Yours and mine and everyone else's who pays taxes.

@SpikeTalon Nope. They don't belong to you. In fact, they subsidize the rest of the country if you really want to look at it that way.

@WilyRickWiles If you want to be technical, one city then, as I myself could only live at one location at a time. The cities still belong to the people who dwell within them, and that's fine if you disagree.

@SpikeTalon Even within cities I see people who have a sense of individual entitlement over the downtown area remaining their perfect white, orderly, gentry playground and not a dynamic place where people actually live and where even the poorest residents should be welcome.

@SpikeTalon Of course they do this because they've subordinated themselves to the elites who own the downtown property and one of the perks is stepping on the servants and poor below them.

@SpikeTalon Just the reality of living in a property-dominated economy. A reality that is intensifying as remote work makes gentrification a national phenomenon.

@WilyRickWiles Since the dawn of humanity there have been prejudiced human beings, and there still is. Just because some take an elitist mentality and look down upon others who they perceive to be less human than themselves, that doesn't remove the fact cities and towns still ultimately belong to the citizens. Those that go the prejudiced route will be wrong every time.

There are abuses of power in every human-devised political/social system. The concept of private property is more aligned with nature itself, and like it or not human beings are territorial animals, just like many other kinds of animals out there. Property rights are not the problem, greedy human beings are.

@SpikeTalon Too much weight has been given to property rights because capitalism incentivizes it, which rewards the "greedy," and so on.

@FuzzyMarineVet To the US and other "developed" countries, that countryside is the global south.

@FuzzyMarineVet Aside from migrant labor made precarious by immigration policy, subsidies, prisons, large and corporate landowners, and dependence on city markets (real and financial), I suppose.

@FuzzyMarineVet At the end of the day, it's the farmers making choices about labor practices. Moreover, didn't farmers demand subsidies over a century ago? Don't rural towns invite prisons, Amazon, and Foxconn, often at great cost to the people who live there? I understand that the small business owner, family office financier, and the owner of the private business feels squeezed by the corporate class. You'd think that they could understand the similar but much worse situation poor and working class people, especially those from marginalized groups, are in, especially when they take out their frustrations on their shared enemy.

@FuzzyMarineVet The fact is, even the rural petit bourgeoisie will still ally with their corporate enemy before allying with the people "below them" (and vice versa, despite corporate lip service on identity issues).

A good majority of those on the political right do understand the reason why some were upset regarding the death of George Floyd. What they do not understand was the needless violent rioting that seriously impacted minority owned businesses, setting buildings on fire, and the looting etc. Looting stores and setting fires do absolutely nothing to honor the memory of Mr Floyd. Maybe perhaps people like you don't understand why some of us are opposed to criminal deeds.

Start talking about peaceful solutions to the problem, and you'll have my undivided attention, but the instant you condone acts of incivility is the instant you could count me out.

@SpikeTalon Have you considered Dr. King's explanation?

@WilyRickWiles I will gladly consider anyone's views so long as they strive for peace. With that said, I also understand that armed conflict may be unavoidable in some cases. The only problem I have there with what had transpired last summer was that too many minority owned businesses suffered loss of some sort, and that sort of "casualty" should not be necessary just to achieve policing reform.

@SpikeTalon I don't know how strategic looting ever is. Though I would note that many businesses in poor communities are owned by outsiders, which is part of what keeps them poor.

Here is what Dr. King said on the matter. [apa.org]

@SpikeTalon Yes, Not fogetting George Floyd and co are full on Criminals .We won't forget that either.

@WilyRickWiles You don't seem to understand history or care about logic and facts

@Tom81 What? You don't seem to be able to make an argument.

@WilyRickWiles and your arguments seem to be based on policies that have failed consistently. You're ignoring facts, that have been proven historically. You absolutely shut yourself off from anything but a political jihadist world view by the far-left

@Tom81 Have you tried evaluating ideas rather than projecting what you see in my avatar?

@WilyRickWiles all I hear from you is the same old ideas rehashed into the modern context. They failed then, they'll fail now.
Your avatar just represents trash ideology and your ideas have certainly lived up to that.
It is you who "does not care to understand", always shifting blame for all problems to the 'bourgeoisie', property owners, the 'right' etc and playing the poor proletariat victim while negating all responsibility. Try evaluating your own ideas against reality (and history) instead of projecting the same old tired propaganda and idea of utopia (which was only created to seize power by authoritarians and install a brutal dictatorship).
That's what your ideas lead to and what you are promoting - a brutal dictatorship.