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I want to take a minute and talk about the "property damage is not violence" claim for a minute. It's a pernicious idea that needs to be refuted strongly and loudly.
First, violence against people is always worse than property damage. Human beings are made in the image of God and carry the spark of the divine. Stuff is just stuff. That being said...
Property does not appear by magic. I remember buying my first car. I worked my rear off in a Tennessee tobacco field for 6 months to buy it. It was a piece of crap, but it was mine. That car reflected hours and hours of back breaking labor.
Every business that gets burned, every window that gets smashed, every public facility that is damaged, reflects that same labor. Even government property, in the form of the labor expended to pay taxes to purchase it.
Even property that is insured represent the destruction of someone's hard work. Insurance just spreads the loss out over more people, so that everyone loses a little bit rather than one person losing all.
When someone says that "no amount of property damage warrants months in a concrete cell," ask yourself this: what is the proper punishment for stealing hours of hard work -- hours of their lives sacrificed for the betterment of they and their families?
What is the proper punishment for destroying the hours and hours of labor put in by family who opened a business? The hours of work on an assembly line to pay the income taxes that built a courthouse or public university?
No, property damage is not the same as violence against people. But it is violence against their labor, and theft of their industry. Destruction of their time and effort.
Those who don't understand that should spend some time working on a farm, or a low wage service job.
Those who don't understand that should spend some time working on a farm, or a low wage service job.
We only appreciate the things for which we sacrifice. It was true at the dawn of time, it was true in the East Tennessee tobacco fields, and it's true in downtown Richmond today.
