London was burning...
The aftermath of the recent London riots have been all over the headlines today as story broke of the sentencing of two UK youth. Their involvement? “Inciting” the riots via Facebook messages. Their punishment? Four years in prison.
Have the law enforcement officials completely lost their minds?
Concerning the twenty-something Facebookers: “Police admit that no riots resulted from their postings and that neither of the guilty men was involved in acts of violence or theft themselves.” One report claims that one of the young men posted on Facebook while drunk, then went to sleep, woke up the following morning and removed the post. What exactly was his crime and why is four years a fitting punishment?
Quote from the presiding judge, Judge Elgan Edwards said both acted in an “evil manner inciting violence at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation.” It sounds like something residents of revolutionary Boston would give the middle finger to. Why not condemn them to lashings or the stocks? It’s Facebook messages. Ban them from Facebook or sentence them to community service, but four years in prison is ridiculous.
There has also been chatter of kicking out those who played a part in the riots and criminal activity from their government-subsidized housing. If these rioters really had no reason for their actions beforehand, they sure do have something to protest now. Those who live in government-subsidized housing are usually there because they qualify due to their inability to procure adequate housing on the private market. Where will they live? The media and political elite have largely portrayed the events of last week as “senseless criminality”, calling the rioters and looters “thugs” and “malcontents”, for not having an organized message of political or social uprising. If we take only this as the truth, then what will kicking them and their families out of subsidized housing do, other than create more marginalization and discontent?
And why does everyone seem to have such a hard time connecting the dots on this one?
I don’t dispute for one second that the situation in London and surrounding areas was a mess. It did harm, people were killed, injured and honest folks with honest businesses were caught in the crossfire of anger. I don’t advocate violence and I don’t condone theft or looting. There should be action against such, but one cannot stop there. Stop ignoring the real problems.
Don’t discount the discontent and don’t assume because people are badly organized and/or opportunistic that there are not deeper issues to address. Locking up all the rioters, even if you could, will not solve this in the least. Banning kids from Facebook won’t stop it. Similarly, the new strict curfews to combat the “flash mobs” in Philadelphia will probably help, but not solve the actual problems. It can’t stop at law enforcement and prison sentences, those are band-aids and suppression, not solutions.
The problems are deeper than “thugs” or pure “evil”, no matter what the politicians or the media tries to say. The easiest way to gain political support and win a re/election is to ride the “public safety” option. This is a no-brainer. Heavy fists, lengthy sentences and tons of police is easy, it makes the older generation and business owners feel safe. The hard thing is to construct positive social policies that get at the root of the problem: the unemployment, the drug trade, marginalization of immigrant populations, “austerity” cuts to libraries and sports clubs and cultural programs…the list right now is pretty endless. Why not take a crack at improving even one of them? I can’t be the only one to realize this, but I feel like I’m shouting in a room full of old, deaf judgmental people while they shake their heads at the scenes on CNN and BBC.
And it’s not just happening in the UK. I already mentioned the “flash mob” phenomenon in Philadelphia, also attributed to disrespectful youths with the sole motivation to wreck havoc. The “knuckleheads” in France got the heat when they “hijacked” peaceful demonstrations against raising of the retirement age last Fall, breaking a few store windows and making off with some Nike’s. Least of all to mention the huge riots in 2005 that plagued major French cities, following the death of a youth after a police chase.
Maybe the powers that be have a problem that in these Western hubs they aren’t organizing valiantly against a dictator or organizing much, if at all. Perhaps it’s true that they aren’t articulating themselves adequately or choosing the most effective outlet to voice their anger. But it’s no coincidence that growing youth unemployment and disenfranchisement is present repeatedly around the world in current change-making situations, from the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya to reactions to economic worries in Spain, Greece and France to, yes, the “senselessness” in the UK and right here in the United States.
Young people are unhappy, and there happens to be a lot of them. They are bored and they sit around listening to music, watching TV or on the block because it’s easy and fun. Youth today have wants many more times beyond their means. Also not a coincidence is the prevalence of credit cards, fraud and looting when young consumers (on their TVs and music and on the internet) are constantly brainwashed to want more, more, more. They make a lot of people and a lot of corporations truck-fulls of money yet are bringing in close to none themselves, rarely of their own volition. They don’t have jobs and they don’t have families of their own, so they generally have nothing to lose. Going to college or university is a crap shoot, who knows who will be able to finish with tuition fees constantly rising, and hell, there’s already masses of people under 30, some with multiple degrees, either unemployed or underemployed. They are looking at futures that have little to no direction, no clear avenues of success like the generation before. They want iPod’s and Wii’s and Nike’s so when a perfectly justifiable protest against excessive police force resulting in the death of a UK man gets a little out of hand…they see a rare window of opportunity, say “f- it” and get theirs for a change.
Or they make a joke on Facebook and get four years imprisonment.
And I say they, but I mean we.
Four years for Facebook posts that resulted neither in a riot nor any criminal activity is excessive and should be appealed immediately.
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