Nikole Hannah-Jones: ‘Destroying Property Which Can Be Replaced Is Not Violence’

EXCERPT:

HANNAH-JONES: “I think, one, we need to be really careful with our language. Yes, it is disturbing to see property being destroyed, it is disturbing to see people taking property from stores, but these are things. And violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man’s neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. And to use the exact same language to describe those two things, I think really it's not moral to do that. So, yes, I think any reasonable person would say we shouldn’t be destroying other people’s property, but these are not reasonable times. These are people who have protested against police violence again and again and again, year after year after year, and still we can have videos of law enforcement, with witnesses, nonchalantly taking the life of a man for the alleged crime of passing a fake $20 bill."