Joy Pullmann of the Federalist writes about left-of-center activists who excuse lawless looting.
In Chicago this summer, Black Lives Matter protesters have repeatedly called for committing crimes as vengeance for claimed racial injustice. A few days ago, marchers in Millennium Park unfurled huge banners, one of which proclaimed “loot it all back.”
March organizers called for the banner to lead the march, according to Grace Del Vecchio, a local writer onsite who also provided video.
After widespread looting in the city as part of ongoing civil unrest accompanied by a crime wave, on Aug. 11 local Black Lives Matter leader Ariel Atkins openly defended looting as “reparations,” according to local outlets. …
… In a TV interview after Atkins’s comments, while not openly endorsing property crime, Black Lives Matter Chicago cofounder Aislinn Pulley failed to flatly condemn looting as a part of her group’s tactics. Instead she called discussions about looting a “preoccupation” that “works to distract away from the actual cause of the outrage.”
Pulley also implied that rampant property crimes decimating Democrat-run cities like Chicago during ongoing summer protests are not the fault of those committing them, but the fault of voters and elected officials who don’t do what she wants: “The refusal to enact any meaningful change will mean that we will have continued instances like this…We will continue to have unrest, intercommunal violence and these things until the root causes are resolved.”
In other words, don’t blame the criminals, blame the laws they’re breaking and the people enforcing those laws. Just like this admitted ATM robber and his friends say, we need to focus on “what can be done for this man to feel like he don’t need to loot again.” It’s our fault he tried to loot an ATM, you see. We’re responsible for his feelings and actions, not him.
