I guess its early days for me as a blogger – and Id hate to ruin the fun lovin’ tone of my blog thus far as I do have some witty observations re: the Auckland art fair I went to over the weekend, but I do have to pause and say WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN LONDON?
Riots and looting are not an especially astounding thing, look at wikipedia’s list of riots so far in 2011 and even I’ll admit a few have escaped my attention – we’ve even seen some looting happen here in New Zealand.
It just shocked me though, it’s happening, on the scale its happening, in England.
Just in case you are out of the loop the summary as far as i can tell is; the riots started last Thursday night after this guy Mark Duggan was shot dead in a taxi, when his planned arrest apparently went wrong. Family, friends and supporters marched in a peaceful protest to the police station where the protesting turned into rioting after a teenage girl threw something (some accounts say a rock?) at the police and the police retaliated with physical violence against her.
I don’t know about you, but the type of rioting that’s happening over there reminds me of the ’81 Toxteth riots people still talk about in Liverpool or the ‘92 LA Riots over Rodney King which I remember watching on TV. In fact there’s this song by sublime that keeps going through my head as I read all this stuff about London:
Being in New Zealand, online media keeps us up to date with world events, and it’s usually curiosity that leads you down a rabbit hole of google news searches and hyperlinks.
Even though at this point Ive read more about the riots than I have about Rita Angus (which I totally need to do more of, 'cause our Rita Angus exhibition opens on friday) I still in no way feel like I can make any type of social commentary.
So instead let me share with you what I’ve come across trying to suss this thing out;
If the rioting was a surprise, people weren't looking
16 YEAR OLD GIRL BATTERED BY TOTTENHAM RIOT POLICE -youtube video
Twitter didn't fuel the Tottenham riot -Social networks did play a role during this weekend's events – just not the way Daily Mail journalists think
RIP Mark Duggan Facebook page
Crazy,crazy stuff and now its spreading to other 'urban' areas in England....
London Riots spreading fast towards Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol
Police deal with disorder in Liverpool
1 comment:
i so remember those LA rodney king riots. Yep these riots are crazy alright, damn twitter and facebook spreading the madness!
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