Riots are a class act - and often they're the only alternative

I wish all societies had sufficient sensitivity to avoid forcing peoples' backs to the wall...it should never have come to this. Governments "go broke by saving money" on social justice. There is an important lesson here for the US--Dictynna

France now accepts the need for social justice. No petition, peaceful march or letter to an MP could have achieved this

Gary Younge
Monday November 14, 2005
The Guardian

'If there is no struggle, there is no progress," said the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. "Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

By the end of last week it looked as though the fortnight of struggle between minority French youth and the police might actually have yielded some progress. Condemning the rioters is easy. They shot at the police, killed an innocent man, trashed businesses, rammed a car into a retirement home, and torched countless cars (given that 400 cars are burned on an average New Year's Eve in France, this was not quite as remarkable as some made out).