I keep thinking about the interview I encountered on NPR's latest offering, a new podcast called Code Switch: Race. In Your Face. The journalist, Natalie Escobar, was interviewing a white Marxist academic, Vicky Osterweil, about her new book from Hachette Book Group called In Defense of Looting.
And I keep thinking about four minority business owners in Minneapolis—three African-American and one Hispanic—and what their response would likely have been to the latest offering from one of America's premier book publishers, and one of America's biggest taxpayer-funded media companies.
First, let's go to the NPR interview. It started with Escobar asking the white progressive author about the definition of looting. "When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot," Osterweil began. "That's the thing I'm defending. I'm not defending any situation in which property is stolen by force."
Rather than challenge the almost Orwellian new definition of looting that was conjured in thin air by the guest, Escobar plowed ahead. The NPR enabler sought further clarification on the reason why looting is morally defensible. Osterweil happily complied.
"It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living...their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage—which, during COVID times, is widely unreliable or, particularly in these communities, is often not available, or it comes at great risk," Osterweil explained.
Osterweil then went on to explain the political significance of looting.
"It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss," Osterweil explained. "And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free."
