Boston Lithuanian on the riot: mass psychosis, broken windows and products brought from the supermarket

Minneapolis, which has become the epicenter of protests, has seen images never seen before in the United States: cars and buildings are burned down, shops are looted, and battles that recall a battlefield in the streets have been fought with police officers. .

A wave of violence caught fire last Monday when George Floyd, who had been thrown to the ground and suffocated by a neck struck in the knee, died as a result of the police action. The filmed incident immediately sparked a wave of anger, and the police action was condemned as a manifestation of racism.

Since Floyd’s death, thousands of people have participated in demonstrations across the country to protest police brutality and racism. Tensions in the country have been severely fueled by the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with a quarter of the country’s workforce currently out of work and the poorest regions most affected. As reported by The New York Times, there is a clear difference in COVID-19 deaths between New York’s rich and poor neighborhoods. Brooklyn, home to less than a third of the poverty line, has lost 612 people out of 100,000, while East Harlem has lost 293 lives out of 100,000 in Manhattan. population.

Lithuanian Agota Sakalauskaitė, who has been living in Boston for five years, also found herself in the whirlwind of these events. The girl claims that while the riots were not as fierce as at the epicenter of the Minneapolis riots, violence was also inevitable on the east coast.

Delfi spoke to a Lithuanian who recently graduated from Boston University:

– What is the current situation in Boston?

– Helicopters, police sirens are heard all day. We are thinking of taking a walk in the afternoon because everything seems to have calmed down too. The great riots that took place yesterday no longer exist. Cleaning continues now. I’ll take a camera to take a picture of what’s left of our center. We actually live very close to that place, from the center.

Yesterday, everything moved from one place to another. And we are approaching the point where there is a luxury mall that is now closed due to a pandemic. It is 5 minutes from us. And we saw images on television of smashed windows, looted, carrying goods, someone chasing those people. We were a little alarmed, we turned on the alarms, the cars had to be driven to the garage because you don’t know how things can move.

– Did it happen all Sunday?

– It started a long time ago, last week, when a black citizen was killed by a police officer. It started in Minneapolis, it’s the scariest thing there can be. There, it devastates local businesses, burns buildings, destroys property, property.

– Have you had similar images?

– Maybe it’s not that cruel. It is not as horrible as in the fireplace itself. In Atlanta, Berods tried to break into CNN headquarters on Saturday. On Saturday we had good weather, but there were already protests for several blocks. The police came, but we thought that maybe there was none of that, there were no robberies. But the second wave came again on Sunday, people gathered to picket and so around 6 p.m. Until 9 PM. Everything was quite calm. The police were ready and armed. Everything finally broke around 9:30 p.m. and then, on the 23rd night, it was the National Guard. And those who joined in all this massive psychosis, the robbery were just younger. Some may be in school, some may be college students. And here perhaps not so much the racial difference, but rather the result of the social stratum, the social tension.

– What proportion of protesters are peaceful and how many are aggressive?

– We have seen almost everything we have seen through knowledge. And here, local news is sometimes much better covered than national television. Perhaps less political. As far as you can see, even when the picket occurred, there is still some kind of aggression, dissatisfaction, injustice. It is that aggression that they have in some way, but since nobody set fire to the fights, to the destruction of the property, there were no riots. Yes, you see that they have dissatisfaction, but I think that whenever there is such a situation, there will be someone who wants to take advantage of it. Similar trends were observed in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and ours. Still, those who had already gone to that picket with the idea that there was some sort of organized aggressive group, managed to take advantage of that. Also, when we have a pandemic now, we have to wear masks, we will probably have everything open soon, it is more difficult to recognize people because of those masks. There were wounded policemen in our place, about 40 people were arrested. Although this is definitely the tip of the iceberg itself. Cops, I don’t know, maybe 6-7 at the hospital.

– And what was the reaction of the police?

– I think they were a little scared because they had every right to react more harshly. Because if someone destroys the property, you can even shoot him, but the police were more conservative. Of course, they used tear gas, but they were more in a defensive position and allowed this aggression to manifest. Those people need to stand out and say what they want to say, crush something or set it on fire. But the police were really on the defensive side and I don’t think it was because they lacked strength, but simply because they didn’t want to confirm the impression that they were murderers that they were looking for a way to exploit and somehow harm themselves. They really didn’t use as much as they could.

– Were there no threats to your property?

– No, everything was fine on our street. Clearly, for about 2 nights that wave was about 4-5 minutes from us. Probably it was close. I slept hard at night. And anyway, it happens that someone walks through the city yelling at a drunk man. But you’re probably more vigilant when you know there’s an angry crowd nearby.

– Do you feel safe?

We feel safe We saw on television that there are concentrated forces, the National Guard has been sent, so now everything is really calm. I don’t think there will be any more such attacks. Perhaps the police will no longer tolerate as much. We’ll see.

– How do you think these protests are a reaction to that tragic police incident, or are there more factors?

– That racial tension is often emphasized. But I think social influence, the fragmented state in terms of income, had the biggest impact. Like everywhere. Well, in Lithuania we are all more or less the same skin color, so we cannot base the accusations on another prism. America still has a history of racial issues, people may be a little more sensitive. Sure, it’s completely unjustifiable, it’s cruel, but as far as I’m concerned, I think it was treated this way and if it were white, it wouldn’t have happened. What I think is just a guess of ground coffee. Maybe there is someone as a police officer, he is nervous, his mental health is poor and he simply cannot do that job. The problem is that there are policemen who cannot work as policemen, they use their force without reason. This is probably the biggest problem here. But when it comes to national knowledge and the press covers us, it is an attempt to emphasize that this is a racial conflict.

– Thanks for chatting