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{"id":1848,"date":"2015-04-28T08:08:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T14:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1848"},"modified":"2015-04-28T08:46:57","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T14:46:57","slug":"a-few-comments-on-the-riots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/04\/a-few-comments-on-the-riots.html","title":{"rendered":"A few comments on the riots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So once again we have a city in chaos as originally-peaceful protests turn violent and the police seemingly turn their backs. \u00a0Here\u2019s The Economist<\/a> for a quick summary, and further coverage from Reuters<\/a>\u00a0and AP<\/a>. \u00a0I don\u2019t really have a sense yet of the severity of the whole thing, though we turned on CNN last night, which we don\u2019t usually do, and my son* was most shocked by the report of someone cutting a hole in a fire hose being used to put out a fire. \u00a0(*My 12-year old son; I had taken my youngest upstairs to read with him and tuck him in.)<\/p>\n

Detroit, of course, \u00a0had its own riot, in\u00a01967, which accelerated, if it didn\u2019t directly cause, the massive white flight from the city, two years before my family moved into the area, settling in Southfield, a suburb just to the north of 8 Mile Road. \u00a0Would they have moved directly into the city otherwise? \u00a0Probably not; they\u2019re just not city kind of people. \u00a0And our family\u2019s economic fortunes were much more connected to the fate of the auto industry than with the city itself, though, heck, it would have been nice to have had some experience of city life other than sporadic and only faintly-remembered trips for a Greek Festival at Hart Plaza, or the Auto Show or, well, that\u2019s pretty much all I can remember.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll tell you this: \u00a0not only has there not been another riot, since then, but I can\u2019t even conceive of a riot in Detroit happening again. \u00a0I may be wrong, and any actual Detroiters (or suburbanites \u2014 SJ?) can correct me, but: \u00a0heck, where would they riot? \u00a0In the neighborhoods? \u00a0At the corner grocery store? \u00a0\u2014 for the most part, these are fairly heavily fortified. \u00a0Would they gather downtown, where such progress as exists is so hard-fought? \u00a0I just can\u2019t conceive of a mob action, even as out of control as mobs are, ransacking a city which is already in such dire straights.<\/p>\n

In Detroit, anyone with a lick of sense ought to know that if you destroy a building, the store owners aren\u2019t going to just shrug it off, collect insurance money, and rebuild. \u00a0They\u2019ll leave. \u00a0And any government or charitable help \u2014 well, that\u2019d be at the cost of losing out on some kind of urban renewal project elsewhere.<\/p>\n

And, to the best of my knowledge, there has in fact not<\/em> been any riot since 1967, not on that scale, not on a smaller scale, either.<\/p>\n

But is that any less true in Baltimore? \u00a0Is it really worth a few packages of toilet paper, if your corner store closes down? \u00a0Yes, I know it\u2019s in the nature of riots that once the looting has started, participants take it for granted that destruction is going to happen, and they might as well join in and get their share of of toilet paper, or their thrills from setting fires that, heck, someone else would have set anyway. \u00a0But \u2014 it\u2019s my hunch anyway \u2014 I don\u2019t think riots are inevitable, or an unpredictable force of nature.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"