A recently released book entitled “In Defense of Looting” by a self-described writer, editor and agitator has hit at a moment when the arguments over racism and police-involved deaths are being intermingled with a significant push to force politicians and public figures define and denounce when protesting becomes rioting.
Yet, by the definitions of author Vicky Osterweil, rioting and looting take on more of a tone of revolutionary acts, with every rioter or looter a comrade in arms, assisting one another in harmoniously throwing off the chains of capitalist oppression, according to an interview with National Public Radio.
“You get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free,” she said in the NPR interview.
Yet, Osterweil also carefully defines looting as mass shoplifting in the interview.
“I'm not defending any situation in which property is stolen by force,” she told NPR. “It's not a home invasion either. It's about a certain kind of action that's taken during protests and riots.”
As riots and upheaval have swept the nation, it has ranged from riots that spread quickly across Kenosha, Wisconsin, to those who narrowly targeted federal and other government buildings in Portland, Oregon.
“Portland, I think they were overreacting,” James McQueen of Calvert County told Maryland State Wire.
The more upsetting element to property damage and destruction in Portland was how long it was permitted to go on, he said. Yet, beyond the loss of property, McQueen is worried that the growth of riots could bring a violent backlash.
“But what worried me, Kenosha’s getting closer to the suburbs,” McQueen told Maryland State Wire. “And if you do that, if you live in certain suburbs, there’s gonna be bigger issues, because you’re gonna see, probably more people come out … that would fight against Antifa, and the only way that they would fight would be violence also.”
Regardless of the rhetoric it comes dressed in, violence is going to feed into more violence, McQueen said.
“If you really want to say something, quit the violence, quit the burning,” McQueen told Maryland State Wire.
Alerts Sign-up