As many people have wondered on Twitter this weekend, what in the hell happened at the Keene, New Hampshire Pumpkinfest that caused the proceedings to degenerated into riots?
Tear gas and pepper spray hung in the air as police in riot gear descended on Keene, New Hampshire, on Saturday night, trying to disperse a rowdy crowd that brought chaos to the city's 24th annual Pumpkin Festival, CNN affiliates reported.
"State and local public safety officials are on the scene and have been working closely together to defuse the situation," Gov. Maggie Hassan said a statement. "We will continue to monitor the situation and provide any assistance necessary to Keene."
Bonfires burned into the early hours of Sunday morning on city streets that were littered with broken beer and liquor bottles, video from CNN affiliate WMUR showed.
"I am saddened and disheartened at the events surrounding this year's Keene Pumpkin Festival," said Keene State College President Anne Huot. "Despite the concerted efforts of organizers, city officials, police, and Keene State College, there continued to be disruptive behavior at parties in multiple locations around the city, injuries, and property damage."
Huot said Keene State students bore some of the responsibility for the unruly behavior, but also suggested that some outside the community had billed the event "as a destination for destructive and raucous behavior."
There are a lot of snide remarked to be made about "destructive culture of pumpkin spice lattes" and "it's dangerous to have groups of white people together because they might riot over pumpkins" that are pretty well deserved after the way the media treated (and still treat) black America after demonstrations protesting the killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri.
But underneath those cheap shots you notice that 1) police didn't dare use live firearms on this crowd despite the kind of property destruction that resulted in armed riot squads in military gear in Ferguson and the fact that 140 people were arrested last year for similar destruction (those violent white people, you know) and 2) it's being played off as "college kids being rowdy" whereas more than four black people is a militant, dangerous mob.
In other words, there's a definite case of a double standard here in "post-racial" America.
It's probably Obama's fault.
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1 comment:
The Cinco de Mayo "celebrations" around the University of Cincinnati campus involved car flipping, mattress flipping, "revelers" urinating on neighborhood residents' lawns, and of course the requisite littering of broken beer bottles and other debris. Those weren't called "riots" either.
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