Americans Are Protesting, But What Keeps Full-Scale Riots From Breaking Out?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/books/154155/americans_are_protesting%2C_but_what_keeps_full-scale_riots_from_breaking_out/

Michael Katz's Why Don't American Cities Burn? is both a crushing reminder of seemingly intractable problems that still face American cities and an exploration of why things aren't worse. It is a slim book that serves as a general overview of the current state of the urban studies field, and although it went to the presses before Occupy Wall Street broke out, it provides some insight into the structural challenges facing the protesters who have recently flooded the streets of American metropolises.

Katz lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches history at the University of Pennsylvania. The book's engrossing prologue is told in the first person and uses a murder trial, at which Katz served on the jury, as a framing device to set up his major themes. He gives us a portrait of the North Philadelphia badlands, where the underground economy is the largest employer and violence is a normalized part of life. Katz weaves fascinating insights on urban America into the larger narrative, which centers on a deadly confrontation between two African-American men, Shorty and Herbert, and ends with the former dead of a knife wound.

Why Don't American Cities Burn? returns to these two men again and again, but readers hoping for a continued easy read will soon be disappointed. Chapter 2, titled "The New African-American Inequality," looks at almost every imaginable metric by which wellbeing can be measured and shows that inequality persists in every way, despite significant advances, between black Americans and their counterparts. It is as enlightening an as unremitting litany of statistics can be, but the effect is numbing.

Katz uses Herbert and Shorty as the catalyst for the titular chapter, which asks why anger at the crushing conditions in many urban neighborhoods resulted in a wave of criminal violence, rather than acts of collective rage. The conditions that inspired urban violence in the 1960s still exist and, in many cases, have worsened: unemployment, police brutality, failing schools, segregation, and poverty.

[Nambe]

1. The US has a higher percentage of it's population in prison than China and Russia combined.

The neo cons are heavily invested in private prisons and dedicated to growing their business. They can and will ruin your life without blinking. Don't make the mistake of empowerment via justice in the US. Ask Martha.

[russspeakeasy]

2. A well written article...thatks for the post.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. The social scientist have all sorts of theories about this

The haves (which includes anyone who owns a home or business) see riots as a bad thing. Those who are dispossessed or have no sense of social responsibility may see it as a good thing or opportunity for enrichment. Another counter argument is the availability of firearms. Some merchants stood their ground during the LA riots and shot at rioters. Their buildings often survived.

[wendylaroux]

4. batons,pepper spray, tasers,hand cuffs,kettling, and guns?

[ellisonz]

7. Welcome to DU!

- I'm sorry we're out of pepper-spray, it's a vegetable!

[wendylaroux]

8. thank you

for welcoming me--yes pepper spray is a veggie,just like ketchup!

[Vincardog]

5. 30 years of fear police by police and opposition to organized political protest? Maybe the

FBI infiltrating and setting up anyone who works for change?
Just a guess

[MisterP]

6. James Dunkerley notes that Nicaragua 1978-79 was way better off than El Salvador or Guatemala,

but Nicaragua had the successful revolution: his explanation is that it was conditions plus an unraveling of the dominant group in Managua that allowed 1979, whereas there was no such unraveling to the north