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# How is Riot a Justified Reaction?
December 01 2014
Written by Mary Benson.
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VOICES-I just don't understand how a riot is a justified reaction to a grand jury decision. How does that entitle someone to go and destroy a neighborhood? (See CityWatch article “[Ferguson Isn’t About Black Rage …”)](https://ded2209.inmotionhosting.com/~citywa9/lead-stories-hidden/7956-ferguson-isn-t-about-black-rage-against-cops-it-s-white-rage-against-progress)
How does a riot with its ac companying police intervention support a finding of racial discrimination? How does a racial employment quota, giving people of color up to a 10% add-on be considered as equality under the law? In the 2008 stock market fiasco, non-government workers like me lost 80% of their retirement pension fund, and even more with the crash in home equity. I believe until people like Carol stop seeing this as a uniquely black issue, nothing is going to change.
Mine is a family of Irish Immigrants, who came to this country starved by famine, they moved from Chicago to Iowa when lands were opened up they failed at wheat farming, they failed at peach orchards, they started up again as a freight hauler for the railroad only to be bankrupt yet again when the railroad went belly up.
Our freedom here in America is not one of entitlement and guaranteed outcomes.
*(Mary Benson, California State University, Northridge)*
-cw
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CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 97
Pub: Dec 2, 2014
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