If I am pissed off enough, does that excuse my violent actions.

Some may think so, but in reality nope.

Was the Boston Tea Party justifiable?

I can understand the pissed off part. But did your actions improve the situation, or make it worse? So now there are employees out of work, business owners out big bucks, people injured on both sides, and people without a pharmacy to get their prescriptions refilled, as well as some other lost services. Yeah things are a whole lot better.~

Not if it includes hurting random innocent people who had nothing to do with it.

Meh. Plenty of people think white boys are justified to do much the same thing if their sportsball team loses. Or wins. Or whatever. Because boys will be boys.

@janbb What’s the reference to the Boston Tea Party? I don’t get the connection.

Animosity

Destruction of property in retaliation against oppression. It’s not exactly a far leap.

From a psychological perspective, everyone should be responsible for their actions. From a sociological perspective, this is not a surprise. The pitchforks are coming

That is how your country was “founded”.

I am loving Michael’s mom. She will be on many talk shows soon. I bet Oprah is wishing to do that story. I am really proud of her doing what she believed had to be done to make her son be right, be safe, and see the situation in the right way. She was all mom, just getting her son home so they could stay out of the stupid stuff. Yayyyyyyyy Mom!

When you are really and truly pissed do you even care whether you have an excuse or not?

Excuses are not for the moment. Excuses are for all the finger pointing afterward.

Hell, no! Controlling your temper is one of the things that being civilized is all about.

No. And I heard all kinds of excuses. They are young, and underprivileged with poor education and poor living conditions. Well I grew up dirt poor in the Bronx. Both my parents worked and they made barely enough to get buy. But we were taught to respect other peoples property. And even if my parents never said a thing. I knew braking the law had consequences. Being poor doesn’t mean you are born with some mental handicap. You don’t need to learn in school that stealing, damaging property, stealing and hurting others is against the law. All the kids and adults they showed on tv are old enough to know right and wrong.
The reason these things happen is because for the last 20 years people are being taught that there are no consequences to their bad behavior. It’s like the drunk who gets drunk and then slaps the kids and misses or curses out the neighbor and then blames the drink. No body made you drink.

Well no body made them do all that crap.
There is no excuse. I saw the laughing and celebrating as they smashed and stole stuff and took off running with merchandise and money. They didn’t look angry. They looked happy as hell creating havoc.

And no. Just because the media didn’t announce other stupid riots that involved white people doesn’t give them a pass. The other groups should’ve been bought up on charges as well.

Riots are nothing new but neither is police brutality. You can go back to the early days of America and see how the police where crooks and murders. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But action needs to be done in a civilized way, like the peaceful marches that have been going on. Nobody listens to a hot head. But intellectual people making valid and honest points and putting constant pressure on the local governments put pressure on them to change, as well as offering real solutions. Violence offers no solutions and only makes the effort a lot harder than it has to be.

I’ve been to Baltimore several times. I often thought it was a beautiful city. It was sad to watch what people were doing. It’s just going to drive up insurances for businesses and the cost of that insurance will be passed down to all those living there. Making and already expensive living, more expensive. People went out to clean up the next morning. What they needed to do was grab all those little thugs and make they get down on their hands and knees and clean up the mess they made. Community work for all of them for a year minimum.

No. Besides they aren’t really pissed off, it is just an excuse to jump on the thug wagon and rob and loot and get “free” stuff. A ruse and nothing else.

Out of the thousands of people who were peacefully protesting – and protesting something real and important that needs immediate attention and outrage from everyone, not just the black communities – the media chooses to focus on the few who riot and don’t actually care about the real cause. It’s done to delegitimize the entire thing, to take the focus away from the positive changes that thousands of people are trying to make.

What’s worse is that most people truly don’t react with such aversion when white people ransack cities because their sports teams won or lost a fucking game. But, ooohhh, those outraged black people should just shut the hell up when unarmed black men are murdered by the people who are paid to protect them! How dare they!

I agree that everyone has the ability to get pissed off about something, but some people legitimately have more of a reason to get pissed off. The fact that many privileged people don’t recognize that in this country is part of the problem.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who were rioting that truly just don’t give a shit. Who just want to loot, and burn, and cause mayhem. But there may also be a number of them who burned things down and caused destruction because they feel they have no other choice left. Does that make it right? No, definitely not, because they end up hurting innocent people. But the important thing to remember is that we can’t compare those riots to the riots that occur (all the time) when (mostly) white people get mad or happy about losing or winning a sports match, because they are born of entirely different things. One is truly random havoc for the sake of it, another is because people are being murdered – even if the rioters are in the wrong in general.

Annie Mosity << @josie‘s life coach.