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by Jennie S. Bev

On Thursday, August 4, 2011, upon the death of Mark Duggan, a Tottenham Black resident, allegedly caused by police shooting in a Scotland Yard operation on gun and drug-related activities, London Riots were triggered. A peaceful vigil of 200 people escalated rapidly. Tottenham is a part of London Borough of Haringey, like Queens in New York, south side of Chicago, and Oakland in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Tottenham is considered one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Europe with people speaking more than 200 languages.

Riots started to spread on August 6, 2011 and in four nights, riots have spread to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Greater Manchester, and Salford. As of August 8, riots have spread to Liverpool, Nottingham, Bristol and Medway. Racial tension between Black communities and Asian communities culminated in the death of three Pakistani men Shazad Hussain, Haroon Jahan and Musaver Ali, who were victims of hit-and-run when protecting their property from looters. Looting and arson of both large and mom-and-pop neighborhood stores occurred, in which 1,200 people were arrested.

London Riots reminded me of Los Angeles Riots in 1992, which were triggered by the Rodney King incident. Widespread looting, arson, and killing spree occurred resulting in 53 deaths, 7,000 fires, and more than $1 billion property damages followed the acquittal of police officers accused of beating King in a traffic stop. Looting and arson also targeted both big retailers and mom-and-pop neighborhood stores, which stopped in six days. Racial tension was felt when stored owned by Korean immigrants were looted and destroyed. However, despite this tension, the riots were not about the failure of American integrated assimilation or multiculturalism. In the end, King appeared to have found a fairy-tale ending as he won $3.8 million award in a civil law suit against the city of Los Angeles. He even married one of the jurors Cynthia Kelley, who helped pushing the award in the trial.

London Riots also reminded me of the recent Arab Spring, which started on December 18, 2010 with revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and quickly spread to Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. And protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, borders of Israel-Palestine, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. The characteristics were similar: Unemployed young people lacking opportunities and Internet social media-networking savvy. Both in London Riots and Arab Spring, disenchantment loosened people’s tie with the society and caused social unrests, as Emile Durkheim would have likely posited in alignment with his notion of “anomie.”

In a nutshell, the riots started in London, one of the most diverse cities in Europe, where the disenchantment of disenfranchised people were magnified by ongoing slow economic recovery post-2008 global recession, high unemployment, rampant poverty culminating in marginalization and social exclusion, negative correlation between ethnic diversity with social cohesion, and  failure of implementation of fair social policies. The death of Mark Duggan was a trigger and the mass distrust toward the Scotland Yard police force was embodiment of the deep-seated disappointments on multifaceted issues. The role of Blackberry Messenger and social networking sites like Twitter was magnifier, without which the riots would still have occurred. London itself has a long history of violence and riots, dating back to 60AD.

This essay attempts to provide an informed and educated background of the violent occurrences using historical data and findings that may shed some light to the causes and reasons for ongoing tension in the region.[]

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