Riots, riots everywhere. Lately there have been plenty of riots within major cities because of different acts that have happened at the hands of the police. I am not here to say that what the police did was correct, it obviously wasn’t. What I am here to say is that people should not riot the way they have been.

I have always founds riots odd. People will riot over pretty much anything from police brutality to their favorite team losing at a soccer match. One of the main problems with riots is that people lose the real reason why it is happening. There’s a mentality that happens where people will emulate others and not really think about what they are doing. With that irrational thought process it can lead to bad choices made by otherwise good people. People with this mob mentality can and usually will end up doing terrible things such as burning down building and even murdering people because at the moment they feel it is the correct course of action. Obviously this is a bad thought process to have.

I chose as my headline a quote from one of my favorite movies: “Death to Smoochy” a critically panned film starring Edward Norton and the late Robin Williams. The quote is said by Edward Norton’s character and it has always ringed true with me. You can’t change the world, Martin Luther King Jr. couldn’t change the world. Think about it, he helped a lot, he led peaceful protests and had a lot of people on his side. He battled against racism, inequality, and sheer ignorance that prevailed and still prevails over the USA. That’s the main word there, “Still”. There’s still racism in the USA, still inequality, people thinking they are superior to others just because of the color of their skin or because they have an X rather than a Y in their genetic makeup.

What did Martin Luther King Jr. do then? He made a dent. He helped pass a lot of laws, helped change the mind of a lot of people. He did that peacefully and that’s what I want to stress. Having riots won’t change anything, real world violence turns into more real world violence and until someone sits back and thinks logically on the issue then we will just see it escalate more.

By Reetin