I have not seen any news stories about looting, riots, or even protests in these areas.
Yay? The press is mostly reporting on looting of the big stores in SF and Walnut Creek -- Lululemon and Macys got hit! But I follow a local Oakland-based journalist on Twitter, and he posted a thread about looting of small locally-owned shops in the Fruitvale District last night, which is bad.
I would be more supportive of people looting to survive given the economic situation right now, but the sociology on this indicates that looting and violence lose public support for the underlying cause. Link. So that's not good. And it's clear that a lot of the looting is just people taking advantage of the cops paying attention to the protests, and not directly related to it. If I'm protesting police brutality, why do I have to loot Lululemon?
What I've seen says that where the police are explicitly working with the protestors(Flint and at least 1 other city) there's no vandalism and no looting. Which makes me think the looters are unrelated to the protests and just taking advantage of confusion.
All was well here, until after dark, then the instigators took over after the decent people went home.
That matches what happened here in San Antonio Saturday night.
We just had a protest march go down Main Street in my hometown. Lots of chants of "No Justice, No Peace" and the whole crowd taking a knee. All seems peaceful so far. I just wish it hadn't happened when I was on a live conference call so I could have at least gone down to kneel in solidarity if not actually join the march.
Much the same here - things were comparatively peaceful until after dark, then it started getting ugly. Someone set a fire in the basement of my church's parish house, but it was put out fairly quickly without a LOT of damage. And the church was untouched. The rector was camping with his family and pretty much unreachable; his main problem was not being able to figure out how to turn off the alarm.
Our curfew keeps expanding -- Saturday night it was just 4 neighborhoods within city limits, downtown and close to downtown, at 10 p.m. Then last night it expanded to all 52 neighborhoods, at 9 p.m. And I just read that for tonight it's expanded to 8 p.m., even though last night was (I think) fairly peaceful, even after dark.
Oh damn, I just read that our city hall is being evacuated right now because of the protests.
Dallas is under curfew as of last night.
Could I send you four seconds of comic relief?
edited to add the warning that loud music will play automatically
