Watching Tottenham burning down made me feel like a parent forced to watch their troubled child slip further out of reach. A community that had so little on Saturday evening, has even less this morning.
Tottenham's reputation is already tarnished by the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots, but as someone who started my journalism career on its streets, I know hundreds of people and organisations who have dedicated their lives to improving the community for no reward other than to see it uplifted. I know the police, too, have worked to rebuild up a relationship with young people through initiatives like the Haringey Police Community Consultative Group. All of this has been undone in an instant.
I mourn with the people who are proud of Tottenham and the rich parts of its history. I empathise with those who choose to live and send their children to schools there while others would prefer to criticise; condemning Tottenham on its reputation, not its reality. It is those people who are the victims of the events of Saturday night. Some are now standing in the ashes of their lives after their homes have burned down. Businesses and services that provide for families are gone. If the High Street was lacking before, it is a ghost town now.
Opportunistic looters, driven by mob mentality, opportunism and shameless greed, stole food, drinks, mobile phones and carpets. Finding slim pickings in Tottenham, they turned their attentions to Wood Green. These were not the people who, hours earlier, had attended a peaceful protest following the shooting of father-of-four Mark Duggan.
There is an anger that has built up over seasons of discontent that Tottenham and its people deserved so much more than it has been getting.
As the saying goes, those who cannot remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. No matter how many steps the police believe they have taken to rebuild the relationship with the community, police cars still got booed when they drive through Farm, as Broadwater Farm is known. A dislike of the police is embedded in some Tottenham sub-cultures.
Of all the footage I've seen, one image sticks out: the youths attacking a parked police car with a venom that transcended the television screen and spent chills down my spine. Using stones, parking cones, bricks and whatever they could get their hands on, they battered the vehicle for everything it represented; for every time they are stopped-and-searched; for friends and family that have been killed in police custody.
Young people in Tottenham were angry in 1985 and they are still angry now. This is what needs to be addressed. It is young people with whom the powers that be need to reconnect with. Instead, they have lost youth centres; their youth workers, their EMA and can't find jobs. Until then, Tottenham will remain stuck in a cycle of poverty where history of the worst kind will continue to repeat.
We can't use words and phrases like 'disenfranchised' and 'most deprived ward in the country' without reflecting on what it means. People may ask: why would anyone burn their own community down? It is tantamount to self-harm. The bottom line the youths do not feel a part of the community. There is still very much an 'us' and 'them' mentality.
In the background on the BBC, a heckler shouted at the MP David Lammy, "don't just be on their side, be on our side".
Friends and family attended Tottenham police station demanding answers over Mark Duggan's death. They don't condone the rioting that happened last night, but they are unsympathetic. As someone told me, you can rebuild a building, but you can't bring back someone back to life or give children back a father.
This year, peaceful marches have been happening in Birmingham and London over the deaths of reggae icon Smiley Culture, a father-of-two Kinglsey Burrell and 21-year-old Demetre Fraser who all died following police contact.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) are already investigating these deaths, and now add Mark Duggan's name to that list.
Unless these investigations are down independently, transparently and swiftly, the rage will continue to burn in hearts, minds, and, worse, on streets.
Follow Elizabeth Pears on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bizpears
" im so mad im gonna go burn down my neighborhood and maybe people will respect me more"
If there is a paper for black people there must be one for non-black people, otherwise it's racism I suppose. Brilliant.
Try thinking of black people as a group who have similar experiences and therefore have some common interests that may be of less interest to the wider community, like Anglers or train spotters. That's why there is a "black" newspaper; because it addresses minority interests. It's not just for blacks any one who is interested in issues facing the black community is welcome to buy it and read it.
My son gets The Stage, the weekly newspaper for those interested in performing arts. Strangely enough there is no newspaper specially for those not interested in the performing arts, even though they are a majority. Isn't that outrageous?
As you very shrewdly point out white people are a majority in the UK, therefore the top selling white newspaper would be "The Sun".
I assume you fail as a parent as much as you do at logic.
The Sun does not try to ethnocentrically divide people or segregate.
Talk about fail.
You should look at yourself before you accuse others. I believe there is a word that starts with H that describes what you did.
Destroying local businesses (thus costing shopkeepers, who may live above their shops their livelihoods, and risking people's jobs by destroying their workplaces), burning buses and opportunistically looting shops is simple mob violence.
The police should have brought out the water cannons last night.
The shooting itself is almost irrelevant in this situation. What is relevant is that is that anger levels are so high in these communities. With good reason, when so many of the wealthy tell them to eat cake after opening their well-fed gobs on TV talking about the sacrifices 'we' have to make.
Riots like this are cyclical throughout Europe, and are a warning that the iron hand is poking through the velvet glove.
Can you give some examples of recent riots in England by whites?
Or don't you count Irish people as being white? What even the loyalists, they will be upset.
Alternatively I give you West Ham vs Millwall last year.
Don't we all get frustrated with authority at times? I don't just mean the police, but anyone who has authority over us at a particular time. It could be Traffic Wardens, Teachers, Supervisors, Mom, Dad the list is endless. Problems arise when these frustrations are allowed to build up. You put people under enough pressure and eventually they'll blow. You never saw people swearing at a traffic warden for example? Now tell me, which category of people are likely to be told what to do the most? I bet they were out last night in Tottenham weren't they?
It's rare for these frustrations to manifest themselves in a riot, but when a group of frustrated individuals come together, under the banner of a perceived injustice, it doesn't take much to start one. 'Outsiders', with an ulterior motive could easily trigger one. They'll no doubt be loads of speculation about the underlying factors which contributed to this riot, as well as how one can be prevented in future, but will it work? I doubt it. People who are told what to do get frustrated. Anger, is a build up of frustration. Rioting, is a way for a large number of young people relieve this anger.
The police are between a rock and a hard place. They are there to stop these gangs killing one another. But with the availability of guns and black people willing to use them indiscriminately, the incident that occurred last Thursday is inevitable. With so many young black people descending into drugs, crime and violence the future looks very bleak. In so many ways we have not moved on and in fact gone backwards since the disturbances of the early 1980s.
Finally it should be made clear the vast majority of Black people are sick and tired of our communities being tarnished and destroyed by gun-wielding thugs. Mr Duggan was not a respected pillar of the community. He was a gangster not a role model for children to aspire to.
There are all kinds of reasons for it, but family break ups might well be a factor.
I don't want that to be true, but pretending it isn't true won't make it better.
You romanticize mob violence.
Actions of rioters are always bad. But they also always send a message that you failed to send, that all your community workers failed to send, that all you nice well-adjusted moderates with jobs getting pats on the head failed to send. So, get with the program.
Young people need jobs!!!