The second issue of the Occupied Wall Street Journal makes for exhilarating reading. But sitting here in England, one passage caused me to spit the fine tea I wasn't drinking over the English muffin that I wasn't eating. The paragraph appears in a graphic that seems to be intended to demonstrate that the Occupy Movement is part of a continuum of international protest:
Young people, first in working class London neighborhoods and then in cities throughout the country, rebel days after police shoot and kill 29-year-old Mark Duggan. Spurred by police violence, racism and alienation, it is the largest uprising in recent English history. Five people die, at least 16 are injured and more than 3,000 get arrested.That passage leaves a number of important things unstated. The most important is that the casualties were not the responsibility of homicidal security forces suppressing brave rebels. It was the "rebels" that were doing a good part of the killing:
On 10 August, in Winson Green, Birmingham, three men – Haroon Jahan, 21 and brothers Shahzad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31 – were killed in a hit-and-run incident while attempting to protect their neighbourhood from rioters and looters. A 26 year old man, a 23 year old man and a 17 year old youth appeared in court charged with murder and were remanded in custody.I think to say they were involved in part of the killing is an understatement. The OWSJ cites 5 deaths. Those 5 deaths were all committed by rioters. Mark Duggan was killed by the Police but that was, of course, before the riots began.
A 68-year-old man, Richard Mannington Bowes, died on 11 August after he was attacked while attempting to stamp out a litter-bin fire in Ealing on the evening of 8 August.
Bowes was attacked by members of a mob on 8 August 2011, while attempting to extinguish a fire that had been deliberately started in industrial bins on Spring Bridge Road. The attack inflicted severe head injuries which resulted in a coma. The assault was caught on CCTV and reportedly filmed on mobile phones by associates of the alleged assailant. The attack on Bowes was witnessed by several police officers, but due to the number of rioters they were unable to come to his aid until riot squad officers pushed back the rioters while being attacked in order to reach Bowes. A line of officers then held back the rioters as paramedics arrived. Bowes's wallet and phone had been stolen, and police faced difficulty in identifying him. He died of his injuries in St Mary's Hospital on 11 August 2011 after being removed from life support.
The "rebels" also were involved in robbing the injured.
The grassroots response among the population was not, on the whole, favourable to the rioters.
There is a case to be made that the original Tottenham riots were political in the broadest sense. For the other riots the case is feeble. Opinion is divided between those who take the position that to explain the riotous behaviour is not to excuse it, and those who say that the explanations all seem to take the form of excuses. The explanations have not shied away from the looting and the violence, but have taken the position that we can expect no better of a youth raised in a relentlessly materialistic society, and that breaking into a shop and stealing a flat screen television is not morally distinguishable from having the government bail your bank out.
Whatever side of the debate you might find yourself on, describing the riots in the terms that the OWSJ does would mean you held a view 1% rather than 99% of British people would be likely to adhere to.
America should embrace the Occupy Wall Street for what it is. If it is unique then it is not thereby diminished. What would diminish it would be to associate it with the London Riots.
PS I suspect some may accuse me of being right wing (it's a new and refreshing experience for me). I took part in the riot cleanup campaign and turned out with a diverse community of others to sweep up. We were denounced as "fascists" on some blogs for our efforts.
