London is now filled with young people in the streets looting the shops that line their neighborhoods. The capitalist economic system has left them without adequate schools or jobs; their schools are sub-standard, their unemployment rate is up to 40 per cent. Their parents, families and friends are out of work, losing their homes and apartments. Even their youth recreation centers have been closed. They have nowhere to go except the streets. Without hope of a decent future, they loot and burn.
Looting neighborhood shops and fire-bombing residents cars and local buses, such explosions of personal frustration, will provide only momentary pseudo-emotional relief, not solve any of their problems, while causing major problems for their communities.
Meanwhile, the guys who caused their problems are sitting in fancy bank buildings and luxurious residential estates well away from the scruffy burning buildings, untouched. But those guys write the laws and carry out the economic policies which cause the poverty and despair in local neighborhoods. They send their police forces, carrying their callous attitudes, into poor communities to “enforce” their laws. No wonder the police are an object of attack; they are the physical embodiment of the rich’s disdain for the poor and they are reachable.
