South Central Reporter

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

Osterweil, who recently released a book called "In Defense of Looting," believes that rioters and looks are participating in a "powerful tactic" that questions justice, property ownership and wealth distribution. 

In Osterweil's interview with NPR published on Aug. 27, the self-proclaimed writer and agitator said that looting is a powerful political statement that demonstrates how "without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free."

"Looting strikes at the heart of [the] property, of whiteness and of the police," Osterweil told NPR. "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."

Osterweil's controversial comments have opened her up to backlash, including from Trump supporters. 

James Jones told South Central Reporter that looting is rarely acceptable. 

"The only circumstance that I can think of where looting would be OK is if we were in a war with a foreign nation," Jones said, "and could loot their treasury and thereby financially cripple that country, which would end the war sooner. That instance of looting would be okay by me."

Jones, an activist and Trump supporter, said that this instance of looting is a "part of war." The circumstances by which looting is taking place in America, according to Jones, is a criminal act. "Right now the anarchist rioters are waging war against their own countrymen. That is criminal."

Jones said that the demographics of a business owner — whether it be ethnicity, race or religious beliefs — shouldn't matter. 

"A business owner should feel secure in his business without having to worry if some criminal is going to burn it down," said Jones.

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."