I’m having a hard time this morning.  When I fell asleep last night I was upset.  I was worried for my friends in London, I was worried for the city of London, and I was worried about what I would wake up to.

I woke up this morning and opened my computer and became worried for humanity.   Obviously looting is disgraceful, and the idea of how many businesses will suffer or cease to exist as a result of this is more than a little upsetting, but when they started attacking people’s homes things reached another level.  Last night, a Sky news reporter stood with a terrified woman on the street because she didn’t want to be alone after waking up to find a masked man dressed in black standing in her room, and the police were nowhere to be found.    This morning this video is spreading like wildfire:

Watching it makes me feel physically sick.  I cried reading the reports, because obviously the riots will end eventually, but how will we go on knowing that people like this are around us in such numbers?   People who are capable of setting buildings on fire while people sleep in them, who carelessly destroy businesses, who rob people as they lie injured on the street and LAUGH all the while?  How did these people come to be like this?!?

What is heartening are the displays of completely contrasting humanity within the madness.  You’re bound to have seen this by now:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gex_ya4-Oo&feature=related

And you’ve probably heard about the Turkish men turned vigilantes who were forced to defend their livelihoods because the police couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything about attacks on their shops.  The @riotcleanup campaign which kicked off this morning is also encouraging, it is good to see people taking back their power where they can.

They tweeted this morning “If they do it again.   We do this again tomorrow. Solidarity for our communities.   Show them they cannot win.”  Thank God for that, because otherwise I’d be completely hopeless.

One of the men defending his shop asked, “I’ve got a little kid – how I’m gonna grow this kid in this country?”  That’s the question I can’t get out of my head.  I’m worried about the future, and I’m worried about the past.  I’m worried about how things have gone so wrong, and what’s happened that so many people just don’t have any sense of right and wrong anymore.  How are people SO bitter, SO selfish and feeling SO entitled?  And what are we, as a society,  going to do about it?