ABORIGINAL INK: Is rioting an appropriate response?

Riot police form a line in Tottenham, north London as trouble flared after members of the community took to the streets to demand justice, after Mark Duggan, 29 was shot dead by police. (LEWIS WHYLD/PA WIRE)

NATIONAL: The London rioters have been demonised in the media. But would the world have taken notice if they hadn’t taken matters into their own hands, asks CHRIS MUNRO*.

The image went around the world. It was the silhouette of a woman hurling herself from a second story window into the waiting arms of police and firemen during the London riots. The backdrop was a massive inferno in Croydon, south London.

Any photographer will tell you it’s an amazing shot, but while a bewildered world attempts to figure out what had just transpired throughout England, this image served the interests of the Conservative British government, the police and the Fleet Street. It promotes a simple message to an international community searching for answers.

It screams: “Look what these criminals and thugs have done to one of the word’s iconic cities. Look at how the innocent have been harmed.

And take a good look at our brave emergency services personnel risking life and limb in the fight against evil.”

It is little wonder the image ran all over the world. But for me, the most poignant image to emerge was that of Tottenham man, Mark Duggan.

A shot taken from his Facebook page shows the father of four staring indifferently at the camera. Duggan’s death at the hands of the police sparked four nights of rioting in London’s lower working class north. No explanation from the Left or the Right has accurately accounted for the riots that then spread throughout England.

And no answers can be found in the media’s irresponsible reporting of the initial events. Nowhere is Duggan referred to as a father, son or husband. He’s simply described as a “suspected drug dealer”.

This is despite the fact his shooting death means these suspicions may never be substantiated. The media has deliberately devalued Duggan’s life.

The image of Duggan as the ripple that sparked a tsunami of unrest has been doggedly manipulated through the media’s negative filter.

With the media in tow, Prime Minister David Cameron has done everything in his power to divert attention away from Duggan’s death, and the real reasons London burned.

The mindless rioting and looting is indefensible. But it’s staggering how quickly the fatal police shooting on a busy Tottenham street has been forgotten by the world’s media. I believe the initial uprising, in response to Duggan’s death, by the black community of Tottenham, was justified.

Much like the ‘Redfern riots’ or the uprising on Palm Island, the Tottenham riots were a direct response to the failure of the police force to undertake their duties responsibly and with the safety of those they’re employed to protect foremost in mind.

Duggan was gunned down in a botched police raid. The reaction of his community was valid. Perhaps, scarily, it’s as simple as that. Just like on Palm Island and indeed many Aboriginal communities, England’s poor have been the targets of increasingly overt and disproportionate police attention, sometimes for good reason, but in many cases not.

Why is it “inexcusable” for a continually repressed public to fight back after enduring decades of social and cultural isolation and unmistakable police harassment?

What’s so “evil” about taking to the streets to fight for the basic human right to not be gunned down by police and receive a modicum of respect? What other forms of protest are open to ensure grievances are voiced and taken seriously?

Amidst all the talk of “fighting back” by David Cameron, you can bet significant change in policing tactics and attitudes will emerge from the rumble of places like Croydon, Tottenham, Wood Green and Walthamstow. And that’s the stark reality.

Commentators and experts have offered a raft of complex sociological theories as to why the tinderbox of social disorder self-combusted, but one dead simple concept seems to make more sense than others and it goes something like this… If you treat people like criminals for long enough, they’ll eventually start behaving that way.

If you continuously erode a people’s sense of community with contemptuous and underdeveloped policy, the risk of total fragmentation is real. As is the case with any civil disobedience, be it at home on the streets of Redfern, or elsewhere in the world, the ritual condemnation of violence emerges.

Social unrest whipping through the boroughs of London has been described as “utterly unacceptable.” The uprising dismissed as “pure criminality” by a “violent minority,” but lacking in politics these “outrages” are not.

Aboriginal communities all over Australia, just like those boroughs in London are consistently dismissed, ignored and forgotten. Well, the whole world’s paying attention now isn’t it?

Aboriginal Australia has a lot to learn from these recent events, and its about power… riots are fundamentally about a shift of power. We’re talking about people who’ve been shoved to the periphery of society all their lives, denied access to equality for generations and hounded by police since European arrival.

We’re talking about people whom respect has never been shown, who’ve had racism dolled out at every turn and who die in some cases 20-odd years before their fellow countrymen in a first world country.

We’re talking about people who are stripped searched by police whilst walking to a business meeting, as was an elderly acquaintance in Redfern just last week. We’re talking about families who’ve had their brothers, fathers and uncles taken away by police only to hear of their death on a prison cell floor hours later… the news often delivered by local journalists and not the police responsible.

Experts can pontificate about the roots of disorder all they want, but let’s be honest, people riot because they realise that by banding together they can achieve something. And something is better than the nothing they live with every day.

We’re always taught that violence isn’t the answer, but for a section of society, it’s fair to say it’s the only option they have at their disposal.

And that’s exactly what’s occurred in England.

One NBC report summed this up perfectly when a young black man in Tottenham was asked if the rioting really achieved anything.

“Yes” he replied. “You wouldn’t be talking to me right now if we didn’t riot, would you? Two months ago we marched on Scotland Yard, 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

And take a good look the world has. England’s societal composition is now the most thoroughly scrutinised in the world, and while it may only be for a brief minute or two, it’s a hell of a long minute for the country’s reeling leadership.

Through the use of oration, imagery and the printed word, the government, police and the media have banded together with their wholesale denunciations and assumptions, but have failed to recognise that its their decision making that’s problematic, not the youth, their parents or Blackberry messaging.

You can’t stand by and watch a section of the community rot, then run a mile from the inevitable fallout. And you can’t douse the flames of discontent with a slick front-page photo or glib media management.

The lesson has been learnt in England. Rioting does achieve something. It’s a means to an end – albeit a crude and sometimes dangerous one. It may not appeal to middle class sensitivities, but it undeniably gets results.

Those who took to the streets of Tottenham following the death of Mark Duggan, just like those that responded to the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004 can, if anything else, be sure in the knowledge their voices have been heard and their concerns are front page news.

* Chris Munro is a Gamilaroi man and a former political correspondant for NITV.