Chicago City Wire

Author Vicky Osterweil is quoted as writing that "a new energy of resistance is building across the country," in defense of looting and rioting that has gripped several American cities since June in response to police killings of Black Americans, the NPR reported in August. 

According to the NPR article, Osterweil, who released a book titled In Defense of Looting late last month, believes that rioters and looks are partaking in a "powerful tactic" that questions justice, property ownership and wealth distribution. 

In Osterweil's interview with NPR, the self-proclaimed writer and agitator said that looting is a powerful political action tactic that demonstrates how "without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free."

Whike protest in support of Black Lives Matter, the calling has also resulted in reports of rioting and looting. | Stock Photo

"Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police," Osterweil told NRP. "It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be."

Sean Morrison, chair of the Cook County GOP, told Chicago City Wire that there is never a time where looting is acceptable. 

"Looting is lawlessness," Morrison said, adding that looting is theft and destruction, a criminal activity, and feels the same about arson. 

"The answer is the same [...]. In fact, the additional travesty of what we are witnessing is the refusal of many of these big-city political leaders to refuse to apprehend and prosecute the offenders," he said. "This only lends itself to the continued violence and criminal activity."

Morrison said that, whether the owner of the looted business is white or black or any ethnicity, looting is never acceptable. 

Osterweil, however, told NPR that the need to respect small businesses is "a right-wing myth." 

"Ultimately, what nonviolence ends up meaning is that the activist doesn't do anything that makes them feel violent. And I think getting free is messier than that," Osterweil told NPR. "We have to be willing to do things that scare us and that we wouldn't do in normal, "peaceful" times, because we need to get free."