Minneapolis

Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd in a Minneapolis courthouse on Tuesday. Jurors deliberated for 10 hours before returning a guilty verdict on all counts: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Floyd's death on May 25 last year was witnessed by several bystanders outside of the Cup Foods deli in northern Minneapolis. A video showing the final minutes of Floyd's life, shot by teenager Darnella Frazier, went viral and prompted a wave of summer protests and riots in American cities and worldwide. In the clip, Officer Chauvin restrained Floyd with his knee, pinning his head to the tarmac alongside a car. Floyd had initially been apprehended for use of a counterfeit banknote in the deli.

For years, activists have demanded stricter gun control in America, on the cogent (though perhaps unconstitutional) grounds that fewer guns will save the lives of young people in American cities. Cockburn has an alternative proposal: instead of gun control, America needs celebrity control. Lacking any skin in the game and let loose on Twitter, famous people are saying extremely insane things that are going to get people killed. The chief honor this time goes to alleged ‘comedian’ Chelsea Handler, after the shooting death of Minneapolis’s Daunte Wright. Wright tragically learned the hard way that resisting arrest puts you at risk of being shot by a birdbrained police officer who confuses her taser with a pistol.

So far in the 2020s, American citizens have been hectored endlessly about wearing masks, staying safe indoors and standing apart out. Yet the people who smash up neighborhoods are encouraged to keep expressing their pain. The concept of law and order is therefore becoming a twisted joke. Yes, Minneapolis is rioting again — another police violence video circulated on the internet, another round of anarchy, another bonfire of American values. This time it’s Daunte Wright, a young man shot dead as he tried to escape the police in Brooklyn Center, a northern suburb of the Twin Cities. The officer responsible, a woman called Kim Potter, seems to have believed she was using a Taser to stop Wright. But she got him with a gun instead.

I was in my hotel room in London when the second wave of riots in Ferguson broke out. The clashes began on November 24, 2014 after a grand jury decided, rightly, not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown, a black man who, according to black eyewitnesses, was shot to death by Wilson after charging at him. As a filmmaker who often travels to hotspots around the world to document the absurdity of the human condition, I wrestled with whether I should cut short my London trip, fly directly to the St Louis suburb and risk myself and my crew by documenting the chaos breaking out there. Arriving in Ferguson, I witnessed heart-wrenching scenes of an American city in flames.

One of the best rules of thumb to emerge from systems theory is Stafford Beer’s famous statement: the purpose of a system is what it does. It doesn’t matter what the designer intended, or what the individual participants think they’re doing; the end result is all that matters. It’s a useful thing to bear in mind when we consider the objectives of the Black Lives Matter protesters, because right now the movement is beginning to look an awful lot like a machine for the abolition of police departments. It is frankly dizzying how rapidly the aims of the movement seem to have shifted from reform to destruction.

Remember when peaceful protesters of the economic lockdown were smeared for apparently putting lives at risk by utilizing their First Amendment rights?  ‘Many protesters have ignored public health edicts, exposed themselves and others to COVID-19 and put our nation’s hodgepodge efforts to mitigate the pandemic at risk,’ the USA Today editorial board wrote. George Stephanopoulos, an ABC journalist and former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, appeared to suggest during an April interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the platform should censor posts promoting protests against the lockdown.‘Facebook also holds its users accountable by continuing to monitor and flag posts for harmful misinformation about the disease,’ he said.

Race riots have gripped the nation over the past week, eclipsing the peaceful protesters demanding justice for the death of George Floyd. Violent rioters — including members of antifa — have laid waste to virtually every American city. As darkness descends on an American city, what is it like to be on the front lines of the riots?Reporters who set out to document the chaos described to The Spectator how the mood shifted as the sun went down. Rioters felt empowered under the cover of darkness and set out to fight, destroy, and steal.Krista Oliver, who covered the weekend-long protests in Washington, DC for the Daily Caller recalled ‘how scary these riots are getting as the night progresses.

Small businesses in America have been hit by a devastating double whammy. Stores that managed to survive the economic shutdown now face a severe outbreak of looting and vandalism that could close them for good. Rioters might justify their actions by arguing that property damage is nothing compared to the suffering of black Americans at the hands of police, but the destruction of small businesses has profound economic and cultural consequences. As of mid-May, economists projected that more than 100,000 small businesses had been lost thanks to the COVID-19 quarantine. That accounts for at least 2 percent of small businesses in America. More than 30 percent of small business owners said they would be at risk if the shutdown lasted more than two months.

These riots are not just about pent up frustration over police brutality and the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. In part, they’re about a population being locked up for three months while 40 million people lose their employment.Politicians like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio cracked down on Jewish funerals and schools. They remained silent last night as hundreds of people joined protests which turned into riots in Brooklyn, injuring police officers and resulting in the arrest of several members of the Blac Block anarchist group, antifa.Mayors in Atlanta and Minneapolis condemned the violent crowds which had gathered by the hundreds to turn on corporate businesses and small businesses alike and even the CNN headquarters building.

Donald Trump announced on Twitter this morning that the National Guard is standing by in Minneapolis. The Guard is ready to be deployed to quell the riots stemming from righteous anger over the death of George Floyd. The only sensible question is: why has it taken so long? President Trump ought to be the tough but moral leader the city needs right now, but his initial response was just as spineless as the rest. When the protests first started, Trump was busy tweeting about Joe Scarborough’s dead intern. As the city burned, he whined about Twitter fact-checking him on voter fraud and had his administration quickly draft an executive order on social media.