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Riots Quotes

Browse 66 quotes about Riots.

Riots Quotes

“I know a lot of Americans who would be glad to settle for better bus service from their home to their jobs, or from poor neighborhoods to areas of the city where jobs are to be found. Repeated studies of riots in urban ghettos show that lack of adequate transportation was a big factor in the discontent and bitterness which caused riot conditions to erupt, but President Nixon's answer is to build a space shuttle or an SST with precious public funds, to serve a tiny elite of the population or to stimulate the economy of a state or region by creating massive and useless technological publicworks projects. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

“In this year of riots I am called to duty Through this year of angers I have gripped a meaning In this year of lies and angers burning out of control I went out and met history on its own terms And I have come back to tell you what I saw: Uprisings everywhere—they'll riot anytime—anything goes that'll feed a flame; Warnings unheeded—stopwatches hurtling—direct lies expected and received— Fires burning out of control in the streets "WHO'S THAT OUT THERE IN THAT STRANGE RED LIGHT?" "We call you to answer for your indiscretions, Mr. Johnson." The time has come for me to have it out with America on the battlefields of my ancestry. In my short lifetime I have seen America lose faith in her own greatness— This year of riots and angers burning out of control announces one great covenant broken: The summit once reached and past, the terror begins.”

“Winter arrived with December, and the world continued to suffer the loss of the Internet and most forms of communication. Supply chains were disrupted. The only mass form of personal communication was the letter, and postal workers were having their worst year ever, as they were actually meeded. Food was becoming scarcer and more expensive, as was fuel for vehicles and heating. Major cities experienced riots on a regular basis, spurred on by religious fervor and want. Civilization was on the brink of collapse.”

“All processes in nature create waste but nature takes care of the waste too. The thought process is man-made. The waste it creates is like plastic. Religions all over the world have turned human mind into a factory of creating pious thoughts. The waste it creates is immense and dirty. People try to burn it with the fire of hatred, riots, wars and so on... True religion is about discovering the zone of no thought.”

“Mob is not the plural of man, he said. We’re dealing with a different species, that has kaleidoscopes in the hollows of the eyes. Where projections of violence keep rotating at increasing velocity. Until the prisms shatter with their own frenzy, & the blinded creature collapses in the rubble it has created.”

“Yes, an actual full-sized camel. If you find that confusing, just think how the criosphinx must have felt. Where did the camel come from, you ask? I may have mentioned Walt’s collection of amulets. Two of them summoned disgusting camels. I’d met them before, so I was less than excited when a ton of dromedary flesh flew across my line of sight, plowed into the sphinx, and collapsed on top of it. The sphinx growled in outrage as it tried to free itself. The camel grunted and farted. “Hindenburg,” I said. Only one camel could possibly fart that badly. “Walt, why in the world—?” “Sorry!” he yelled. “Wrong amulet!” The technique worked, at any rate. The camel wasn’t much of a fighter, but it was quite heavy and clumsy. The criosphinx snarled and clawed at the floor, trying unsuccessfully to push the camel off; but Hindenburg just splayed his legs, made alarmed honking sounds, and let loose gas. I moved to Walt’s side and tried to get my bearings.”

“Quoting page 32: Third, the riots spurred aggressive efforts by federal officials to dampen the violence by speeding delivery of benefits, especially jobs paying good wages, to urban minorities who found little payoff in the civil right legislation of 1964-65. The Small Business Administration (SBA), seeking to aid proprietors of riot-damaged stores and to encourage minority ownership in urban rebuilding efforts, established in 1968 the section 8(a) program. Targeted to aid heavily damaged core areas through grants and subsidized business loans, the 8(a) program avoided the racial quota taboo by funneling aid to “socially disadvantaged” persons, not to minorities per se. But most participants in the 8(a) program were minority business entrepreneurs.”

“Page 207 In the inner cities of all the major metropolitan areas across the United States, ethnic Koreans represent an increasingly glaring market-dominant minority vis-à-vis the relatively economically depressed African-American majorities around them. In New York City, Koreans, less than .1 percent of the city’s population, own 85 percent of produce stands, 70 percent of grocery stores, 80 percent of nail salons, and 60 percent of dry cleaners. In portions of downtown Los Angeles, Koreans own 40 percent of the real estate but constitute only 10 percent of the residents. Korean-American businesses in Los Angeles County number roughly 25,000, with gross sales of $4.5 billion. Nationwide, Korean entrepreneurs have in the last decade come to control 80 percent of the $2.5 billion African-American beauty business, which—“like preaching and burying people”—historically was always a “black” business and a source of pride, income, and jobs for African-Americans. “They’ve come in and taken away a market that’s not rightfully theirs,” is the common, angry view among inner-city blacks. Page 208 At a December 31, 1994, rally, Norman “Grand Dad” Reide, vice president of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, accused Koreans of “reaping a financial harvest at the expense of black people” and recommended that “we boycott the bloodsucking Koreans.” More recently, in November 2000, African-Americans firebombed a Korean-owned grocery store in northeast Washington, D.C. The spray-painted message on the charred walls: “Burn them down, Shut them down, Black Power!”

“The academic literature describes marshals who “‘police’ other demonstrators,” and who have a “collaborative relationship” with the authorities. This is essentially a strategy of co-optation. The police enlist the protest organizers to control the demonstrators, putting the organization at least partly in the service of the state and intensifying the function of control. (...) Police/protestor cooperation required a fundamental adjustment in the attitude of the authorities. The Negotiated Management approach demanded the institutionalization of protest. Demonstrations had to be granted some degree of legitimacy so they could be carefully managed rather than simply shoved about. This approach de-emphasized the radical or antagonistic aspects of protest in favor of a routinized and collaborative approach. Naturally such a relationship brought with it some fairly tight constraints as to the kinds of protest activity available. Rallies, marches, polite picketing, symbolic civil disobedience actions, and even legal direct action — such as strikes or boycotts — were likely to be acceptable, within certain limits. Violence, obviously, would not be tolerated. Neither would property destruction. Nor would any of the variety of tactics that had been developed to close businesses, prevent logging, disrupt government meetings, or otherwise interfere with the operation of some part of society. That is to say, picketing may be fine, barricades are not. Rallies were in, riots were out. Taking to the streets — under certain circumstances — may be acceptable; taking over the factories was not. The danger, for activists, is that they might permanently limit themselves to tactics that were predictable, non-disruptive, and ultimately ineffective.”

“At a street corner meeting in Watts when the riots were over, an unemployed youth of about twenty said to me, "We won." I asked him: "How have you won? Homes have been destroyed, Negroes are lying dead in the streets, the stores from which you buy food and clothes are destroyed, and people are bringing you relief." His reply was significant: "We won because we made the whole world pay attention to us. The police chief never came here before; the mayor always stayed uptown. We made them come." Clearly it was no accident that the riots proceeded along an almost direct path to City Hall.... This is hardly a description of a Negro community that has run amok. The largest number of arrests were for looting—not for arson or shooting. Most of the people involved were not habitual thieves; they were members of a deprived group who seized a chance to possess things that all the dinning affluence of Los Angeles had never given them.”

“Later, some of his supporters decide that Antifa orchestrated the whole thing. It’s as if Antifa, probably taking advantage of a group-discount rate at the MAGA store, suddenly show up decked out in all this crap, I mean, merchandise, and duped the poor, pathetic Make America Great Again crowd. Sometimes reality is an orphan in the valley of the true believers.”

“I followed along with Sky News and BBC News during the UK 2024 riots. The BBC News feed distinctly changed after it emerged the killer of the young girls was a BBC TV star. The Sky news feed distinctly changed after the rioting did not stop. After a week of watching both of them, I never trusted either news feed and started to get my news from social media. Both channels reported the Banksy police box artwork as ‘fish’ when they were flesh eating piranhas!”

“Long years of white liberal arguments that blacks have been – and still are – invariably innocent of accusations, because of the contemporary suffering and the suffering of their ancestors, has now convinced an articulate percentage of the black community that blacks should not be arrested or punished – no matter what they do [Otto Scott’s Compass, September 1, 1998, Vol. 9, Issue 97, p.3]. [Pres.] Johnson ... [n]ever seem[ed] to realize that [‘a wave of black riots, racial denunciations, and violence’] in response to enlarged opportunities [after the civil rights legislation of the 60s] are not signs of progress, but the response of a violent minority to perceived weakness [Otto Scott’s Compass, December 1, 1998, Vol. 9, Issue 100, p.3].”