Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Riots

I have lived most of my life in two cities (or their suburbs), Bangkok and Cincinnati.  Each has had a riot and government imposed curfew while I lived there.  Cincinnati had riots in 2001 after the police shot a young black man, and of course there is a riot in Bangkok right now. 

Fortunately, in both cases, I never had reason to fear my safety.  While the curfew in Cincinnati during the 2001 riots were city wide, the violence and problems were confined to a small area.  The city government didn't want to offend anyone by restricting the curfew to the areas affected by the riot, so they pretended it was a city wide issue and imposed the curfew on everyone.  While the violence here is mainly restricted to the downtown, there are some pockets of problems in other places.  The area that we live in, however, is restricted access and it is extremely unlikely that we would have any problems. 

Still, if I have grand children some day, I can tell them that I lived through the 2001 Cincinnati riots as well as the Bangkok 2010 riots.  If I ever do move to a different city, they better watch out.    

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