Let's Not Get Hung Up on Property Damage When We Talk About Protests

In Oakland and Berkeley, California—both centers of liberal and left-wing activism, both focal points for massive protests against police brutality in recent weeks—there's a pattern for every demonstration that hits the East Bay like a wave. I live in Oakland, and I've seen it happen many times:

• Act I: Protesters gather downtown.
• Act II: March down streets, pick up some steam.
• Act III: March all over. Shut down streets and some highways. Demonstrators in Berkeley ​​shut down the Transbay BART​ on Friday in an act of civil disobedience, which was kind of extraordinary.

• Act IV: Cops, for whatever reason, are told it's time to wrap it up. So they begin getting more aggressive with their dispersal methods. This generally occurs around 10 PM, and most protesters take it as their cue to scurry off.
• Act V: A window gets broken.
• Act VI: Cops start trying to get rid of the crowds by any means necessary.
• Act VII: Pretty quickly afterwards, the crowd's gone for the night.

This is the script. Maybe some marches are more purposeful with their routes, maybe a few more windows get broken in some instances, maybe some stores get trashed—Sunday night's demonstration in Berkeley saw a bunch of  banks​ and a Whole Foods get it. Sometimes the cops use tear gas; sometimes they don't. But this is generally how things go down.

I'd like to focus on Act V, the "broken window" one, because that's what everyone seems to lose their shit over. Here, for instance, is what San Francisco Chronicle reporter Vivian Ho tweeted at around 10:40 PM during Friday night's protests in Oakland:

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When that first window breaks—and this is nearly inevitable anytime the shit kicks off—it's the beginning of the end. But maybe it's an ideal end, since both protesters and cops get to close out the night's festivities without losing much face. The police get to take out their toys because "things have turned violent!" And the protesters get to claim that cops ran off a peaceful protest. No one loses, see you all back out here tomorrow night.

The problem is, when Act V occurs it changes the narrative for viewers at home.  After the above tweet was posted, Twitter's #Oakland thread was no longer about #EricGarner or #MikeBrown; it was about how anarchists downtown are destroying our city, how embarrassing it is, how they should be ashamed, with plenty of SMH-ing.

For those living outside the Bay, it became undeniable proof (once again) of how wretched and animalistic Oakland's residents are. The next day's news reports about the protests used those broken windows as the headline, the lead image, the backdrop their reporters-on-the-scene stand in front of.

I have some advice for everyone: Calm the fuck down. They're broken windows.

On Friday, there was also that bloody hand, and a rightfully angry store owner, and all that. Which, hey: I'm no fan of bloody hands, I don't like violence—I am not condoning window-breaking or looting. I'm all for detectives going over the surveillance footage and arresting looters, and let's get that man some stitches. I'm not patting the back of whatever loony masked person got riled up and decided to take his (it's always his) frustration out on an inanimate object.

It's just the conversation of what the protest is about shouldn't be drowned out by small acts of property damage.  It's time to stop crying about windows and cry over the dead.

Back in 2009, during the protests/riots that occurred after  ​Oscar Grant's murder, downtown Oakland was ravaged. Cars were burned, shops were looted, and the historic Fox Theater ​suffered $20,000 worth of damage. In what proved to be the act most cited by those sick and tired of the protesters, the offices of Youth Radio, a downtown-based nonprofit youth media organization, was smashed up terribly. It wasn't fun. Plenty of folks back then looked at those events as a death knell for the burgeoning downtown revitalization, more evidence of why Oakland just can't have nice things, and the same apocalyptic predictions pop up now after a window gets smashed.

But guess what? Downtown didn't die in 2009. Businesses didn't leave. In fact, the East Bay is thriving.  The Fox Theater is fixed and has a full calendar of acts. Youth Radio has rebuilt and is still broadcasting out of the same space (and, by the way, has so far been untouched during the latest protests, perhaps due to the self-policing of protesters who understand how harmful the previous smash-up was to their cause). Sears, a store that was dying the slowest of deaths, sold their six-story building in the heart of downtown for ​$25 million. All of the Bay's property values ​have soared, and Oakland is not immune to that. (Hell, if you want to get more micro about it, there are even anecdotal stories of downtown bars getting more business after or during protest nights, which isn't hard to understand, seeing as they bring in an influx of people, some of whom surely want to drink.)

Frankly, businesses are not being run out because of broken windows—you can even get  riot insuran​ce, an option that covers damage due to "civil unrest or riot." If you've opened a downtown business since the Grant protests and have not gotten that kind of coverage, you're just not doing your homework.

If you're a member of the media, it's easy to be distracted by a few moments of heated action after hours and hours of repetitive marching. Broken windows and boarded-up storefronts are visceral, full of violent aesthetics, way better than poorly-lit crowds and muffled chants. So those become the story. And if you're watching the news at home, it's easy to see those visuals and focus on the asshole protesters harming local businesses. It sucks. They'll have to sweep up! They'll have to paint over the graffiti! They'll have to reorder supplies!

But don't let that become the central story. As the great Susie Cagle put it during the Mike Brown portion of the Oakland protests:

Just a reminder that spray paint, broken windows, and trash fires, while messy, will not destroy Oakland's social fabric

— Susie Cagle (@susie_c) Novem​ber 26, 2014

These are relatively small, easily cleaned-up messes. They're minor annoyances. They are not reasons to turn against the entirety of the protests, nor to condemn the those taking part. The momentary loss of property is not equivalent to the permanent loss of human life.

Follow Rick Paulas on ​Twitter.