It seems theft is becoming the greatest form of protest, at least to one man.

This man, DeRay McKesson, is a prominent leader in the Black Lives Matter movement. He was offered a guest-lecturer job for a semester at Yale University and, recently, he has been teaching his students the merits of looting as a form of protest.

McKesson gave students an essay to read on the topic. This essay compares today’s looters, particularly those during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, to the patriots who took part in the Boston Tea Party during the American Revolution. McKesson teaches that looting is one of the highest forms of protest and is completely justified.

The essay, titled “In Defense of Looting,” states that looting is looked down upon because the ruling class has made it seem “nonpolitical” and “violent,” while it is actually “practical and tactical,” according to the publication of the article in “The New Inquiry” last year. McKesson did not put the article on his syllabus, apparently going off-script to teach it.

Please excuse me while I go steal some stuff from the local Walgreen’s. Do not worry, I just need some Doritos for political purposes.

Seriously? College students are being taught that stealing is one of the best ways of protesting?

It is stealing. Looting means stealing. If you watched any coverage of the Ferguson riots, what you saw on television was people stealing from stores, a completely illegal act. To call such an act a high form of protest is absurd, especially in the context of the Ferguson riots.

Is McKesson trying to push back the Black Lives Matter movement? Granted, this is his opinion and does not reflect the beliefs of the group as a whole, but given that he is a leader of the group, it is a bit unsettling. It is quite noble to compare today’s looters with the participants of the Boston Tea Party, but it is also completely warped in both thought and logic.

The Boston Tea Party was not even technically looting. Many of the boxes of tea on those British ships were simply tossed overboard or destroyed, not taken for personal gain. Every definition of looting I found did not mention destruction of property. Also, the Boston Tea Party was a show of defiance, a rebellion against taxes and tyranny. The same cannot be said when talking about the Ferguson riots.

Protesting is great. Protesting is one of the greatest freedoms we as Americans have. To distort it to the point of saying looting is completely justifiable during a protest is completely unjustifiable. Americans should protest, as is our constitutional right, but we should protest peacefully. Last time I checked, ransacking stores and stealing everything before the building is burned to the ground, crushing the livelihood of employees and owners, is not peaceful at all.

If the Black Lives Matter movement wants to be taken seriously, they should promote the peaceful type of protest. I may not agree with everything the movement stands for, but they have every right to protest anything they want to, as long as it is peaceful and law-abiding. Perhaps getting rid of McKesson as a leader of the movement would be a good start to making the movement seem more credible, as it seems the man has some pretty anarchic and wild beliefs.

The last thing anyone should be telling college students is that it is perfectly fine to steal whatever you want from stores, as long as you have a political or revolutionary motive behind it. Hopefully these students, who go to Yale, a very prestigious university, are smarter than their professor. 

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