My highschool (9th and 10th grade) English teacher P. P. Kulkarni sir used to often say, “Age of crowd is 12 years”. His point was, when you’ve large crowd gathered anywhere they behave like 12 year old kids who just blindly follow what others are doing without thinking about consequences of their actions. At that time (age of 14 – 16), it was hard to understand what he meant. But looking at recent events world over it makes lot of sense.
What happened with George Floyd was disgraceful. In any civilized society, there is no place for racism. Those police officers should be charged and prosecuted. All the peaceful protests that happened initially reflected people’s anger. And kudos to them for expressing their views in civilized manner.
But after those initial peaceful protests, some lunatics have hijacked things and started to implement their own agenda. Just like racism there is no place for riots in any civilized society. Burning of homes, police stations, vehicles and looting of stores is absolutely counter productive. After seeing those images, Mr. Floyd’s brother rightly questioned these “protestors”.
Had these protests not turned violent, they may have provided an opportunity to ask some tough questions. It may have even helped to kick-start some long overdue reforms about police force. However these violent protests (or riots) have ensured when this chapter of history is written people may forget tragedy of Mr. Floyd’s death and remember scenes of people running away from stores with stolen goods.
In times like these, you expect some sane voices to come forward and lead the communities and society. Looking at statements made by subset politicians across the board, clearly they’re not ready to become that sane voice to unite everybody. Somebody else has to take the lead and do that job before things get worse. Question is who is ready to become that sane voice of reason and more importantly would people listen to it?