Wikipedia says violence broke out a day after the George Floyd incident [1]:
> After the main protest group disbanded on the night of May 26, a much smaller group, numbering in the hundreds, spray-painted the building, threw rocks and bottles, broke a window at the station, and vandalized a squad car. A skirmish soon broke out between the vandals and protesters trying to stop them. At around 8 p.m., police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators, some of whom had thrown water bottles at police officers.
That was long before Trump was taking any action. Let's not give a bad politician credit he doesn't deserve.
Not so fun fact: on May 29th in Chicago, the address with the highest number of arrests by far was at Trump tower, against peaceful protesters. Then the police department lied about the number of arrests that happened for looting, saying that there were more arrests for looting than protesters.
If you're looking to build a better understanding of what happened, you might want to reconsider using wikipedia as your source and try to find local news that takes a critical look at policing.
> on May 29th in Chicago, the address with the highest number of arrests by far was at Trump tower, against peaceful protesters.
I am not surprised that the one place in town which has a strong connection to a sitting US president who is considered racist by protesters is a protest, and thus an arrest hotspot. I see no proof that the arrest was made against peaceful protesters.
Other sources, by the way, speak of 108 arrests, mostly related to property damage and violence [1]
> If you're looking to build a better understanding of what happened, you might want to reconsider using wikipedia as your source and try to find local news that takes a critical look at policing.
I prefer a source that at least tries to be unbiased to a source that makes it very clear it doesn't care about unbiased at all.
The source you quote makes claims, but does not show data to back them up. Their analysis - and they admit that themselves - is based on incomplete data.
Heh. I'm the reporter who did the analysis and I absolutely assure you the data was not incomplete. Where in the article was that said? Maybe I'm missing something, but I've spent many hours looking at the arrests in those early days and I can't recall anything that I'd call "incomplete".
The reporting we did at Chicago Reporter was effectively in response to what was said in past reporting (like the one you link), which solely relied on the narratives given by the police, rather than actual thorough analysis. Our analysis found CPD's narrative about the number of people arrested for looting vs protesters to be completely false. CPD agreed that their original narrative was wrong.
Mind you, whenever you see anything about the protests from David Brown, remember: he said he's seen no evidence of kettling of protesters in August 2020[1], despite overwhelming information pointing otherwise, including video of CPD surrounding protesters. I'm not sure I'd trust anything quoted from Brown in that article.
Edit: if you want to look at the data yourself, here [2] you go. They remove the address info in this data, but journalists/students/nonprofits have access to an "authorize-only" version that has address info.
> The Reporter does not have access to the arrest narratives, so our analysis includes crimes that could be considered looting in the context of a protest, but may also be everyday crimes like burglary.
This becomes particularly interesting because only two paragraphs further up, it is pointed out that police was able to - and likely did - arrest groups of people based on the same narrative.
> Edit: if you want to look at the data yourself, here [2] you go. They remove the address info in this data, but journalists/students/nonprofits have access to an "authorize-only" version that has address info.
I wish journalists would give that information - link to sources of their articles - with the articles, especially when working for clearly opinionated media. It increases trust and reliability imho.
It feels like you're just searching for things to dislike.
I'm not sure what your point about the narratives is or how that makes the analysis "limited". The charge is clear enough. Funny enough, the reason that CPD failed to accurately count the number of looters is because they basically did a grep of "protester" in their narrative logs, rather than looking at the charge itself. And again -- CPD agreed with us that their numbers were wrong and ours were correct.
> I wish journalists would give that information
heh. The actual source was an API that we had access to. What I linked wasn't the original source. The API isn't something we could link to. In fact, after we published that article, they shut it down so that we nor other journalists could access it!
And dude. You're preaching to the choir about the reliability shit. Your feelings towards journalists should be directed towards editors, not journalists.
There was an actual "white supremacist" that smashed windows and spray painted "free shit for everyone zone" on the side of a building while the crowd called him out as an agent provocateur, so...
> The man whose cell phone records were sought is said to be a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and “known associate” of the Aryan Cowboys white supremacist prison gang based in Minnesota and Kentucky. He was photographed with a group wearing Aryan Cowboy leather vests in Stillwater harassing a Muslim woman on June 27 of last year, according to the search warrant.
> The search warrant sought the suspect’s cell phone activity and cell tower “pings” on the day of the AutoZone incident. The man, who has a lengthy criminal history, did not return a phone call seeking comment.
That's an easy one. America has had a couple of centuries of systemic racism keeping majority-black communities poor, uneducated, and not particularly fearful of prison (relative to majority-white communities). When you combine that poverty with an easy opportunity to loot something valuable in a situation where there's a perception of not being caught due to the chaos, people will loot things. There will have been poor white people in the videos you watched, but your biases mean you focused on the black people instead.
That's not a suggestion that you're racist. It's simply that you've grown up in a society where white people are literally considered superior. The white supremacy is all around you. You don't notice it in the same way you don't notice the air you breathe. When someone points it out though, you should probably listen at least, even if you choose not to act.
Also, it's not Trump's fault. It goes back far further than Trump. He's simply a clever grifter who found a way to capitalize on it. His family is the better part of $3bn richer since his presidency...
>It's simply that you've grown up in a society where white people are literally considered superior. The white supremacy is all around you. You don't notice it in the same way you don't notice the air you breathe. When someone points it out though, you should probably listen at least, even if you choose not to act.
I'm Bulgarian. We've been slaves longer than the trans-atlantic slave trade existed. Up until 45 years ago we were a puppet state of the USSR with zero political rights. Don't fucking lecture me how privileged I am. And you'll notice that despite being significantly poorer than even poor Americans, we don't riot and loot and burn buildings every time there is a political controversy.
I've been to those protests. 3 hours of football hooligans and extreme nationalists cannot compare to however many months BLM was. I wouldn't call it rioting and there definitely wasn't any looting or burning buildings.
So don't tell me that it's the same, because it isn't. It's possible to air your grievances in a civilized manner, without stealing sneakers.
And you'll notice that despite being significantly poorer than even poor Americans, we don't riot and loot and burn buildings every time there is a political controversy.
Guess what keeps those black neighbourhoods poor? Lack of progressive taxation, which also impacts poor people of all other colors as well, including whites.
Many Americans are obsessed with race, but really the main source of inequality is money these days. Fix the money issue and all poor people will benefit, including minorities. Take more money from the rich and use it to fund public services, education regardless of people's skin color.
Now, obviously black people are poor because of historical actions which might count as "white supremacy" (like trans-atlantic slave trade), but you don't fix the issue by blaming white people, you fix it by taxing the rich.
If you look at the historical record, the people working to stop progressive taxation were openly racist, and used that to get poor white people to support the policies.
So, white supremacy lead directly to lots of poor white people getting hurt, just like the civil war killed a whole bunch of poor white people.
> In this “systemic racism” frame and with an understanding of the pre-existing condition of racial wealth disparities, the “anti-tax” shift of the U.S. tax system from more to less progressive comes into focus as a current manifestation of relentless racism. Beginning in the early 1980s, our tax systems have become less progressive. “Anti-tax” fervor took root with caps on property taxes in California in 1978 and the Reagan tax cuts in the early 1980s, and it has steadily flourished. Congress has decreased wealth taxes along with top marginal income tax rates. State and local governments have reduced reliance on income and property taxes, replacing them with increased sales and other consumption taxes.
> The “anti-tax” movement and economic inequality go hand in hand. Leading economists identify decreased progressivity in the tax system as an important cause of rising economic inequality. High-income earners who are taxed at lower rates are able to add more to their wealth every year compared to low-income earners. “Anti-tax,” it turns out, is less about taking the burden of taxation off of everyone and more about shifting that burden away from wealthy taxpayers who can, for example, choose to domicile in states that raise revenues through (regressive) sales rather than (progressive) income taxes.
