Keene, NH Pumpkin fest: come for the jack-o'-lanterns, stay for the riot

October 21, 2014 3:02 PM

Keene, New Hampshire tried to set a new world record for most pumpkins carved at their 2014 Pumpkin Festival, but failed to reach their goal. Instead, the news coverage of the Pumpkin Festival is for the vaguely related mayhem that erupted in neighborhoods near Keene State campus. It has been reported that the chaos was due to an influx of young people, up to 2,000 congregated in some areas, who threw billiard balls, rocks, debris and bottles full of liquor, and overturned at least one car. Police used tear gas and pepper balls to quell the crowds, and arrested 84 individuals. There were dozens of injuries, but no fatalities. In the larger discussion of various group gatherings and actions and the police response to such events, comparisons have been made between the Keene "pumpkin riot" and Ferguson. To which Luke O’Neil wrote Keene Is Not Ferguson—Despite the Police, Fires, and Tear Gas. Jordan Lebeau responded with a piece titled Actually, Comparing Keene to Ferguson Is Precisely What You Should Do (last two articles on Boston.com).

For a decent round-up of Twitter comments, and elaboration on those themes, see Emanuella Grinberg's article on CNN, titled Why Pumpkin Fest riots are not like Ferguson, and the LA Times has links to instagram photos from the Keene riot, along with a comment from Keene State President Anne Huot, who said that the college was "actively working to identify the individuals who participated in unlawful behavior, and those who are identified will be held accountable."

In an interesting bit of coincidence, in an August 17 Last Week Tonight segment on police militarization, John Oliver mentioned that the Keene police department got a BearCat from the federal government to prepare for this year's Pumpkin Festival, though they didn't deploy the heavily armored vehicle this year.

posted by filthy light thief (79 comments total)

bottles up! don't puke!
posted by pyramid termite at 3:22 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

It looks like Nov 2014 will be the first homecoming at Queens University in Kingston ON because it was cancelled for three years due to uncontrolled student riots. So feel better Americans, you're not alone here.

Unlike black people, white people apparently don't need any sort of actual cause to riot, they just do it every so often. Sporting events are also popular non-reasons. And if you're feeling left out Asian-Canadians, wow, look at those Vancouver Stanley Cup riot photos. Way to represent there guys!
posted by GuyZero at 3:23 PM on October 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

No TRUE Queen's student would...oh, right. Never mind.

/ Class of '96
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:26 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

actually, we had a riot in kalamazoo this year, too - it was a couple of thousand kids party hopping, getting trashed and attempting to tip over an ice-cream truck

then the police showed up and tear gassed them

i'd rather live in the hood than that neighborhood
posted by pyramid termite at 3:28 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Any of these kids get shot by the cops?

I didn't think so.
posted by Renoroc at 3:30 PM on October 21, 2014 [16 favorites]

I was going to make a snarky comment about police militarization while the rioters have trebuchets, but it turns out that photo is unrelated.
posted by ckape at 3:34 PM on October 21, 2014

Ah, journalists in their new role. Taking surveillance photos of unruly crowds so the authorities may make post-riot arrests.
posted by telstar at 3:40 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

That my friends is what almost 50 years of waiting for the Great Pumpkin can do to a people.
posted by srboisvert at 3:43 PM on October 21, 2014 [26 favorites]

Town brought the pumpkin, kids brought the spice.
posted by schoolgirl report at 3:45 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

As a Facebook friend commented: "Hands up! Don't ... uh ... tell my mom."

Also: An Expert Look at the Pumpkin Riots of 2014 by "...an International Expert on Whiteness ..."
posted by straw at 3:59 PM on October 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

Unlike black people, white people apparently don't need any sort of actual cause to riot, they just do it every so often.

As I have said elsewhere, many white people are descended from Germanic and Nordic peoples who raged through Europe for roughly 1000 years. The urge to riot is in their blood. It's genetic. They might not be bad people at heart, but some inner imperative will always rise up and force them to try and sack Rome, or the nearest pumpkin festival, portapotty, or international banking system. We should pity these people, in thrall to their base ancestral instincts. They sometimes make good athletes or musicians, though. It has something to do with their muscle fibers.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:59 PM on October 21, 2014 [154 favorites]

The sad thing about this is that previously Keene was just a boring little town except for its [OBJECT NOT FOUND].
posted by maryr at 4:00 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: a chug-fueled quote from a random doofus

(from O'Neil's article)
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:03 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

What I'm really shocked that no one has mentioned is that Keene, NH is one of the hotspots of the Free State Project, which in fact was one of the reasons the police requested heavy militarization in the first place. One of the big tensions in Keene, NH has been specifically that police militarization in the first place.

So I think arguing that this was definitely a riot over pumpkins and nothing else is at the very least, premature.
posted by corb at 4:05 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Interestingly, a quote from Keene officials before this happened:

City Council Member:

“Our application talked about the danger of domestic terrorism, but that’s just something you put in the grant application to get the money,” he said. “What red-blooded American cop isn’t going to be excited about getting a toy like this? That’s what it comes down to.”

Free Keene has some commentary on this whole situation, including violent police tactics against people who were not involved, as well as their refusal to offer people an opportunity to leave the crowd - and some video of cops refusing to get involved in actual bottle throwing.
posted by corb at 4:15 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think anyone believes this was a riot over pumpkins. I don't think there's much evidence that there was a political philosophy behind it either. This, much like the Red Sox playoff riots the region has seen, seems like an interaction between drunk, privileged young idiots and overworked, overarmed, or overambitious police response.

On preview: OK, maybe stoneweaver thinks it was about pumpkins.
posted by maryr at 4:16 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also this weekend, a large group of mostly white students rioted at WVU when their team upset Baylor at football. Maybe its time to have a frank discussion about how white culture encourages white youths to disrespect people and property over such trivial matters. Where are the white fathers? Where are the white leaders?
posted by dirigibleman at 4:19 PM on October 21, 2014 [63 favorites]

Any idea why the Pumpkin Fest organizer was being so weird and aggressive towards "local eyewitness reporter"?
posted by Nevin at 4:19 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

So I think arguing that this was definitely a riot over pumpkins and nothing else is at the very least, premature.

I honestly can't tell if people are speaking tongue-in-cheek in this thread, but it looked an awful lot like a bunch of drunken bro's deciding to engage in some casual violence.
posted by Nevin at 4:25 PM on October 21, 2014

Any idea why the Pumpkin Fest organizer was being so weird and aggressive towards "local eyewitness reporter"?

Based on her behaviour in that video, if I had to guess, she's probably worried and/or scared about what was happening and the potential negative press for the town and the future of that festival. She obviously believes very strongly in the festival and looked concerned about the way the media was presenting it.
posted by Fizz at 4:31 PM on October 21, 2014

Who amongst us can honestly say we haven't become enraged by proximity to a gourd at some point in our lives?
posted by sobarel at 4:40 PM on October 21, 2014 [29 favorites]

So I think arguing that this was definitely a riot over pumpkins and nothing else is at the very least, premature.

I don't think the conversation is about "omigod people are rioting over pumpkins that's so wacky". The conversation is more like "so, in a predominantly black community people stage a protest in response to a police shooting and everyone freaks the hell out but meanwhile in a white community people are being random drunken idiots and people just brush it off, and that's not fair".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:41 PM on October 21, 2014 [17 favorites]

It's totes obvies PSL backlash.
posted by MikeMc at 4:48 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Great now we're going to have to endure another month of opportunistic whites like Taylor Swift, Terry Bradshaw and Carrie Bradshaw carrying their "We Can't Even" signs and hash tagging evrything "Really?" and "Seriously?!!" as if just being white gave them some perspective on this ugly but ultimately preventable incident. How about we just stop talking about this and go back to way things were when everything was peaceful is that too much to ask!!!?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:54 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

This was a really nice roundup of the Twitter commentary.
posted by joycehealy at 4:56 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

As I have said elsewhere, many white people are descended from Germanic and Nordic peoples who raged through Europe for roughly 1000 years. The urge to riot is in their blood. It's genetic.

When I first read this, and before I went and found some terrible things written about Ferguson riots, I thought about the 2004 San Luis Obispo Mardi Gras controversy, when the police force beefed up to prevent the escalation of the prior years' events, when people came to town to get drunk and cause trouble (seriously, I met a guy who had driven an hour and a half north, then got drunk/disoriented enough that he lost his friends and his car). In 2004, the police force was out with tear gas and bean bag guns.

Similar to this, where a lot of the pictures look like college-aged kids who were there to fuck shit up, as captured in this quote:

“It’s (expletive) wicked,” said Steven French, an 18-year-old who was said he was visiting from Haverhill, Mass.

“It’s just like a rush. You’re revolting from the cops,” he said, sometime after 9 p.m. “It’s a blast to do things that you’re not supposed to do.”

He was interviewed by the Sentinel Source, after traveling 80+ miles just to make a mess. Maybe there were some Free State Project people, but they were outnumbered by drunken bros.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:02 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

October 18, 2014

October fifteenth, two thousand and fourteen
There was a riot on the streets in the town of Keene
You were sittin' at home reading your MeFi
While I was participating in some anarchy
posted by tonycpsu at 5:02 PM on October 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

I was wondering when this would show up here. I lived in Keene around the time that the Pumpkin Festival got started 24 years ago. It was a fairly generic harvest festival until someone had the idea of encouraging people to bring jack o' lanterns, and the sight of thousands of jack o'lanterns glowing on an October night is so frigging cool that the pumpkins quickly became the focus.

Early on it was a really sweet community event; the downtown streets are blocked off to car traffic and local organizations set up concessions for fundraising. People walking around in costumes, jack o'lanterns everywhere! Lining both sides of the divided main street, on big scaffolding towers, lining the curbs around Central Square. And there were plenty of people even in the early years, most of them from Keene and the surrounding towns; it was crowded but not mobbed, and you'd bump into a lot of friends and acquaintances.

Then they got the Guinness World Record for most Jack O'Lanterns lit in one place, and the event started attracting regional and national buzz. During the years after I moved away it evolved from a lovely local Autumn celebration into a spectacle hosted by Keene for strangers to come gawk at; the last time I went in 2006 it was so crowded that the streets and sidewalk everywhere downtown were packed with shoulder to shoulder crowds. The lines for food were all absurdly long, and it was really not very pleasant; it wasn't so much "stroll along and look at the pumpkins" as "try to keep up with the dense stream of foot traffic and catch a glimpse of some of the pumpkins as you get whisked by." Most people I know who still live in and around Keene stay away from the pumpkin festival now.

Within the last five years or so, asshole students at Keene State latched onto the event as an excuse to get drunk, and that reputation slowly grew into what happened this weekend. There was some borderline riot nonsense last year too, and Keene State's response was to ban parties on campus... so this year there were parties organized adjacent to campus, along with one big one organized by a company called Finnarage whose modus operandi is apparently to encourage attendees to get out of control, take video clips and... profit, I guess? Thanks to social media buzz the party crowd was way larger than the college or the city anticipated, and when you've got a group of 1,000+ drunken asshole bro dickheads like the guy who told the Keene Sentinel “It’s just like a rush. You’re revolting from the cops… It’s a blast to do things that you’re not supposed to do,” you get a riot.

If I didn't have a personal connection to Keene I'm sure I'd be all LOLpumpkinriots like the rest of the country, but instead I'm just angry at the morons from Keene State and elsewhere who have damaged the reputation and made a national joke out of a really nice little city and a pretty good college. And I'm wistful because 20+ years ago I could not possibly have ever imagined that a quirky little local autumn festival would someday have to contend with fucking riots.
posted by usonian at 5:10 PM on October 21, 2014 [50 favorites]

Who in the Media decides what rioting is?

Because the 'Pumpkin Fest' damage looked as bad (within a smaller area) as the "Rodney King Riots" I was on the periphery of in L.A. in 1992.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:15 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm just angry at the morons from Keene State and elsewhere who have damaged the reputation and made a national joke out of a really nice little city and a pretty good college.

Heh. That's Queens Homecoming in a nutshell (modulo any joke about Queens students which are just partisan jabs).
posted by GuyZero at 5:16 PM on October 21, 2014

usonian: and when you've got a group of 1,000+ drunken asshole bro dickheads

It doesn't even take that many drunken asshole bro dickheads -- just enough to spark an initial confrontation in front of a large audience, at which point the cops overreact, and even the non-dickheads in the audience start pushing back against the overreaction. Mob mentality is a bitch.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:22 PM on October 21, 2014

Why would you throw a FULL bottle of liquor? Kids these days . . .
posted by nestor_makhno at 5:30 PM on October 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

Who amongst us can honestly say we haven't become enraged by proximity to a gourd at some point in our lives?

Is that you, Gallagher?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:40 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

Nestor that was my thought exactly. It was funny to see SLO mentioned. I was there for the last Poly Royal riot in 1990 and the drunks at least threw empties.
posted by MattD at 5:43 PM on October 21, 2014

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss: religion, politics, and the great pumpkin."
-linus
posted by clavdivs at 5:50 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

Heard about this on the news, and then I found out that my daughter attended this festival riot.
posted by freakazoid at 5:52 PM on October 21, 2014

Any idea why the Pumpkin Fest organizer was being so weird and aggressive towards "local eyewitness reporter"?


I couldn't say why, but goddam do I want to slap the shit-eating grin of that kid's face. I suppose that makes me an old, or intolerant, or something, and I've tried to renounce violence in my life, but shit- he just makes my left hand twitch.


I wouldn't, obviously. But, damn.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:55 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

You know, I was wondering why this sounded so familiar. This is why. And this.

I kind of wonder if maybe this was either A) young fans of The Daily Show et al. downing their twenty-one shots of politics, or B) a duplicitous conspiracy to legitimize the militarization of police, possibly using agent provocateurs to goad the kids from A).
posted by Sys Rq at 6:05 PM on October 21, 2014

he just makes my left hand twitch

backpfeifengesicht
posted by poffin boffin at 6:17 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Born and raised in Keene, NH, and my facebook feed has been flooded with "I cant believes" about how something so terrible could happen in such a nice, small town. I, personally, find this laughable, because college kids are exceptionally adept at finding excuses to party, particularly in towns so quiet and with a demographic privileged enough to destroy their own community out of no reason other than boredom. Keene State College, with its campus downtown (as in off Main Street), has always been known as a party school. I have fond memories of my rather staid and judgmental mother constantly complaining about KSC kids. The campus is downtown, and townies and students (many of whom are locals themselves) share the small, charming main street where Pumpkin Fest is held.

Pumpkin Fest grew rapidly, in part because of its quintessential, small-town, Americana charm. In the days leading up to it, all school children would stop class and carve pumpkins together. I remember my family not going home until we could find OUR pumpkins, which was a world class treasure hunt. It sounds hokey, but several story towers of carved, lit pumpkins bookending rows of shelves of flickering jack-o-lanters, with thousands more pumpkins strewn on every pillar, post, and surface is downright magical. Pumpkins are everywhere, and you'd find silly faces, happy faces, scary faces, names of local businesses, or school classes, or funny sayings. You'd see how many duplicate pumpkins you could find from those pumpkin carving kits. Kids would trick-or-treat at the businesses. You'd buy hot, spiced cider or cotton candy. You'd run into absolutely every single person you knew. It would end in an absurdly amazing firework show, because esteemed Atlas PyroVision was a local company.

It attracted a lot of attention, and a ton of out-of-town visitors. Organizers shifted the night before to be local night to try and keep the small town feel. The bigger Pumpkin Fest got, the better reason it became for a party. I feel really sorry for the frustrated organizer on the news report: the two events happened concurrently, but this was in no way Pumpkin Fest itself getting out of control: this was a bunch of stupid, spoiled college kids being patently irresponsible down the street.

It's extremely embarrassing to see my home town on the national news in such a manner. But it is a really powerful counterpoint to Ferguson. Ferguson, a community so desperate and frustrated, a place where a riot felt downright legitimate, protesting feeling so powerless against the codified abuse of those ostensibly sworn to protect and serve them. And Keene, a mindlessly destructive, pointless party perpetrated by those who will never have their values, their families, or their community come into question as a result of their actions.
posted by missmary6 at 6:22 PM on October 21, 2014 [36 favorites]

Back in the 60s I remember reading an article about contemplated crowd control
apparati, an example of which was a truck bedecked with loudspeakers and a device
that would emit a low frequency sound that would cause incapacitating diarrhea in riot
participants. Never heard much about it later, but ...

"Hey! That doesn't smell like PUMPKINS!!"
posted by Chitownfats at 6:25 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

a low frequency sound that would cause incapacitating diarrhea

The infamous (and sadly fictional) "brown note".
posted by sobarel at 6:27 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

tonycpsu: You were sittin' at home reading your MeFi
While I was participating in some anarchy

Oh my God.

</hamburger>
posted by ob1quixote at 6:27 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

that video of crazy lady trying to shut the reporter down is NUTS. I had seen it linked on FB and hadn't really read the caption, but I assumed without viewing the video that some college douche was trying to shut a middle aged reporter down. was very surprised to see it was a middle aged lady clownishly trying to physically bully the poor guy into not mentioning the riots.

and no I didn't see a smirk. I saw a young man trying to maintain his composure and do his job all the while trying to fend off crazy lady's assault while he's thinking "WTF?"
posted by jayder at 6:32 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sounds like some of these kids were...

[oh crap, where did I put my sunglasses...]
[oh yeah...left them on the kitchen table...be right back!]
[hang on, this is going to be good!]

[I'm back!]
*puts on sunglasses*

...out of their gourds.

In all seriousness, though, I fucking *love* the contrast between this "spot of bother" and what's happened in Ferguson. You couldn't ask for a more perfect example of the continuing racial problems in America. I hope Michael Moore has some free time on his hands, because he could throw together a really good documentary about this in like two months.
posted by uosuaq at 6:34 PM on October 21, 2014 [14 favorites]

...out of their gourds

And out of their rinds!
posted by Chitownfats at 6:47 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Pumpkin solders and dixons coming
Only to find them thrown
This fall is the same as others
The Gords Are all on loan
posted by clavdivs at 6:51 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Why would you throw a FULL bottle of liquor? Kids these days . . .
That right there is the clearest sign of privilege! Never waste a drink, bro.
posted by TwoStride at 6:59 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Another small problem in Keene
posted by Jumpin Jack Flash at 7:07 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

To me, what was going on in that clip came across as pretty apparent.

I don't believe that the riot was in any way connected to the so-called free state project (drunk college students do enjoy their fires and flipping cars), but I think that young man desperately wanted it to be, and was looking for a way to represent that on camera. I think the lady's anxiety stems from her desire to not have her festival associated with a radical individualist-libertarian movement.

But again, that probably just makes me an old.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:11 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's hard to look at this and not see latent tension from the under 25 crowd. There's a lot of pissed off just under the surface of a lot of young people.
posted by underflow at 7:22 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

In all seriousness, though, I fucking *love* the contrast between this "spot of bother" and what's happened in Ferguson. You couldn't ask for a more perfect example of the continuing racial problems in America.

What feels frustrating is that it seems like people don't care about unjust police militarization/violence if they feel like the targets deserve it, by being drunk college bros or what have you. It is especially frustrating because I know a lot of people who didn't support the reason for the protests in Ferguson, but did support people's right to protest without being beaten down and having guns pointed at them.
posted by corb at 7:32 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

No, corb, I don't think that's it.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:33 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

In fact, I will expand on this- I think you are implying two separate false equivalences: one between these drunken rioters, and the protesters in Ferguson; and two, between the response here, and the clearly and overtly heavy-handed response of St. Louis area LEOs to the events in Ferguson.

If you want to have a conversation about how poorly groups of drunken assholes are policed in the US, for instance, compared to things like crowd-control techniques in the UK (which doesn't have the best reputation either, when it comes to treatment of protestors), that's one thing- but I think it is disingenuous to suggest that people who had a problem with police actions in Ferguson are gleefully celebrating the treatment of those causing a disturbance in Keene.

Unless an LRAD was used against these kids, or "Officer Go Fuck Yourself" made the trip up from Ferguson, I don't think you have a point.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:47 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

Sorry, that was a frustrated short bit and not a lengthy, thought out post, which the subject certainly deserves.

I think that in the cases of riots, the immediate cause is rarely the one that causes most of the frustration,and that often the target of their frustration is not that which they take their frustration out on. So I think that, for example, those who rioted in Ferguson were a small, particularly angry group, who felt powerless and helpless and wanted to strike back any way they could. (and not the majority of protesters, obvs)That Michael Brown may have been the spark that set off the fire, but the fire was about so much more - about every other aggression they had suffered, about living in eternal generational poverty, etc. That it should have been directed at the police, if it were just about the spark, but was not, because rage is actually surprisingly hard to focus. Likewise, it's possible that what set this spark off in Keene was something about pumpkins, but I don't think that was actually what it was about. I think - even judging by that particularly ineloquent college guy - that anger at the police had a large part of it, anger at town rules, anger at people trying to keep that small town atmosphere even when new people are moving in and wanting things to be fresh and modern. And maybe also anger at the economy, at the idea that when they get out, there are no jobs guaranteed.

And I think that in both cases, the police response was extremely overtly heavyhanded. Yes, an LRAD wasn't used in Keene and no one was threatened this time with shooting in the face- but they also didn't have an LRAD, It looks like they used some pretty heavy "nonviolent" weaponry, especially for a town of 10,000 people, and that they did so in part because of the ramp up in police militarization that is ultimately going to affect all of us, no matter where we live. Yes, Ferguson was worse - but Ferguson also went on for several days and made national news immediately.

But I think the important part is that when we say "Well Ferguson got it much worse for much more important stuff" we are implicitly allowing that the violence in Keene was okay, trivial, not worth complaining about, not worth putting in the category of huge police militarization events like Ferguson. And we also seem to be vaguely suggesting that police should ramp it up when confronting white drunk college kids, because there's clearly a long way to go before other people nationwide will condemn it.
posted by corb at 8:01 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

To me, the difference is not only in the police response, but in the media coverage. Ferguson was RIOTS, the pumpkinfest was "mischief." That sort of thing.
posted by KathrynT at 8:03 PM on October 21, 2014 [19 favorites]

Plus actual people who actually live or have lived there have explained exactly what is going on: a bunch of drunk college students acting like assholes.

That the odd kid is saying 'fuck the police' is not, let's be real, exactly unique in the history of young kids.

Also the blatant racism on display in, as KathrynT pointed out, 'riot' vs 'mischief.' And unless I'm mistaken, an astounding difference in aftermath compared to Ferguson, where all sorts of Constitutional rights were trampled on as they were not here.

Shockingly, most of the kids here are white. I wonder if that might have anything to do with it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:07 PM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

Not to be all "what KathrynT said", but.... what KathrynT said.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

It was funny to see SLO mentioned. I was there for the last Poly Royal riot in 1990 and the drunks at least threw empties.

That was before my time, but it sounded like another fine example of White Kids Gonna Rebel to Rebel.

If I didn't have a personal connection to Keene I'm sure I'd be all LOLpumpkinriots like the rest of the country, but instead I'm just angry at the morons from Keene State and elsewhere who have damaged the reputation and made a national joke out of a really nice little city and a pretty good college. And I'm wistful because 20+ years ago I could not possibly have ever imagined that a quirky little local autumn festival would someday have to contend with fucking riots.

SLO has had at least two riot-level events that grew out of otherwise nice gatherings. Poly Royal got crazy, even earning coverage by the L.A. Times. That was a "Spring festival," which started as a "farmers' picnic." Then Mardi Gras, which was boasted as the biggest Mardi Gras celebration west of the Mississippi, had the same course of growth: fun local event that grew bigger by the year, until the college community realized it was a great time to party, and then it drew crowds from beyond the local and college communities. In other words, I totally feel for Keene, and I'm not pointing and laughing.

What feels frustrating is that it seems like people don't care about unjust police militarization/violence if they feel like the targets deserve it, by being drunk college bros or what have you.

This is just me, but I saw the military-type response to SLO's Mardi Gras, which only encouraged more people to flock to what would inevitably become a riot. I made this particular post because of exactly what KathrynT wrote: media coverage of this bunch of boisterous kids in Keene (college dudes getting drunk and trashing stuff) versus the angry black mob in Ferguson (an upset community with limited recourse to a heinous crime, perpetrated by police). The coverage of twitter response seems to be the most visible discussion of the juxtaposition in the media, which is good that the twitter responses are getting coverage, but it's the saddest sort of meta-commentary when journalists only find balance when they're clipping soundbite-ready quotes from tweets.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Drunken college riots aren't particular rare in New England -- there were riots (of varying sizes) at UMass in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2013 and this year. In 2014 the root was just that people were really drunk. I just don't think in this case you need more than "big party" to explain it.
posted by bitterpants at 8:11 PM on October 21, 2014

While it's good fun to mock college kids playing riot before midterms, it'd be nice to do it in a way that remembers that we want all protestors to be treated as leniently as the drunk white bros, not to have the drunk white bros treated as badly as people of color.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:19 PM on October 21, 2014 [21 favorites]

Yeah, I get that. I think I'm embittered and jaded and so expect the media routinely to be shits who prop up and enforce the dominant culture (which does tend to be pretty racist/classist), so that I didn't even really process it as something that other people would be surprised and upset by and focused immediately on the other stuff.

But of course now that that has gotten mentioned, I am reminded of how much else is shitty in the good old US of A, and am going to go pour myself a drink to weep into.
posted by corb at 8:21 PM on October 21, 2014

I don't believe that the riot was in any way connected to the so-called free state project (drunk college students do enjoy their fires and flipping cars), but I think that young man desperately wanted it to be, and was looking for a way to represent that on camera. I think the lady's anxiety stems from her desire to not have her festival associated with a radical individualist-libertarian movement.

I think he just wanted to report it because it was interesting and maybe an opportunity for him to put his own talents to use on a potentially big local issue, and she was accusing him of being a "Free Stater" trying to make the local city government look buffoonish. Unfortunately, she had plenty of competency in this area and just was not equipped to verbally handle it appropriately, flailing about in a way that makes them seem like recurring nemesis characters instead.
posted by aydeejones at 8:21 PM on October 21, 2014

Also, corb, your comments elide the number of times that people tried to stage peaceful protests in Ferguson during the days after the shooting, and were met with gassing, rubber bullets, and generalized aggression.

Now if you compare this situation to, let's say, policing of football crowds in the UK (even in Glasgow, where things get pretty scary when The Old Firm plays) well- there are interesting differences. Since the '80s, the police there have realized that a "collective punishment" approach doesn't do much to reduce disturbances, and can in fact exacerbate them (not to mention that "collective punishment and then demonize in the press" will especially no longer fly- there's a reason that you can't buy a copy of The Sun in Liverpool). Instead, they now take more of a "softly, softly" approach, and work to isolate instigators and head off trouble before it occurs. Unfortunately, they do not apply the same standards of policing to political protests.

So in this instance, and in the case of the collegiate riots that take place every year or so in East Lansing, or Columbus, or Lexington, there may be a point to be made about crowd control techniques. But I think you just wanted to suggest that a number of people here are "okay with it when it happens to affluent white people," which I assure you is not the case.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:24 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

"Don't tase me bro" is the ultimate embodiment of the "bros deserve fairness too" creed. That guy was asking about John Kerry's affiliation with the Skull and Bones society, because GW Bush was also a member, during the pre-election run-up, and a security guard makes a "cut-throat" gesture and suddenly dude is getting tased.

I find these bros less sympathetic because I want to draw the line of civil disobedience at "having an actual reason to be there," but that precisely is what gets attacked and marginalized and degraded when there is a super-duper-too-legit-to-quit reason for the actions, so we have accept that even if their motives are absurd and aggressive and anti-social (let's get ironically vandalist-ic guys!) their treatment should still entail the least amount of pain and suffering possible. I'll have to learn more about what actually happened to them, though.
posted by aydeejones at 8:26 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

"For the first time, facing the failure of representative democracy inside this convention and the use of police terror outside, millions of peAceniks caught their breath at the unthinkable (CORB): maybe American society as a whole was unfree and undemocratic, and the areas of liberty mere pockets that must be defended and expanded through great struggle. For after all, Chicago is not Mississippi...and this failure of electoral representative democracy was no failure in some pipsqueak city council, but a failure in the most important assembly in the land."
-Arthur I Waskow. 'Running riot ' (1970)
I like my conflation better then corbs
posted by clavdivs at 8:48 PM on October 21, 2014

I also do believe that there is absolutely no good reason why the Keene police department should own an MRAP.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:50 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

MRAPs are covered by the 2nd amendment, right? I'm pretty sure the founding fathers wanted us all to have one.
posted by el io at 8:55 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Come on, let's not bog yet another thread down with Second Amendment derails. Police militarization should be one issue where both hard-libertarian gun toters and far-left gun-grabbers can agree that neither private citizens nor cops need MRAPs.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:00 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

But I think the important part is that when we say "Well Ferguson got it much worse for much more important stuff"

Ferguson got it much worse for much more important stuff.

we are implicitly allowing that the violence in Keene was okay

The violence in Keene was not okay.

trivial

The violence in Keene was not trivial.

not worth complaining about

The violence in Keene is certainly worth complaining about.

not worth putting in the category of huge police militarization events like Ferguson

The violence in Keene was similar in kind, but very different in degree, to Ferguson.

In conclusion, police militarization, contrasts, etc.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:23 PM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

tonycpsu: You were sittin' at home reading your MeFi
While I was participating in some anarchy

It's about comin' up and stayin' on top, and screaming 187 on a motherfuckin' crop!
posted by dr_dank at 4:45 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sounds just like VEISHEA.
posted by TrialByMedia at 5:04 AM on October 22, 2014

I think corb is onto something, but maybe expressing it backwards. I'd like to think we can all agree that a) police often overreact to civil unrest, making the problem worse, b) that the militarization of the police exacerbates this problem, and c) riots rarely arise out of one thing. There has to be a lot of underlying pressure before any one event, even something as out and out horrible as the police just shooting someone (or as out and out harmless as a harvest festival), sparks a visible reaction.

I think corb is wrong in suggesting that MeFites think the police response was just dandy, because it was directed at white kids, when what I am seeing is MeFites who are bitterly aware that the police and media have treated Keene very differently than Ferguson -- and race (with a bit of class thrown in for good measure) seems the overwhelmingly obvious reason. While there are jokes in this thread (including mine), I don't see any suggestions that the solution to Keene is to go "full Ferguson" for "balance."
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:12 AM on October 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

Here in K-town, the reinstated Homecoming went off without a hitch, but there was an amazing amount of student pushback at having cameras posted at University District intersections for security reasons. My husband is a Queen's employee but we had no reason to go near that area this past weekend.
posted by Kitteh at 7:01 AM on October 22, 2014

Where were you at Khitomer Pumpkin Fest?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:10 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

It seems like a pretty common pattern. Some college kid event gets drunker and drunker over the years, and crazier and crazier, and then eventually starts attracting people who are there for the drinking and the craziness and nothing else, and then one year it just goes over the top and there's property destruction and it's all shut down for a few years.

And the kids move on to somewhere else.
posted by smackfu at 7:57 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

And the kids move on to somewhere else grow up and discuss the situation in the Blue.

Also, it only takes 5% to make a mob.
posted by joecacti at 1:38 PM on October 22, 2014

So I think arguing that this was definitely a riot over pumpkins and nothing else is at the very least, premature.

No, I think it's basically 100% accurate. There are plenty of news reports saying that it was over pumpkins and NONE saying it was over something else. There are no On The Ground reports from twitter or elsewhere saying "We rioted over [NOT PUMPKINS]." You wanting it to be about something else in no way makes it about something else.
posted by stoneweaver


On preview: OK, maybe stoneweaver thinks it was about pumpkins.

er, I may have mis-spoken a bit. I meant that the pumpkins were proximate cause, and that pinning it on some political something or other is probably false. Yes, probably just drunken bro's taking a chance to riot because PUMPKINS.
posted by stoneweaver


Later, Republicans were to demand congressional hearings on Pumpkinghazi.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 4:16 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

the pumpkin fest was the pumpkin fest. the riot occurred several blocks away.the college kids did not get loaded at the pumpkin fest and decide to go back to the dorms and frat houses and riot the promoters of the party at the school should be held accountable
posted by fittipaldi at 6:57 PM on October 23, 2014