https://www.city-journal.org/george-floyd-minneapolis-riots
Once again—as in Baltimore, following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, and long before then, in Watts, Newark, and Detroit—the actions of rioters in an American city are being described as protests, or, by PBS, no less, as an “uprising.” Even Minneapolis’s hapless mayor, Jacob Frey—under siege as his city burns—graces the violence with understanding. “There is a lot of pain and anger in our city,” said Frey, adding that “this is what happens” when long-standing issues of race and poverty go unaddressed. It’s “not just because of five minutes of horror,” Frey noted in a press conference, referring to the images of George Floyd gasping for air beneath a police officer’s knee, “but 400 years.”
Frey rightly called for the arrest of the officer, Derek Chauvin, and Chauvin has now been arrested. But Frey was wrong to ascribe anything close to justifiable motives to those who have torched a police precinct building and a youth center and looted stores serving their own community. It’s as if we have learned nothing over two generations about what happens when public officials give license to the lawless, letting marauders proceed under cover of high-mindedness. We expect as much from inflammatory activists like Al Sharpton but deserve better from elected officials charged with protecting property, lives, and livelihoods.