Seattle, Wa. Do you think this is wise?

[Nomnomine]

It's said, nothing happens in a vacuum. Nothing. The key is to have a dialogue before things devolve. When you dont, it's been my experience they do, devolve I mean.   Cause and effect are a real thing. You can't have one sided respect.  I remember as a child when no one cared about others opinions and it often turned into fistfights amongst the boys and some ugly backbiting amongst the girls. If we all want to get past the churlish BS, we all need to respect one another, grow up and be fair. When this passed as it surely will, I pray we remember it and what caused it. History forgotten seems to repeat itself. People want to b e happy, IMHO. To accomplish that, we need mutual respect and fairness. Without it, we'll revisit this again and again and again.

Wise words.

I'm all for dialog - until the guns come out. At that time, the time for talking is over, and any more words are just a wasted effort. Cities are burning, so it appears, to me at least, that the guns are out, but the marauders are still trying to convince us that dialog is still necessary, while they are busy burning the world down. I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced. More talk seems more a distraction and diversionary tactic to me at this point.

In your estimation, what is it that has "caused this" per your last couple of sentences? The rioters are all over the map as to "what caused this", and I'd like to pin it down to find a solution before my own guns come out in response to theirs already being out - if they still want to talk as they claim. So far, their answer to police brutality seems to be an increase in lawlessness and citizen brutality to counter said police brutality and rid us of police protection. Their answer to slavery of 160 years ago is to destroy the history that reminds us of it as a mistake not to be repeated, which to my mind seems counter-productive.

Maybe you see something else as the root cause? I'm open to dialog...

... until the guns come out.

.

Most of your bullet points are rhetorical so I will address the few that aren't. I am not Black and haven't had to live in their world of second class citizenry. They have set the guns down in the past, opened dialogue and found themselves back at square one. They have had their fill of talk. They are done. History has proven revolution yields results. They are following a proven formula.  So I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. The cause and effect I spoke of earlier. I'm simply not going to bring up all the reasons for all this arbitrary violence, the sentient understand. This will pass when  they feel real change is at hand. Momentum drives them and the media feeds them. They wont give that up. Neither would the Right if they felt their lives were being threatened. This will play out and the question remains, what may we do to change the culture so we never revisit this? That's up to all of us. The Bill of Rights belongs to every American Citizen. It needs to be applied in the manner it is written.

I think at the very least they come up with replacement organizations before defunding the current ones. People are getting shot in these police free zones, or whatever they call them. Criminals need to be put somewhere. Make reform centers instead of jails, call it something other than police with the reform you want in place to replace them. Don't just stOP criminal justice