No riots over the murder of white cops

A letter in yesterday's Chronicle (below) raised some interesting questions about the murder of four Oakland cops.

And, just as important, they were white men killed by a black man, which, in the minds of the Oscar Grant rioters, means the event doesn't qualify for a riot:

Just Cops

Four Oakland police officers are dead. They were just men doing their jobs---trying to help make Oakland a better, safer place to live.

But in his reckless, self-centered and hateful mind, one criminal punk made a conscious decision to murder these men. It wasn't an accident; he hadn't meant to pull his toothbrush and mistakenly grabbed his gun. He intentionally killed these men to avoid going back to prison for violating his parole.

So where's the outrage, Oakland? Is the "community" going to riot in the streets, break windows and burn cars over this? No. They only do that when it suits them. Besides, they were just cops, right?

Mike Pardee

Oakland

Fresh air break

Anonymous writes:Just discovered your blog and I have to say it's a breath of fresh air. I enjoy reading about SF and its various development projects, but feel blogs like sfist, curbed, sfcitizen don't really present much of a balanced view. While I don't agree with everything I've read here either, I'm glad there's someone like you on the intertubes and I look forward to becoming a regular reader.

Rob writes:
Welcome aboard, Anon. I bet you didn't learn about this blog from other bloggers in the city, since they ignore me as much as possible. It's good that you mention development, since I often write about subjects other than the bike fantasy. You'll notice that I get a lot of comments from people on my bike posts but rarely get any on my posts about, say, the Market/Octavia Plan or UC's ripoff of the old extension property, two big projects that will completely remake the heart of the city for the worse. 

Back when I was a young radical, we grappled with some serious issues, like the war in Vietnam and civil rights. Here in the political theme park I call Progressive Land the young rads mostly get excited about relatively trivial issues, like graffiti, bicycles and defending their right to misbehave in public during the Bay to Breakers race.