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It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

He really is that stupid.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Let there be snark.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

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83Comments

  4. 4.

    sparrow

    As a bal’morian that marched on Saturday, I am pretty pissed off at these guys. But I want to point out that the looters and rioters that showed up at the end on Saturday were *not* protesters. They were not holding signs, they didn’t march for hours. They were just there to wreck shit. Same with these fools. It is sadly true that we have a subset of the Baltimore youth that are what you see here. They make it a hell of a lot harder to fight for justice and fixing things. I really don’t know what else to say.

    If you read the comments you this video you will see how Baltimore feels about this:

    https://www.facebook.com/WestsideFreakySeanStayTatted/videos/10102347239934229/?hc_location=ufi

  8. 8.

    J.D. Rhoades

    Now of course, the Baltimore PD says they have a “credible threat” that the Bloods and Crips and something called the “Black Guerrilla Family” have joined forces to “take out” police officers.

    Uh-huh. Sure. Sounds like they’re pre-emptively covering for the next shooting of an unarmed person wearing red, blue, or black.

  9. 9.

    Trollhattan

    Didn’t see this thread when I posted below.

    Time zones away so don’t really know what’s occurring in Baltimore but of course hope peace and calm prevail.

    I suspect few are surprised this is occurring, given the damning frequency of similar events around the country. It was bound to blow up somewhere, if not Baltimore then somewhere else. So how do we stop it from repeating elsewhere? Those who remember the ’60s understand the fires can jump from city to city in a hell of a hurry.

  12. 12.

    JPL

    Hopefully, they don’t destroy their community. Rather than spend money paying victims for damages caused by police brutality, maybe Baltimore should spend money training them.

  13. 13.

    Schlemazel

    having lived through the riots of the 60’s I feel nothing but dread. A lot of people who do not deserve it are going to be hurt, a lot of damage will be done and in the end things will be worse not better. Once these things start they are damn hard to stop, they just run their course.

    “Does anyone know where the love of god goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours.”

  15. 15.

    sparrow

    @J.D. Rhoades: Black Guerilla Family (BGF) is a real thing here and not so nice (not just a petty gang of kids). They’re pretty organized and smart: last year one of the BGF inmates was found to be practically running the city jail, which resulted in a terribly embarassing corruption case: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-ci-bgf-trial-opening-statements-20141119-story.html#page=1

    They also go around the city assasinating people — here’s a case that happened at a fairly high-end mall near me: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-09-08/news/bs-md-co-towson-town-shooting-trial-20120905_1_gang-retaliation-william-ward-iii-bgf

  16. 16.

    Schlemazel

    @AxelFoley:
    You know that the media will focus on the looters & rioters and not on the cops role in starting this. I thank pasta every day I was not born black because I don’t know how I’d survive knowing I could be killed with impunity but when I strike back in rage it is all my fault. How can I not be filled with rage?

  18. 18.

    Rafer Janders

    @J.D. Rhoades:

    Now of course, the Baltimore PD says they have a “credible threat” that the Bloods and Crips and something called the “Black Guerrilla Family” have joined forces to “take out” police officers.

    The BGF is actually a real thing — it’s a prison-based gang, active in prisons throughout the country. It operates largely but not entirely out of prisons, rather than being a neighborhood or streets based gang (much like its counterpart the Aryan Nations). Doesn’t mean the threat is real, of course.

  19. 19.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Rafer Janders:

    BGF aside, I’m not buying Bloods and Crips suddenly declaring a truce to fight the cops. Sounds like the BPD is ratcheting up white fear so that from now on, every civilian casualty will be declared a gang member.

  20. 20.

    Trollhattan

    David Simon has a blog I’ll be watching in hopes he has any insight on what’s occurring. Even if no longer a reporter it’s still sort of in his wheelhouse.

  21. 21.

    Violet

    My local news said the riots got worse after a local high school let out for the day and most of the rioters are teenagers and young adults.

  23. 23.

    Heliopause

    I think that stuff about American Exceptionalism is correct. No other developed liberal democracy would put up with these levels of inequality, oppression, and violence for decade after decade after decade.

  24. 24.

    nellcote

    so Baltimore shuts down transit/buses, then let’s kids out of school with no way to get home. WTF?

  25. 25.

    mister anderson

    Seriously, as someone who lives near Baltimore, a little tear gas will probably spruce that dump up.

  27. 27.

    skerry

    @Violet: This is true. However, it is also true that the police blocked access to the transit that most of these kids use to get home from school – leaving a lot of teenagers without a way to leave the area.

  28. 28.

    Lavocat

    Honestly, WTF did people expect?

    You give cops license to kill people in the streets, and then fail to charge them or refuse to indict them, and sooner or later the people are going to figure out that they might just as well try to get away with the same thing.

    D’OH!

    This is NOT a “Baltimore thing”; this is an “America thing”.

    And it seems to be getting worse with each passing week.

  29. 29.

    different-church-lady

    @Rafer Janders: You know that cliche about being able to hold two thoughts in the head at the same time?

    a) There are bad LEOs who will try to leverage anything they can.

    b) There are genuine threats to life that LEOs risk every day.

    One does not contradict the other. But once again we need to sit by while a bunch of loudmouths place them in opposition.

    (This post does not mean to exclude the existence of many other letters.)

  31. 31.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Violet: I’ve always noticed that local news tells SOME of the story, and leaves important stuff out.

    They’re pressed for time; they need to show funny youtube videos and car dealership commercials.

  32. 32.

    Cacti

    Wonkette had a good find today, with that Baltimore Sun article from September 2014.

    Law enforcement/community relations have been the dog’s dinner in Baltimore for a while now.

    Since 2011, the City of Baltimore has paid out more than 100 settlements for brutality and civil rights violation complaints against BPD.

  33. 33.

    different-church-lady

    @sparrow:

    But I want to point out that the looters and rioters that showed up at the end on Saturday were *not* protesters.

    Seems to be a common occurrence nowadays, and some of the honest folk in the media are trying to communicate it as such. The more classy rag in my fair city went out of their way to word their headlines in a way that did not conflate looters with protesters.

  34. 34.

    skerry

    @Violet: Now the police are asking parents to come get their children. A lot of these families rely on the now shut-down public transportation.

    Not a lot of thought.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @Trollhattan:

    It was bound to blow up somewhere, if not Baltimore then somewhere else. So how do we stop it from repeating elsewhere?

    Riots happen because peaceful protests are ignored. If we want to stop riots from happening, we need to start listening to the poor and disenfranchised before their complaints rise to the level of a riot.

  36. 36.

    skerry

    Interesting comment from John Angelos, Orioles COO about the protests this weekend in Baltimore.

    Brett, speaking only for myself, I agree with your point that the principle of peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is of utmost importance in any society. MLK, Gandhi, Mandela and all great opposition leaders throughout history have always preached this precept. Further, it is critical that in any democracy, investigation must be completed and due process must be honored before any government or police members are judged responsible.

    That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

    The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, and ultimate price, and one that far exceeds the importances of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at Camden Yards. We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.

  37. 37.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    Mobtown. Baltimore’s nickname from the 1800s with the Know-Nothings and Plug Uglies.

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    @skerry: Well said, John Angelos. Connect the dots.

    And he did not even raise the spectre of police violence against the community. Traces it to offshoring and its destruction of communities.

  41. 41.

    JPL

    This a decent article about the police in Baltimore… link

    @skerry: Awful, just awful. People are trying to get home from work and the streets are blocked. I believe in the right to protest, but I’m also a parent.

  42. 42.

    Starfish

    @Betty Cracker: Baltimore locals to follow: @paulmgardner @baynardwoods @MolotovFlicker @BaltoSpectator @BmoreBloc @justingeorge @justin_fenton #FreddieGray

  43. 43.

    GxB

    Can’t condone the violence, but I guess it is inevitable. The upside is maybe, just maybe, this will push through the vacuous tripe and rubbish shiny du jour they use to keep us turning a blind eye to how fucked up policing in America is today.

    Who am I kidding, it’s just going to be spun as “those people acting like the savages that they really are.”

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @Trollhattan: Thanks for that link. Looks like he wrote some wise words for today.

    First things first.

    Yes, there is a lot to be argued, debated, addressed. And his moment, as inevitable as it has sometimes seemed, can still, in the end, prove transformational, if not redemptive for our city. Changes are necessary and voices need to be heard. All of that is true and all of that is still possible, despite what is now loose in the streets.

    But now — in this moment — the anger and the selfishness and the brutality of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray’s name needs to cease. There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that spoke in Mr. Gray’s name initially, and there was real unity at his homegoing today. But this, now, in the streets is an affront to that man’s memory and a dimunition of the absolute moral lesson of his meaningless and unnecessary death.

    If you can’t seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore. Turn around. Go home. Please.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @skerry:

    Interesting comment from John Angelos, Orioles COO about the protests this weekend in Baltimore.

    The Angelos family has been a cut above the typical MLB owner for a while. Peter Angelos was the only owner who refused to hire scabs during the 1995 strike.

  47. 47.

    Elie

    @Lavocat:

    I’m sorry but what does rioting help? This just adds to the polarization of the discussion about the behavior of the COPS and makes the discussion about black people and how they just like to riot. Yes, the frustration is understandable, but not pardonable. This is just stupid and serves no end except the aforementioned fodder for racists and other fascists. It puts good people and community leaders back on their legs trying tease out why we have to talk about changing police behavior and not locking away all black people (or shooting them). Someone upstring said that the Black Guerrilas were smart. Hmmph — if they are driving this stuff, they are not so smart… but represent a lawless subculture that is the last thing that young black people need to emulate.

  49. 49.

    Cacti

    Peaceful revolutions like those of Gandhi or MLK are historically rare.

    More often, when oppressed people finally stand up and say “enough!” things take a more violent turn, from Spartacus, to the storming of the Bastille, to Nat Turner, to Red October.

  50. 50.

    Trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:
    My sense is there’s at best a tenuous connection between communities and organized protests/marchers occurring in them. Riots occur when the broader community reacts violently to an event and yes, it’s a reaction to both a single, focusing event, e.g., the Rodney King verdict, and historical ones. Some unknowable accumulation of these brutality stories was bound to blow up and now that it’s occurred, I suspect the likelihood of more such events goes up, not down. I expect the administration is monitoring very closely since it’s a national and not just a local issue.

  51. 51.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I don’t know what the nation’s police thought would happen when they decided to embark on a program of “beat the shit out of everyone who crosses your path” three decades ago. Me, this is exactly what I thought would happen, with a lot more and worse to come.

    The worst thing is that nobody seems to have much interest in stopping it. Maybe when whites figure out it’s been happening to them too, it will stop. I don’t know. The media keeps a tight, tight lid on stories about police beating/shooting whites to death, but just like blacks, it happens every day in America. EVERY FUCKING DAY someone dies at the hands of police in this country.

    This wouldn’t happen in a civilized country.

  52. 52.

    kc

    @sparrow:

    But I want to point out that the looters and rioters that showed up at the end on Saturday were *not* protesters. They were not holding signs, they didn’t march for hours. They were just there to wreck shit. Same with these fools.

    I can believe that. Opportunistic assholes are everywhere.

  53. 53.

    Cacti

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    How many “isolated incidents” does it take from various police departments throughout the country for the public to finally acknowledge that the problem is systemic?

    I guess we’re going to find out the hard way.

  54. 54.

    Gravenstone

    @nellcote:

    so Baltimore shuts down transit/buses, then let’s kids out of school with no way to get home. WTF?

    Hey, what good is having the city throw a riot if they can’t ensure a good turnout?

  55. 55.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    And sometimes they happen because assholes try to hijack peaceful protests so they can fuck shit up.

    @J.D. Rhoades: I lived for twelve years in the SF Bay Area and every single riot was started, not by protesters, but by the rich kids from Marin and the Berkeley hills who live for nothing more than driving mom’s Benz down to a protest and throwing bricks through shop windows and at cops. Literally, every single one.

    The cops all knew who every one of them were and never lifted a finger to stop them. Because riots are very good for your career, if you’re a cop.

  56. 56.

    Chris

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    Maybe when whites figure out it’s been happening to them too, it will stop.

    From what I’ve seen, if you show police shootings of white people to these kinds of whites, their reaction will be somewhere along the lines of “SEE! This isn’t racism, cops shoot whites too – hey, OBAMA, why don’t you ever talk about cops shooting WHITE people? Why are the blacks the only ones who get all the attention and that anybody cares about when they get shot? This just proves whites are the REAL oppressed underclass…” and then eventually go running right back to the same kind of people who root for police violence, be it against whites or blacks.

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    @Cacti:

    Peaceful revolutions like those of Gandhi or MLK are historically rare.

    That’s because they’re ultimately founded on the ruling group’s unease about using large-scale violence to retain control. Nonviolent protests against rules who have no compunctions about bloodshed don’t work so well.

  58. 58.

    kc

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    The worst thing is that nobody seems to have much interest in stopping it. Maybe when whites figure out it’s been happening to them too, it will stop. I don’t know. The media keeps a tight, tight lid on stories about police beating/shooting whites to death, but just like blacks, it happens every day in America. EVERY FUCKING DAY someone dies at the hands of police in this country.

    Yep. And many more are beaten, tased, pepper-sprayed, and otherwise brutalized.

  59. 59.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    How many “isolated incidents” does it take from various police departments throughout the country for the public to finally acknowledge that the problem is systemic?

    @Cacti: I think the public knows it’s systemic – against blacks. That causes a large number of whites to sit back and say, well, you know, THOSE PEOPLE, they had it coming.

    It’s going to take blowing the lid off this happening to whites, every day, for them to get some skin in the game, so to speak. I am not hopeful.

  60. 60.

    Elie

    @Cacti:

    The riots make for a great distraction from the goal of fixing the cops. Perfect distraction. Makes me sick— a waste of lives, and a waste of time since riots won’t fix and indeed will make it less likely we can even effing talk about what the aich is going on with the cops.

  61. 61.

    GxB

    @skerry: Well that is unexpectedly frank and spot on. Kinda has a libertarian aftertaste in spots but I’ll let it slide. But for the record Mister COO, the problem isn’t “big government”, it’s corrupt government. We need a “big” government, we’re a big country, and government is not to be run like a business – that’s in large part the problem.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @Elie: I hope this makes you sick, too. The rage from people who are regularly attacked by the police makes sense, at least to me, even if I don’t think it’s the most constructive approach. This kind of thing by the police is inexcusable.

    Related news: “A photo editor for a Baltimore newspaper says he was beaten by police at a protest over the death of Freddie Gray. J.M. Giordano, who works at the City Paper, says Baltimore police ‘swarmed over’ him and hit him repeatedly. A video posted to the newspaper’s website Sunday shows at least two police officers in riot gear hitting and kicking Giordano as the person filming screams, ‘He’s a photographer! He’s press!’”

    From Steve Benen’s end-of-day report today.

    Edit: not saying it’s worse that the police are beating up a (just guessing white photographer), I’m saying it’s stories like this that make it crystal clear that the cops are just beating people because they can, without cause.

  64. 64.

    Lavocat

    @Elie: That’s precisely my point: it’s just amorphous rage that has to be directed at SOMETHING, so …

    It’s human nature to lash out when you feel that you’ve been wronged.

    I’m not saying that I necessarily agree with rioting – merely that it is inevitable under the circumstances. I completely understand it.

  65. 65.

    Elie

    @WaterGirl:

    It does make me sick but as a black person, my deeper pain is knowing that doing anything about it is very very difficult at best and impossible more likely. I have no children but I have a good imagination and I can feel how a black mother feels putting her son in a coffin… whether it is a true coffin for a dead son or the coffin of racism and low expectations for so many young black men with no dreams and no hope. How scared I am for our future… but I cannot give in to the cynicism and evil that would use this tragedy to unleash destruction for no good end. Sorry. Black people most of all have the most to loose. White people can mouth platitudes about understanding how the frustration erupts, but none of y’all actually have to live the consequences of it when your boys go out into the streets. I am desperate for us to try to move this a micron littlebit towards a solution . I am more interested in that than letting some teenager loot at 711 just because that’s why….

  66. 66.

    Linnaeus

    @Elie:

    since riots won’t fix and indeed will make it less likely we can even effing talk about what the aich is going on with the cops.

    And, sadly, there’s historical precedence for this. I grew up in the metro area of a city that had, shall we say, a significant riot in the 1960s. All of the antecedent conditions – poverty, low job opportunities, racism, police brutality – had long been in place. But after the riot, all of the wrong lessons were learned by the people who really really needed to learn the right ones (ETA: meaning the people with actual power to effect change). This went on for years, with the consequences falling mostly on those who were already disadvantaged.

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    David Zirin article about Baltimore:

    One could imagine a situation where people inside Camden Yards would have to confront with their own eyes the reality that a young man, who did not look all that different from some of the people they were cheering on the field, was killed a short Uber ride away. They could confront the fact that the same police officers protecting them have a frightening history that is being dragged out into public view since the death of Freddie Gray. They could confront the bracing defense of the protesters that has actually come from Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos, who took to Twitter in a series of messages and said, in part,

    “We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.”

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @Trollhattan:
    I guess my view is colored very heavily by having lived in the LA area during the Rodney King riots, though fortunately not in an area of active rioting. There were huge problems between the police government and the citizenry, but nobody was doing anything about it. I think that’s the basic conditions you need to have to get really vicious rioting. Maybe you can have less drastic riots because a bunch of kids think it’s fun to smash stuff, but that’s going to burn out pretty quickly. The really nasty ones happen because there’s a whole generation that has been ignored, and a riot is the only way of getting the authorities’ attention.

  70. 70.

    sparrow

    @Elie: BGF doesn’t want peace, let’s just put it that way. More disruption is right in their gameplan.

  71. 71.

    Botsplainer

    @JPL:

    Hopefully, they don’t destroy their community.

    Just once, I want a group of rioters to take out a country club or some gated neighborhood.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @WaterGirl:

    A video posted to the newspaper’s website Sunday shows at least two police officers in riot gear hitting and kicking Giordano as the person filming screams, ‘He’s a photographer! He’s press!’”

    Maybe that was why they were attacking him. If they were doing things they didn’t want recorded, a man with a camera (and an organization dedicated to publishing what he photographed) was the last thing they wanted to encounter.

  73. 73.

    Cacti

    @Roger Moore:

    Maybe that was why they were attacking him. If they were doing things they didn’t want recorded, a man with a camera (and an organization dedicated to publishing what he photographed) was the last thing they wanted to encounter.

    As was shown during the Ferguson riots, police will make a point of trying to harrass and intimidate journalists.

  74. 74.

    Elie

    @sparrow:

    Gameplan for what?

    Certainly not helping the lives for black young people. Do you think that they might be paid to do this (from a deep dark place of cynicism)? Or is it that — what — depriving the community of their drug store is a plus? What? (I know you don’t know — that your statement was rhetorical)

    I’m sick of this shit. Liberals should not enable this by seeming to advocate or look the other way for violence even indirectly. We cannot talk about fixing things with people who are burning down homes and businesses in black neighborhood already hurting…

  76. 76.

    Cervantes

    @Botsplainer:

    Just once, I want a group of rioters to take out a country club or some gated neighborhood.

    That probably is something they could only do just once.

  77. 77.

    sparrow

    @Elie: The BGF and similar groups operate best when there is a power vacuum. Basically, when the social contract doesn’t work for young black males, the BGF comes in and fills the gap (with an almost military-type structure). Kids don’t join gangs because they are inherently bad, they do so because other pathways are closed to them (or aren’t apparent to them), and other leaders don’t exist for them.

  78. 78.

    sparrow

    @Cervantes: Yeah, I was going to say, as much as I know what you’re saying, I don’t want to see that, because then we’ll get a whole lot more dead kids.

  81. 81.

    Paul in KY

    @Elie: That is for the adults in that community to stop. If they don’t want their drug store burned down, then they need to be standing in front of that drug store with baseball bats (or whatever) to let the hoodlums know that if they want to burn something down, go over to Whiteytown.

  82. 82.

    grondo

    According to a lot of lefties I’ve read online today, this is just some much needed, cleansing violence, and to resist it or even object to it as counter-productive is to be complicit with the Powers that brought it on by ignoring black oppression all these years. We should celebrate this as a revolution, and any innocent people who are injured or killed in the process are just the price of restorative justice.

    Or am I wrong?

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