Looting, specifically in response to police violence, is actually an extremely rational and precise form of protest action because it correctly identifies the most direct way to instigate a confrontation with the law without committing violence against anyone in the community.

It flows from an understanding of the true nature of policing: the protection of private property at the expense of human life. Committing intentional, targeted property destruction on a scale large enough that the police can’t contain it is a perfect show of force by the people.

In other words, if the public had to sit down and figure out the perfect way to tell the police to go fuck themselves, they couldn’t really come up with a better tactic than looting. It’s a direct challenge to police authority as well as the economic exploitation in communities.

Even the exploiters are barely harmed here. Businesses are insured and regardless most of the looting takes place at huge franchises that will barely see a dip in their profits as a result, let alone any real human costs. If anything it’s not harmful *enough* to these exploiters.

The public outcry over the looting compared to the public outcry over the police shooting a child is lopsided but really only in the media, where the obvious interests of capital force the narrative to one side. The people, as they are demonstrating, value the child’s life more.

Would you commit a crime to save your child? Would you break unjust laws written by and for the benefit of the rich to undermine their ability to starve and brutalize your family? These are the questions we should be asking anyone clutching their pearls over a ransacked Best Buy.

The media will frame looting as it always does: an overflowing of the animalistic nature of the underclasses not adequately controlled by state violence. In fact it’s one of the most calculated and effective demonstrations of moral integrity. That story has to be told more often.

This Esquire interview with James Baldwin in 1968 should’ve been the final word on looting in America. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23960/james-baldwin-cool-it/

“I'm sorry, the story isn't in yet, and furthermore, I don't believe what I read in the newspapers. I object to the term ‘looters’ because I wonder who is looting whom, baby.”