Dear Editor:
Surely the Stanley Cup hockey riot was the story of the Lower Mainland in 2011. What has been the fallout from that night?
The politicians have not learned one iota from it. The main push from the politicos has been to bring those who committed vandalism to justice and to mete it out sternly in hopes that this will deter future rioters. It won't. It will only briefly satisfy those who did not participate and want those who did to 'pay' for their actions. Surely, there must be consequences for one's actions if they hurt others.
There needs to be retribution and ownership of wrong doing. What form that will take is up to the criminal court judges to determine free from political pressure of the moment.
The bigger picture is being ignored by all levels of government and must be addressed. The seeming immediate cause of the riot was not whether the home team won or lost but was surely fueled by a mixture of alcohol and exuberance. But this is still not the root cause.
If you examine the targets of the violence, you get a better insight into what went so horribly wrong that night. The police and retail stores for the most part were the targets. The producers and retailers of goods have been bombarding consumers with images of their products trying to convince us that we need them to be validated human beings. A culture of glamour and envy surrounds these products and we are not glamorous unless we have them. This leads to disenfranchisement and dissatisfaction. Yes, we should be able to see through all this but somehow that didn't happen and people helped themselves to the glamour.
The second target of the rioters was the police. The confidence in our police forces has fallen on hard times nationally, provincially and municipally.
Ignoring the root causes of protests and riots and then telling the people to eat cake did not work for France and it will not work for us.
Darcy Olson, Burnaby
