#267 | In Defense Of Looting: Dispensing With The Arguments Against Rioting w/ Vicky Osterweil
Intro: 8:18
In this episode, I speak with writer and editor Vicky Osterweil, author of ‘In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action’ published through Bold Type Books.
In her book ‘In Defense of Looting,’ Vicky discusses the history of looting — the mass act of publicly and directly seizing goods — and the vital role this act of wealth distribution has played (and continues to play) in movements toward addressing injustices of and abolishing the state, white supremacy, and capitalism. "From slave revolts to labor strikes to the modern-day movements for climate change, Black lives, and police abolition, Osterweil makes a convincing case for rioting and looting as weapons that bludgeon the status quo while uplifting the poor and marginalized."
In our discussion, I ask her to dispense with, point by point, the various arguments that are made against looting and rioting. These arguments include that looters:
- “are outside agitators"
- “are destroying their own neighborhoods"
- "are not protestors, and have nothing to do with the struggle"
- "are bad for media representation (bad optics)"
- "justify police repression"
- "are consumeristic, and are acting on false consciousness"
Vicky highlights the historical, economic, and social contexts that give rise to these arguments, and why they ultimately fail to address the legitimate reasons why looting and rioting is an integral and necessary act of direct action, and cannot (and should not) be separated from broader movements toward social justice and revolution. This discussion and this book are timely, to say the least. As she writes in her introduction:
Homo sapiens are quite unlucky evolutionarily. In almost all mammals, pregnancy and birth are safe and simple processes: gestating mothers basically never die in childbirth. Indeed, if there are insufficient resources or the gestator is unable to care for a baby at that moment for some reason, the fetus can easily be aborted. But in humans, birth is violent and dangerous, life-threatening to both gestator and fetus.
With that understanding in mind, we can begin to analyze riots as births. Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as fuck: they rip, tear, burn, and destroy to give birth to a new world. They can emerge from rising tensions and lead to nothing — a miscarriage — or be the height and end point of a given movement. In most instances, however, they transform and build a nascent moment into a movement: rioting, as the Black trans Women of Stonewall showed us, is a form of queer birth.
Vicky Osterweil is a writer, editor, and agitator and a regular contributor to The New Inquiry. Her writing has also appeared in The Baffler, The Nation, The Rumpus, Real Life, and Al Jazeera America. She lives in Philadelphia.
Episode Notes:
- Learn more about and purchase a copy of ‘In Defense of Looting’ from Bold Type Books: https://bit.ly/31zvqEn
- Read more of Vicky’s work at The New Inquiry: https://thenewinquiry.com/author/vicky-osterweil
- Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vicky_ACAB
- The song featured in this episode is Opaul (Instrumental) by Freddie Dredd: https://youtu.be/rtbUdiCXA2A
