redbloodedamerica:

lacigreen:

mtvother: Laci Green talks about the recent protests in a new Braless. this week i talked to a lot of people who were outraged about shattered glass but apathetic about shattered lives and it made me v uncomfortable

This is precisely why social justice warriors are so dangerously untrustworthy and completely misleading. Here is the quote this little nitwit cherry-picked from Martin Luther King: “Riots grow of intolerable conditions. Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions…” Then she goes on to say in the video, “Basically, the king of peaceful protests understood why riots happen. It’s a way powerless people attempt to be heard and to hold authorities accountable.” And then she actually says:

What a very stupid thing to say.

The reason I even noticed this gifset was because I’ve actually read Martin Luther King’s autobiography, which she clearly has not. I know the quote because I’ve actually used it myself. However, here is the entire passage from which it was pulled:

“Riots grow of intolerable conditions. Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions and there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people who feel they have no stake in it, who feel they have nothing to lose. To the young victims of the slums, this society has so limited the alternatives of his life that the expression of his manhood is reduced to the ability to defend himself physically. No wonder it appears logical to him to strike out, resorting to violence against oppression. That is the only way he thinks he gets recognition.”

I bolded some points for emphasis. You see Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t condoning violent riots, he was explaining the ignorant rationale behind them and condemning them. He continues:

“After the riot in Chicago that summer, I was greatly discouraged. But we had trained a group of about two thousand disciplined devotees of nonviolence who were willing to take blows without retaliating. We started out engaging in constitutional privileges, marching before real estate offices in all-white communities. And that nonviolent, disciplined, determined force created such a crisis in the city of Chicago that the city had to do something to change conditions. We didn’t have any Molotov cocktails, we didn’t have any bricks, we didn’t have any guns, we just had the power of our bodies and our souls. There was power there, and it was demonstrated once more.”

Although, the little girl above goes on to explain that MLK did promote non-violent methods to protest, she alludes that rioting is an okay method for people to be heard. The whole premise of her video was to try to compare the events in Ferguson to the totalitarian, oppressive police state of a dystopian future in The Hunger Games, which is absurd. The Ferguson police aren’t killing the people in mass genocide to oppress and control them as much as they’d love to believe so (this is coming from a guy who hates big government btw.) The police in Ferguson are only trying to control these sometimes out-of-control mobs of people and protect people and property. There is no need to riot in Ferguson, but the criminals and rabble-rousers do it for their own self-interests; not to make a statement or “to be heard.” The police wouldn’t need to be there if the protesters were all peaceful.

MLK would chastise her for spreading such a utterly false premise. A quick Google search also brought up a similar time King used a form of this same phrase to criticize the Detroit riots:

“We have to see that riots grow out of intolerable conditions existing in all our cities, and also out of centuries of neglect. The tragedy is that the riots aren’t going to solve the problems. … They only intensify the fears of the white community while, in many cases, relieving its guilt.”

Despite what she is attempting to confer, riots solve nothing. There is no social change coming from the actions in Ferguson. It is a huge waste of time. ”Hands up, don’t shoot” is based on an outright lie. And the only thing that will be ingrained in our memories in a few years are people like Michael Brown’s stepfather who did this: