You know what violence is

There's no need to redefine the term

Violence.

Violence is a through line of this summer, and this week it ran through Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Protests have raged through the small, Midwest city since police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, paralyzing him. Demonstrations that were mostly or entirely peaceful during daylight have devolved into vandalism and arson at night, with dozens of businesses, apartments, and vehicles damaged, looted, or burned. Then, late Tuesday, two people were killed and a third wounded when they were shot, allegedly by a 17-year-old suspect who before the shooting said he was on hand, seemingly as a voluntary vigilante, to protect local businesses.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.