I think that bringing in the National Guard will prevent looting and gasoline bombs.
Everyone has a certain sense of "Admirable Respect" for military servicemen and feel that they are sort of "Owed" respect because of their service. So they will not be challenged by the community.
The protests might very well continue but with the vandals choosing not to participate so openly.
The enactment of Martial Law might encourage additional protests across the country in an effort to shame the powerful into enacting change to the System.
I watched a great interview on MSNBC and where some young people spoke in historical terms.
They mentioned that the Ruling Class easily recognize that there is racism within America. In order to sort of compensate or to make amends, the Ruling Class funnels funding into these communities via Food Stamps, Welfare and whatever.
But then, the Ruling Class constantly shame these same communities by calling they lazy and undeserving of such assistance or compensation. And then begin to cut the funding in retaliation.
That the White Folks get unemployment cheques and nobody knows they are unemployed, but the Black Folks get food stamps and everybody knows it at all retail outlets in the community.
I have never found an instance in history where the Ruling Class ever gave anything to the Lower Class without the threat of violence.
For sure, I know of no military dictatorship that has been overthrown by nonviolent action.
Oh, people mention Martin Luther King and Ghandi ...... but these people were just the "Face" of the opposition and were required to preach non-violence or they would be imprisoned. If the opposition wants respect, they gotta put a respectful face in TV Land.
But in the background, there was huge violence taking place.
Ghandi said During a prayer speech on June 16, 1947:
“If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.”
--Gandhi’s “The Last Phase,” Vol. II, p. 326--
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”
--Gandhi’s “Autobiography,” Part V, Chapter XXVII--
Matin Luther King and Ghandi were doing the same thing that Roosevelt did in In 1932/1933 in order to quell the violence and the plot to take over the White House.
The New Deal:
"And, it didn't happen because FDR was a great guy. It happened because people in this country were so radicalized, were so determined, were so organized, that he was able to sell the new deal to the elites as a compromise because the alternative was revolution."
--Naomi Klein, National Conference for Media reform, June 07, 2008--
Matin Luther King was telling the Ruling Class that they could deal with him or deal with the "Violence".
There were two main trends or tendency within the African-American Freedom Movement of the Sixties (and other Freedom Movements inspired by it).
One was the non-violent resistance exemplified by King and Rosa Parks.
The other was the militant, in-your-racist-face resistance of Robert Williams, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers (who, of course, originated in Oakland).
It's interesting but not surprising that the former gets all kinds of validation in the schools and holidays today while the other is scarcely mentioned or honored if at all.
In any case, King and Malcolm, despite their different ideologies and approaches, appreciated the value of each other. They were like a "good-cop"/"bad-cop" routine against the ruling elite, without which the achievements in the ways of Civil Rights during that era would not have come about.
I believe Malcolm said it straight-out in his visit to Selma speaking to the southern racists: "If you don't want to deal with King, you're going to have to deal with people like me."
And his words were already starting to be backed-up by urban rebellions.
--VermontLeftist, Comment, February 2012--
"Martin Luther King was a wonderful man who did much to call the nation’s attention to the Jim Crow laws and to have them abolished. His nonviolent demonstrations however had nothing to do with the policy changes, the civil rights legislation, of the 1960s. Those changes came about due to the violence in the streets by young African-Americans primarily the Panthers in the North and the Deacons in the South. But there was no way that the United States Congress would deal with people like Stokely Carmichael or H Rap Brown so they canonized Dr. King has the champion of civil rights. Even his campus supporters, originally called the “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee” knew that nonviolence would not achieve their ends so they changed their name to the “Student National Coordinating Committee”. Ralph Abernathy was sure to appear in Congress to take advantage of the most recent street violence. In that way, Martin Luther King can be said to have contributed to the civil rights legislation but certainly not his nonviolent demonstrations."
"Similarly, in India, the nonviolent demonstrations of Gandhi came at the end of a 100 year period of violent revolution. Even while Gandhi himself was leading nonviolent demonstrations, other revolutionaries were destroying the infrastructure in India. Great Britain was burdened by the cost of two world wars and simply was no longer able to deal with the destruction caused by the violence of the revolutionaries. Just as the United States used Martin Luther King, so also did Great Britain make use of Gandhi. The British press turned Gandhi into a saint but nonviolent demonstrations only caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Hindus and Muslims since he was added to the committee which ultimately determined the nature of Indian independence."
"There are even members of the liberal elite who will claim that it was the nonviolent boycotting of South Africa which ended, apartheid forgetting all about the violence of the ANC and in particular of Nelson Mandela, who was called a terrorist by the British and is now called a hero and patriot."
http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2011/10/07/stop-the-machine-or-how-to-demoralize-a-movement
Lets face it .... when the costs became too great, the Americans even negotiated with the Taliban but not until it became financially necessary.
The final and most pertinent threat that Martin Luther King gave to the Ruling Class was that he was forming a union for the garbage workers. This was the largest threat ever faced by the Ruling Class since the end of WWII.
Calm
