Steven I. Weiss has an interesting post on how the media described last night’s violence in Crown Heights, versus the 1991 violence in the same area.
“A routine traffic stop of a 75-year-old Hasidic driver in Brooklyn escalated into a protest last night by hundreds of Orthodox Jews,” the Times story read, “who surrounded a police station house, chanted ‘No justice no peace,’ lighted bonfires and set a police car afire.”
“Once you set a police car on fire, isn’t that a riot?” asks Josh Marshall? “Is it a ‘riot’ or a ‘protest’ depending on the ethnicity of the rioters, ahem, protestors?”
We called used the words “angry mobs” in the lede and called it a “wild protest,” which I think is appropriate.
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