In the summer of 1981 rioting broke out in the inner cities. The Wilderness Years II: Comrades of War, BBC 1995
Who will protect us from our protectors: that is the question of America?’ Breaking History: L A Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later, History 2018
Jeremy McDole September 2015; Philando Castile July 2016; Alton Sterling July 2016; Freddie Gray April 2015; Michael Brown August 2014; Trayvon Martin February 2012; Sandra Bland July 2015; Tamir Rice November 2014; Eric Garner July 2014; Ezell Ford August 2014 … ibid. caption
Once the helicopter is on you, there’s nothing you can do. ibid. Rodney King
Witnesses Depict Relentless Beatings: Accounts of Rodney Glen King’s arrest describe repeated striking and kicking of the suspect. LAPD officers said King’s actions justified the treatment. ibid. Los Angeles Times
Simi Valley is a predominantly white community that is home to hundreds of law enforcement officials. ibid. news
Not a single black person on the panel. ibid. news
This is a brutalisation of the truth; that is the tragedy of America. ibid. Reverend Cecil Murray
15 minutes into the attack, four community members rescued Reginald Denny by driving is truck to a local hospital. ibid. caption
All night looters running wild in the streets of Los Angeles. ibid. news
Deaths: 63; Injuries 2,383; Buildings Burned 3,767. ibid. captions
This morning I woke up in a curfew;
O God, I was a prisoner too – yeah!
Could not recognise the faces standing over me;
They were all dressed in uniforms of brutality. Eh!
How many rivers do we have to cross
Before we can talk to the boss? Eh!
All that we got it seems we have lost;
We must have really paid the cost.
(That’s why we gonna be)
Burnin’ and a-lootin’ tonight;
(Say we gonna burn n loot)
Burnin’ and a-looting’ tonight;
(One more than)
Burnin’ all pollution tonight;
(Oh yeah, yeah)
Burnin’ all illusion tonight.
Oh, stop them! Bob Marley & The Wailers, Burnin’ & Lootin’
Watching the people get lairy
It’s not very pretty I tell thee
Walking though town is quite scary
It’s not very sensible either
A friend of a friend he got beaten
He looked the wrong way at a policeman
Would never have happened to Smeaton
An Old Leodensian
La la la …
I predict a riot
etc. The Kaiser Chiefs, I Predict a Riot
July the second, it was nineteen sixty-three
I was servin’ time for armed robbery
Four o’clock in the mornin’, I was layin’ back in my cell
I heard the whistle blow then I heard somebody yell
There’s a riot goin’ on … Dr Feelgood, Riot in Cell Block Number Nine
Got a looter under arrest. A minor. La Haine 1995 starring Vincent Cassel & Hubert Kounde & said Taghmaoui & Marc Duret & Abdel Ahmed Ghili & Francois Levantal & Tadek Lokcinski & Solo & Heloise Rauth & Choukri Gabteni & Benoit Magimel et al, director Mathieu Kassovitz, police radio
Your mother drinks Bud! ibid. gangster insult to evicting official
It’s hopeless. Once I could talk to the kids. No more. ibid. rozzer
Officials now admit that a policeman lost his gun in the riot last night. ibid. television news
You’re just one guy. You can’t blow ’em all away. ibid. Hubert
How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land. ibid. closing commentary
After Charlottesville, Frontline and Pro Publica reporter A C Thompson investigates who was behind the violent riot and uncovers a network across America that goes beyond Charlottesville. Frontline: Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, PBS 2018
Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12th 2017: Charlottesville was a crime scene … The largest gathering of White Supremacists in a generation: they called it Unite the Right. ibid.
I’m able to identify several more RAM [Rise Above Movement] members. ibid.
Flashed all their truncheons bare
Flashed as they turned in air
Cracking hell’s-grannies there
Dare not a liberal spared
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the tear-gas smoke
Right through the gates they broke
Press-hounds and puppies
Admiring the backhand stroke
Thrashing and thundered.
Points make prizes, praise
The first man to six hundred!
Hippies to the right of them
Hippies to the left of them
Horses behind them
Volleyed and thundered.
Rubber-bullets, shot and shell
Not a horse or hero fell
They that had fought so well.
Each rozzer-filth counts the points
Of broken skulls, legs and joints
Top shot will scoop the prize
Of points to six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Treble overtime paid
To each of the Riot Brigade
A wedge of six hundred! The Charge of the Righteous Rioting Rozzers, 2018, from the comic play The Wrong ’Un cf. Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson
Post-riot: 22 April 1993, Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, [Lucasville] Captive I: Prison Riot USA, Netflix 2016, caption
Lucasville was an explosive environment every day. ibid.
It was way out of control. ibid.
They killed him right there. Snitches get ditches. ibid. inmate
There were a lot of old vendettas being settled. ibid.
400-500 guys running about extremely hyped up and mad. ibid.
Protests spawned riots: riots turn into a national uprising. Attacking the prayer book, rebels did not mince their words. Lisa Hilton, Charles I: Downfall of a King II: A Nation Divided, BBC 2019
Now things get really personal. ibid.
Fuelled by ale, the London apprentices are on the rampage … ‘No Bishops! No Popish Lords!’ ibid.
Charles loses control of the parliament and the people in one foul swoop. ibid.
London is in meltdown. Once a laughable minority, the Puritans have swept into power. ibid.
1st January 1642: Charles summons John Pym. ibid.
You’ve got to arrest people. You have to track people. You have to put them in jail for ten years and you’ll never see this stuff again. You have to dominate or you’ll look like a bunch of jerks. Donald Trump, 2020
Fires are burning in cities across America, with storefronts smashed amid clashes between cops and protesters against police violence. It comes days after the Coronavirus death toll in our country passed the grim milestone of 100,000, after a month in which 40 million people went on to the unemployment – exceeding the depths of the Great Depression.
With the country in crisis after a month from hell, President Trump’s public schedule for this last day of May is blank. But when he’s not MIA, the President’s comments have only deepened our division, with tweets like ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’, coming one day after he retweeted an account saying ‘the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.’
President Trump has sowed the seeds of conflict and now we are all reaping the whirlwind of chaos. His inability to empathize with others, his instinct to play white identity politics, his essential disinterest in uniting the nation, have brought us to this breaking point. CNN online article 31 May 2020
CNN: As I wrote this, the US Capitol building was being stormed by right-wing protesters trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
This was an attempted coup, encouraged by the President of the United States, in an attempt to derail today’s congressional certification of the electoral vote that will lead to Joe Biden’s inauguration in two weeks.