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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Early Morning Open Thread: ICYMI

Early Morning Open Thread: ICYMI

by Anne Laurie|  April 28, 20156:41 am| 91 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Bring On The Meteor, Seriously

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Here's Baltimore native @tanehisicoates on today's events http://t.co/wIVLglZVuk pic.twitter.com/JsMSCUHRRj

— Adam Serwer (@AdamSerwer) April 28, 2015

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Nonviolence As Compliance“:

Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city’s publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city’s police still have no idea what happened. I suspect this is not because the mayor and police commissioner are bad people, but because the state of Maryland prioritizes the protection of police officers charged with abuse over the citizens who fall under its purview.

The citizens who live in West Baltimore, where the rioting began, intuitively understand this. I grew up across the street from Mondawmin Mall, where today’s riots began. My mother was raised in the same housing project, Gilmor Homes, where Freddie Gray was killed. Everyone I knew who lived in that world regarded the police not with admiration and respect but with fear and caution. People write these feelings off as wholly irrational at their own peril, or their own leisure…

1) Ferguson was in the flyover, but Baltimore is right along the DC-NYC Axis of Acela. Every train goes through West Baltimore.

— Billmon (@billmon1) April 28, 2015

3) Which means now that WHCD is out of the way, & the Hive Mind has grasped that this is really happening, the MSM freakout will be awesome.

— Billmon (@billmon1) April 28, 2015

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Reader Interactions

91Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    April 28, 2015 at 6:45 am

    WHCD?

  2. 2.

    Dan

    April 28, 2015 at 6:50 am

    Whote House Correspondent’s Dinner?

  3. 3.

    Schlemazel

    April 28, 2015 at 6:55 am

    Yes for #1 &2 White wHore Correspondents Dinners

  4. 4.

    Baud

    April 28, 2015 at 6:57 am

    Fits the acronym, but kind of out of left field.

  5. 5.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    April 28, 2015 at 7:01 am

    @Baud: #HackProm

  6. 6.

    Schlemazel

    April 28, 2015 at 7:06 am

    @Baud:
    Its like they could not get their homework done because they were just too excited about the awesome prom coming up and hoping to get a chance to dance with one of the big celebrities that would be at the “Enchantment Under the Dome” prom dance.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 7:08 am

    @Baud: #hackprom

    ETA: watching CBS morning news. Early part was all disorder. Now CRose is interviewing some NAACP guy on whether the mayor should have called the National Guard out faster. First question.

    Yeah, that would have been my first question.

    And the NAACP guy is doing a great job of connecting the dots CBS Whiteland can’t see. They just see disorder and a burned CVS store.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 7:13 am

    NAACP guy, Mr. Brooks: “This problem will not be solved by molotov cocktails.” Rioting and looting is putting a gun to your own head.

    Now on to Nepal. That’s Mother Nature run riot, so it’s acceptable disorder.

  9. 9.

    PurpleGirl

    April 28, 2015 at 7:16 am

    I have friends in Baltimore, one of my dearest friends, her husband and daughter. Please keep them in mind and hope that the violence ends.

  10. 10.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    April 28, 2015 at 7:25 am

    I saw a bit of Rachel and Chris last night. They were naturally covering everything live. I’m not there, but it looks to me like there’s gross over-reaction going on by the new Republican governor. Calling out the National Guard? Asking for 5000 troops from neighboring states? In response to a couple of stores being looted and burned and some cops being injured by flying bricks and rocks? Really?

    How is closing the schools going to help?

    The police response, the rapid escalation by the Governor, and the rapid ratcheting up of the military-esque rhetoric and actions, makes me think that things are likely to get worse before they get better.

    :-(

    Here’s hoping the Mayor and other officials in the city manage to figure out a way to let people express their anger and frustration and channel that into productive change.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  11. 11.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 7:30 am

    I am really fucking depressed about what has happened. I am so fucking disappointed with the youth who did this. I feel sorry for the ones who weren’t out there, for the sisters, who will have to feel the effects of this for years. Do you think that police got less racist after last night? Do you think the white people of this city, who need to fucking fix the terrible situation that exists in west and east Baltimore, are any more inclined to do shit? No. We will just re-invest in militarized police, re-invest in brutality. I’m so fucking pissed about this. Burning the businesses where your neighbors and family work? Black-owned salons and carry-outs and liquor stores? The school where your little sister can’t go tomorrow? Great fucking idea guys! Really fucking genius. I don’t know what to say. I know thinking isn’t what they’re doing, I know they are fucking angry. But I just can’t empathize with these guys right now. My heart is with the communities they are destroying. My life in white Baltimore will go on pretty much as before. They didn’t change shit except to make things worse for the already besieged communities. I don’t care what people like Ta-Nehisi say. This way isn’t ever going to fucking work. It will just get these kids, and innocent people in their community killed.

  12. 12.

    geg6

    April 28, 2015 at 7:30 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    Ditto.

  13. 13.

    JPL

    April 28, 2015 at 7:34 am

    @sparrow: It is depressing.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 28, 2015 at 7:36 am

    @sparrow: You are feeling the same as I did during the Ferguson riots, but I could not help remembering the fact that the other way has never worked.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    April 28, 2015 at 7:41 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    the other way has never worked.

    Nothing has ever worked.

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    April 28, 2015 at 7:46 am

    Actually, as far as I can tell, there was genuine improvement in the LAPD after the Rodney King incident and the South Central riots (which for me is the ur-example of this story, since I was too young to remember Watts).

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 28, 2015 at 7:47 am

    @Baud: So it would seem. Human nature has not changed one whit.

  18. 18.

    The Thin Black Duke

    April 28, 2015 at 7:50 am

    @sparrow: I’m sorry, but I think you’re misreading what Ta-Nehisi wrote. Believe me, I understand your sorrow and your anger and the last thing I want to see is more black people victimized by this senseless violence.

    However, when the escalating police brutality against black people is ignored and peaceful protests are ignored, how many damned times can black people be expected to turn their bloody cheeks? As James Baldwin observed, “The most dangerous thing a society can do is to create a world where a man has nothing to lose.”

    And what Baltimore and the rest of the United States is saying loud and clear is “Black Lives Don’t Matter”.

    And yeah, I’m scared to death, because I don’t know what going to happen next.

  19. 19.

    debbie

    April 28, 2015 at 7:51 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    I’m not there, but it looks to me like there’s gross over-reaction going on by the new Republican governor.

    I also heard in her words a tacit acceptance of the actions of the police, which I find very dispiriting.

  20. 20.

    Elmo

    April 28, 2015 at 7:51 am

    What I keep hanging up on is the idea that the authorities “don’t know” what happened to Gray. Of course they know. They may not know with particularity whose boot delivered the actual killing blow, but when a mob attacks a man that level of particularity is irrelevant.

    The facts as we know them give rise to the legal doctrine of res ipsa loquitor. The thing speaks for itself. Before entering police custody his spine was sufficiently intact to allow him to run. The cops admit he didn’t resist. Once in police custody, his spine was nearly severed and several bones broken.

    Res fucking ipsa, goddammit.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    April 28, 2015 at 7:58 am

    @Elmo:

    What I keep hanging up on is the idea that the authorities “don’t know” what happened to Gray.

    I keep seeing this, but this is the latest news I’ve found

    Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has said police expect to present a report on Gray’s death to the state’s attorney’s office by Friday, but officials have not said when the report will be made public.

  22. 22.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 7:58 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: @Baud: Everything you say is true. That makes it all the more depressing. I’ve been an optimist about Baltimore, naively I guess. I thought what I saw, marching on Saturday, was something different. I saw a crowd of young, old, black, white, asian, latino, male, female, all marching for justice for a poor black man of the Western district. I thought maybe Baltimore, in some crazy way, would be the place where the people in power did the right thing for once and people actually stood in solidarity. I can’t help feeling that fragile connection has been destroyed tonight. I know I’ve been naive, I know. I just feel like we started to build something, and it all got burned down last night.

  23. 23.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 28, 2015 at 7:59 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: What I find strange is that yesterday afternoon Baltimore kicked students off the Metro and school buses which left thousands of children stranded. Doesn’t make any sense.

  24. 24.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 8:03 am

    @Patricia Kayden: That was dumb as hell.

  25. 25.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 28, 2015 at 8:03 am

    @Elmo: Up to now, I haven’t even heard why the police interacted with Gray in the first place. Riding a bike isn’t a crime to my knowledge. Why did they stop him? Why did they arrest him? How was his spine severed? Why did they not get him medical treatment right away? Why was a man in obvious agony placed in leg irons?

    All the cops involved in Gray’s death need to be charged with murder. Unfortunately, the rioting has given some officials an excuse to take the focus off Gray’s death for the next few days, if not longer.

  26. 26.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 8:04 am

    @Patricia Kayden: They stopped him “because he ran from police”. I guess that counts as probable cause for a stop. Given the result, Freddie Grey was 100% correct.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 28, 2015 at 8:07 am

    @sparrow: Hope is never naive.

  28. 28.

    debbie

    April 28, 2015 at 8:08 am

    @sparrow:

    I heard this morning on NPR that he made eye contact and then ran. Clearly a crime punishable by death.

  29. 29.

    The Thin Black Duke

    April 28, 2015 at 8:10 am

    @Patricia Kayden: Call me paranoid, but how many of these “rioters” are undercover cops whose job is to keep pouring kerosene on the fire? As Gl Scott-Heron sang so long ago, “It follows a scheme if you dig what I mean”.

  30. 30.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 28, 2015 at 8:14 am

    @sparrow: I’m speechless. He ran and then they caught and subdued him and had him under their custody and control. How and why did it escalate to a severed spine? (Rhetorical question since I assume this is under investigation).

    To be fair, I guess if I was a cop and someone ran when they saw me, I’d be suspicious. It’s what happened next that is so disturbing though.

  31. 31.

    FlipYrWhig

    April 28, 2015 at 8:14 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: Aren’t most of the rioters high school kids? It’s difficult to find cops who can pass for teenagers, as the noted documentary 21 Jump Street has shown.

  32. 32.

    FlipYrWhig

    April 28, 2015 at 8:18 am

    @Patricia Kayden: In a lot of these incidents, the cop has gone apeshit when the person starts to run. It REALLY pisses them off when they have to give chase. They start to contemplate revenge.

  33. 33.

    A Humble Lurker

    April 28, 2015 at 8:18 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    @Baud:
    A bus boycott and lawsuit did something.

    @FlipYrWhig: Probably not difficult to find kids who’ll throw molotov cocktails for cash, though.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 8:19 am

    @sparrow:

    Wire creator David Simon’s blog, The Audacity of Despair, on Baltimore.

    He’s in sparrow’s corner.

  35. 35.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 8:19 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: I heard at least one early report (I think from a citypaper guy?) that they saw an undercover cop in the crowd come out and arrest someone. So yeah, there were some. I don’t know if they were really instigating though.

    I gotta do something positive today because this depression shit is not me. I’m going to head over to my local Ace hardware that was hit last night and start helping with the cleanup. It seems Baltimore is pulling together this morning to clean up this mess.

  36. 36.

    jurassicpork

    April 28, 2015 at 8:19 am

    Jack the Ripper’s at large. Yes, after two and a half years of ceaseless, hard work, my historical psychological thriller Tatterdemalion has finally launched. The Kindle version’s on sale for $4.99 and you can find it here.

  37. 37.

    Mr. Twister

    April 28, 2015 at 8:22 am

    It has already been pointed out that Spiro Agnew made his reputation with his “law and order” response to the riots in 1968. I guess Larry “the Hutt” Hogan can only hope…

  38. 38.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 8:23 am

    Also, media betters: notice that people did vote — overwhelmingly — for change in 2008 and 2012, and they have seen so much disrespect heaped upon their president. I have never seen anything like this.

    And you ran with the “death panels” and all the anti-ACA stuff anyone could dredge up. Who knows what’s the truth?

    So you can make more money and draw eyeballs. And now some of you are scoffing about “disorder” and a burned CVS. (And who does not have warm hometown feelings about CVS?)

  39. 39.

    Cervantes

    April 28, 2015 at 8:24 am

    @jurassicpork:

    Yes, after two and a half years of ceaseless, hard work, my historical psychological thriller Tatterdemalion has finally launched.

    Excellent news. Congratulations!

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 8:24 am

    @sparrow: That would be positive and good therapy.

    Hugs.

  41. 41.

    debbie

    April 28, 2015 at 8:24 am

    The last paragraph in TNC’s piece should be mandatory reading for anyone claiming that the problem lies with the protestors:

    When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is “correct” or “wise,” any more than a forest fire can be “correct” or “wise.” Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the rioters themselves.

  42. 42.

    The Thin Black Duke

    April 28, 2015 at 8:25 am

    @FlipYrWhig: To be honest, I don’t know if these rioters are high school kids or not because the stories the talking heads on TV are telling me keeps on changing. What I do know is that in similiar situations in the past, some of the idiots who are provoking the violence in the streets are people who have never been seen in that neighborhood before and are never seen again afterwards. It’s probably a coincidence, though.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    April 28, 2015 at 8:25 am

    @A Humble Lurker:

    A bus boycott and lawsuit did something.

    150 years after the end of slavery, 50 years after Jim Crow, the lynchings continue, only now under color of law. So the question begs, what difference does it make where one sits on the bus when the cops get on it?

  44. 44.

    max

    April 28, 2015 at 8:26 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Calling out the National Guard? Asking for 5000 troops from neighboring states? In response to a couple of stores being looted and burned and some cops being injured by flying bricks and rocks? Really?

    Yeah, they kinda lost their shit. The locus of the busted up area is pretty small. We’re talking maybe a square mile, but a fire outside that area. And even then, it’s a couple of handfuls of busted up stores. 1968 was way worse.

    But they’ve got to work for the clampdown.

    max
    [‘The neighbors are cleaning up.’]

  45. 45.

    Matt McIrvin

    April 28, 2015 at 8:27 am

    @Patricia Kayden: I could be wrong, but the picture I’m getting is that they initially injured his spine by stepping on it, shackled him, put him in the back of a vehicle without a seat belt and knocked him around with an intentional “rough ride”.

  46. 46.

    max

    April 28, 2015 at 8:29 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: To be honest, I don’t know if these rioters are high school kids or not because the stories the talking heads on TV are telling me keeps on changing.

    What I saw in most of those pictures from yesterday afternoon was the 15-25 crowd. Looked like kids, dressed like kids. All the older folks were distraught.

    max
    [‘Sending everyone home from school/cancelling school didn’t help.’]

  47. 47.

    FlipYrWhig

    April 28, 2015 at 8:32 am

    @debbie: Mobilizing to demonstrate disrespect for law and order and the cops, OK, I can get that. Throw eggs and rocks at police vehicles. Get in the faces of the line of cops in riot gear and vent. These are confrontational deeds that feel in tune with the moment (although I’m not brave enough to do them). But I don’t really understand why burning a CVS would play a part in that. I think you still have to condemn _misdirected_ violence, even if you want to carve out a category of appropriately directed violence so as not to fall into the trap of saying only nonviolence is ever appropriate under crisis conditions.

  48. 48.

    Cervantes

    April 28, 2015 at 8:38 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I could be wrong, but the picture I’m getting is that they initially injured his spine by stepping on it, shackled him, put him in the back of a vehicle without a seat belt and knocked him around with an intentional “rough ride”.

    And the six officers involved not only have not been suspended, they are working desk duty at full pay — but is anyone surprised?

  49. 49.

    Sly

    April 28, 2015 at 8:41 am

    When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.

    “Poor Martin [Luther King] has gone through God knows what kind of hell to awaken the American conscience, but Martin has reached the end of his rope. There are some things Martin can’t do — Martin’s only one man. Martin can’t solve the nation’s central problem by himself. There are lots of people, lots of black people I mean, now, who don’t go to church no more, and don’t listen to Martin, you know, and anyway are themselves produced by a civilization which has always glorified violence — unless the Negro had the gun. So that Martin is undercut by the performance of the country. The country is only concerned about non-violence if it seems that I’m going to get violent. It’s not worried about non-violence if it’s some Alabama sheriff.”
    – James Baldwin, 1963

  50. 50.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 8:43 am

    @max: There was looting all over the city, from east and west sides, to the inner harbor, to the far North where I live. I was listening to the police scanner for hours last night. At least 4 different pharmacies were looted and burned, a brand-new senior center, half a dozen cars, at least 4 row homes. Let’s not minimize the damage. It wasn’t pretty.

    Edited to add (regarding age): everyone I heard getting arrested last night was like 14. Sad.

  51. 51.

    gelfling545

    April 28, 2015 at 8:54 am

    @sparrow: no the police did not become less racist last night, but they weren’t going to anyway.

  52. 52.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 28, 2015 at 8:55 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: No, I watched the rioting from the time it started (around 4 pm) and the rioters appeared to be young Black men (teenagers). But I understand why you would speculate about that.

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    April 28, 2015 at 8:57 am

    What’s the read on the mayor’s performance during this crisis? Some folks are saying she fucked up by letting things get out of hand (giving “those who want to destroy” some “space”). Others are saying she clamped down too hard and provoked greater violence. Anyone have an informed opinion on that?

  54. 54.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 8:58 am

    @sparrow:

    Why are they going after pharmacies and the senior center? What they got against their grandmas?

  55. 55.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 9:02 am

    @Elizabelle: It’s stupid mob mentality. They aren’t thinking. If they were, they wouldn’t be doing this. What Thin Black Duke says is right.

    @Betty Cracker: I have been pretty down on the mayor (and still don’t like her and want her gone), but I actually think she did ok last night. She didn’t immediately call in the guard until there were an alarming number of fires spread out around the city. Maybe she shouldn’t have called them, but I think they are more symbolic than anything. The one thing she did right is told the police to back the fuck off and not to engage. A few dozen arrests out of the hundreds – thousands of kids that were out last night is remarkable, and as far as I know, no one got beat up or shot by police. Would that she had that much control over the police at other times. The only thing I will fault was the closing down of the metro — that was dumb.

  56. 56.

    Morzer

    April 28, 2015 at 9:05 am

    @Elizabelle:

    At a guess because prescription drugs are extremely expensive and they are hoping to load up on useful medical supplies for the future. I don’t think they want to harm anyone’s grandmother.

  57. 57.

    debbie

    April 28, 2015 at 9:08 am

    @FlipYrWhig:

    i don’t support the violence, but I do understand it. If nonviolence had worked, there wouldn’t have been violence last night.

    The real problem is the cops and their supporters. To complain that cops are being condemned without a trial, even as citizens have been executed without a trial, speaks to a tone deafness of astonishing depths. Watching this happen again and again tells me it will never change.

  58. 58.

    Morzer

    April 28, 2015 at 9:11 am

    @FlipYrWhig:

    The sad truth is that non-violence only works when the side that could bring decisive violence to bear chooses not to do so, whether voluntarily or because it is constrained by public opinion or some other factor, and subsequently opens negotiations with the non-violent protestors. If that partnership in restraint and negotiation doesn’t happen, non-violence fails, either by people just giving up as time drags on, or by devolving into a violent conflict.

  59. 59.

    Patricia Kayden

    April 28, 2015 at 9:12 am

    @sparrow: Sparrow, did she really say that people needed space to destroy things? That’s what I’ve heard several times. I doubt she would say something so stupid.

  60. 60.

    max

    April 28, 2015 at 9:22 am

    There was pretty definitely a flyer/image circulating.

    And the whole thing kicked off around three. So that was a flash mob of teens and it grew from there.

    max
    [‘Thanks, Facebook!’]

  61. 61.

    RaflW

    April 28, 2015 at 9:35 am

    @sparrow:

    I don’t care what people like Ta-Nehisi say.

    Then you are not actually interested in change, only in the maintenance of civil order for your acknowledged white privilege.

    @Baud:

    Nothing has ever worked.

    Bullshit. Things have improved in some cities and in some ways. Hopelessness/resignation is another tool of white power. Reject it.

  62. 62.

    beltane

    April 28, 2015 at 9:36 am

    @max: Shutting down mass transit also guaranteed that every high school student in Baltimore was going to be swept up in the crowd whether they wanted to or not.

  63. 63.

    cmorenc

    April 28, 2015 at 9:42 am

    @sparrow:

    I am really fucking depressed about what has happened. I am so fucking disappointed with the youth who did this. I feel sorry for the ones who weren’t out there, for the sisters, who will have to feel the effects of this for years. Do you think that police got less racist after last night? Do you think the white people of this city, who need to fucking fix the terrible situation that exists in west and east Baltimore, are any more inclined to do shit? No. We will just re-invest in militarized police, re-invest in brutality. I’m so fucking pissed about this. Burning the businesses where your neighbors and family work? Black-owned salons and carry-outs and liquor stores? The school where your little sister can’t go tomorrow? Great fucking idea guys! Really fucking genius.

    THIS.

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    April 28, 2015 at 9:54 am

    @RaflW: That’s not fair. Sparrow was apparently a participant in the peaceful protests and is obviously interested in change. It’s not unreasonable to view the violence last night as a setback to that cause and to express frustration with that and people who are perceived as endorsing it from afar. (FWIW, I think Coates is right, but disagreeing with him does not equal endorsing white supremacy, for chrissake.)

  65. 65.

    Josie

    April 28, 2015 at 9:54 am

    @Patricia Kayden: She did say it but did not mean it in that way. She was pointing out that, when you leave space for people to demonstrate peacefully, you open up the possibility of someone misusing that space to commit destructive acts. She was saying it is a fine line to walk as a governing body. It was awkwardly phrased by her and then twisted by the media.

  66. 66.

    raven

    April 28, 2015 at 9:54 am

    @Patricia Kayden: She said it, I don’t think that she meant it but it really sounds awful when she tries to say it was “taken out of context”.

  67. 67.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 9:56 am

    @RaflW: To clarify, I spoke in anger because there are a lot of liberals who like to champion violence from the sidelines. I respect Ta-Nihisi immensely and I get what he was saying. He’s not wrong. I shouldn’t have picked him out.

  68. 68.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 9:57 am

    For something cheerier: C-Span 1 reporter is roaming the lines of people outside the Supreme Court, which will hear gay marriage arguments today.

    They’re finding humane folks who support gay marriage.

    Turn it on. Society can change for the better too.

  69. 69.

    RaflW

    April 28, 2015 at 10:07 am

    @sparrow: Thanks for engaging. When I saw that sentence it just reminded me too much of all the times white folks have dismissed black voices of leadership. If the situation in places like Baltimore is ever going to change (and I think it can) black folks living in/coming from the impacted communities have to lead the change and be respected for their voice, leadership and experience.

    I actually agree that in those cases where white liberals are armchair cheering on violence, that we should tell them to STFU, post haste. In my view, what white people need to do is lead the change among fellow white people. Sure, some of us will just look like awful hippies or even race traitors to folks entrenched in their white comfort and stability.

    But as we learned in MN on the freedom to marry campaign, the goal is not to reach them. It is to reach the moveable middle. Some of that, IMO, starts with explaining generational hopelessness, rage and suppression of black youth. Not excusing it. No. But explaining it to our fellow whites who are utterly ignorant of the ongoing trauma.

  70. 70.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 10:07 am

    I’m back home already; there was nothing to clean up in my neighborhood business block by the time I got there. In addition to municipal workers and a street cleaning machine, there were actually a ton of families out in full force with brooms, trashbags, and all the rest. It was all done so we were all kind of just milling around checking things out. Honestly, if I hadn’t known that something had gone down last night it would look like a beautiful Tuesday morning in Baltimore. I will try to get down to the harder hit areas downtown later and see if they still need help.

    But, I feel a bit better. Seeing the families of Waverly out in cleanup mode made my heart a little gladder.

  71. 71.

    Morzer

    April 28, 2015 at 10:07 am

    @Elizabelle:

    I really do hope that Maester Pycelle (I mean, Roberts) doesn’t manage to screw over those good people.

  72. 72.

    Violet

    April 28, 2015 at 10:07 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA: #HackProm is my favorite way to describe it. I hope it goes viral.

  73. 73.

    Cacti

    April 28, 2015 at 10:10 am

    The type of non-violence practiced by Gandhi and MLK was also calculated, confrontational, and provocative. It was done precisely to incite a brutish overreaction by the power structure to comparatively trivial “offenses”.

    It wasn’t just linking arms and singing songs while the cops went to work on you with nightsticks.

  74. 74.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 10:12 am

    @RaflW: I totally agree.

  75. 75.

    Kryptik

    April 28, 2015 at 10:14 am

    Rioting is always awful, and I hope whoever instigated this shit out of what was initially peaceful protest gets their eventual just desserts, but I haven’t heard much about how the cop presence seemed adversarial from the beginning. Like Ferguson, they didn’t seem there to de-escalate shit, they were looking for a reason to go whole hog and SWAT on everything they could see, and took the first chance they could.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    April 28, 2015 at 10:16 am

    @Morzer: We talking about Roger B. Taney of the 21st century?

    Actually, I don’t think Roberts will. Corporations have spoken. They are not down with discriminating against gay folk.

    Indiana pizza came up as a joke subject at the #hackprom — by both President Obama and Cecily Strong.

  77. 77.

    askew

    April 28, 2015 at 10:17 am

    @sparrow:

    That’s good to hear. What were feelings on the ground about last night’s mess?

  78. 78.

    Morzer

    April 28, 2015 at 10:19 am

    @Elizabelle:

    I thought Obama was magnificent. Absolutely bucketing magnificent.

  79. 79.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 10:19 am

    @Kryptik: Yes and no. I imagine hemming in hundreds of highschoolers with 300 cops in full riot gear did not help diffuse things. But I was listening on the radio for hours last night and they were mostly trying to get the kids to disperse and go home. Arrests were fairly infrequent for the scale of the violence going on. No one got shot or beat up that I have heard (yet). Not that I’m pro-BPD, they need to clean house immediately and institute some major changes and indict the killer cops. But whether because of the police chief or the mayor or the media presence they actually held back last night pretty well.

  80. 80.

    Betty Cracker

    April 28, 2015 at 10:21 am

    @Cacti: That is absolutely correct. It took unbelievable courage and damn-near superhuman restraint. There was nothing passive or kumbaya about it

  81. 81.

    LAC

    April 28, 2015 at 10:23 am

    @Kryptik: yeah, I love how that gets glossed over. Maybe the powers aren’t too busy, they might get around to to letting the public know what happened to that young man. Some honesty and lot less ” thin blue line” shit might have helped. If we are going to play the blame game, we might as well expand it a bit.

  82. 82.

    msdc

    April 28, 2015 at 10:24 am

    @RaflW:

    I actually agree that in those cases where white liberals are armchair cheering on violence, that we should tell them to STFU, post haste.

    Armchair radicalism isn’t just a white liberal problem. Sparrow is more directly affected by the riots than Coates is from his perch up at the Atlantic, and he deserved better than your calling out.

  83. 83.

    The Other Chuck

    April 28, 2015 at 10:25 am

    @FlipYrWhig: The definition of a rioting mob is one that isn’t acting rationally. Coates had it spot on with the forest fire analogy, though I take issue with his characterization of the mob as “protesters”, since meaningful demonstration can’t happen under these conditions. The riots are a menace and tragedy both, and need to be stopped ASAP before (more?) bystanders are killed. Then we can look at dismantling and rebuilding the Baltimore PD.

  84. 84.

    sparrow

    April 28, 2015 at 10:28 am

    @Betty Cracker: Someone once told me that for the Ghandi/MLK strategy to work, required the power class to be capable of shame. Is white America capable of shame? I think so, or at least a majority. I think the age of incontrovertible video evidence is putting that shame front and center. That’s why I have some hope. (And as a side note, also why I don’t think this situation is directly analogous to the Palestinian conflict.)

  85. 85.

    Morzer

    April 28, 2015 at 10:32 am

    @sparrow:

    Is white America capable of shame?

    The parts of it that aren’t obsessively playing the victim after being asked to share some of their toys, maybe.

  86. 86.

    Spanky

    April 28, 2015 at 10:40 am

    @sparrow:

    Let me see if I can help you understand. These kids don’t give a shit what you or anybody else understands or thinks about them. They don’t care and they are not afraid. This is them shouting the frustration to the world that has said duck you to them for too long. These are the ones that are not the best students and are overlooked.

  87. 87.

    LanceThruster

    April 28, 2015 at 10:56 am

    During the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict, I saw live news footage of a young black girl of about 15 or so amidst her own neighborhood on fire. She was so eloquent, with tears in her eyes and anguish on her face said, “Why are people doing this to their own neighborhood? This doesn’t help anybody. People will think we’re animals!”

    That last line left her sobbing as the producers cut away to more burn footage.

    She had no reason to feel any shame, but knew the judgmental attitudes she and her community would be subject to following this. I think of this young woman to this day, and feel shame for a society that considers such remarkable individuals as part of a faceless disposable class.

  88. 88.

    Elie

    April 28, 2015 at 11:20 am

    @sparrow:

    Makes you wonder: don’t large cities ever have “practice” scenarios where they review their plans and responses in given emergency situations? Honestly. This looks as though 1) they didn’t have a plan or 2) they had one but it hadn’t been tested for real world effectiveness.

    Baltimore, where I lived for 5 years in the early 90’s, has had a dirt poor excluded black population for years and years. Successive waves of politicians, (unfortunately mostly Democratic and black), haven’t been able to move the needle on one economic development or quality of life metric for the inner city population described in such detail in the show “The Wire”, (the closest anyone ever got to seeing what life is like for this community). All city administrations sustained the small high income population still remaining in certain neighborhoods but left the black hoods untouched. I agree that this unaddressed pain was bound to erupt one day with the right trigger. But what now? Where is the path forward from the burned homes and businesses of the people who actually lived in that community? I can understand why people have a reaction, but still, the next day comes and what do you have? Where is the energy and motivation going to come from? There is no direct line from the violence to positive action, unfortunately. There is, however, a direct line from the images that we saw last night to continued justification for injustice and fear of poor black people. Progressives have barely shown any spine to support any social legislation including ACA. That gives me great trepidation that next steps are just not known and will be hard to energize… I pray not. Maybe Ta Nehesi will write about how to do that next.

  89. 89.

    Linnaeus

    April 28, 2015 at 11:41 am

    A lot of people have quoted Ta-Nehisi Coates on Baltimore, but I think it’s also worth revisiting his commentary in the wake of the Ferguson protests:

    What clearly cannot be said is that American society’s affection for nonviolence is notional. What cannot be said is that American society’s admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. increases with distance, that the movement he led was bugged, smeared, harassed, and attacked by the same country that now celebrates him. King had the courage to condemn not merely the violence of blacks, nor the violence of the Klan, but the violence of the American state itself.

    What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence—like nonviolence—sometimes works. “Property damage and looting impede social progress,” Jonathan Chait wrote Tuesday. He delivered this sentence with unearned authority. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. They describe everything from enslavement to Jim Crow laws to lynching to red-lining.

    “Property damage and looting”—perhaps more than nonviolence—has also been a significant tool in black “social progress.” In 1851, when Shadrach Minkins was snatched off the streets of Boston under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Law, abolitionists “stormed the courtroom” and “overpowered the federal guards” to set Minkins free. That same year, when slaveholders came to Christiana, Pennsylvania, to reclaim their property under the same law, they were not greeted with prayer and hymnals but with gunfire.

    “Property damage and looting” is a fairly accurate description of the emancipation of black people in 1865, who only five years earlier constituted some $4 billion in property. The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 is inseparable from the threat of riots. The housing bill of 1968—the most proactive civil-rights legislation on the books—is a direct response to the riots that swept American cities after King was killed. Violence, lingering on the outside, often backed nonviolence during the civil-rights movement. “We could go into meetings and say, ‘Well, either deal with us or you will have Malcolm X coming into here,'” said SNCC organizer Gloria Richardson. “They would get just hysterical. The police chief would say, ‘Oh no!'”

    (apologies for the long quote, but I think it’s necessary.)

    Coates goes on to write that America has never believed in “nonviolence”. Not really. And it’s really hard to argue with him on this – our colonial forebears rioted over putting stamps on their documents, and that’s still regarded as, at worst, maybe a mildly excessive response to an unfathomable injustice. Those with more justifiable grievances don’t get that luxury when their acts are deemed an affront to the social order that most Americans seem to prefer.

    None of which is to say that the riots are “right”. Trouble is, those in a position to make the changes that need to be made don’t appear to be coming forth with solutions. So the same people get the short end no matter what.

  90. 90.

    Elie

    April 28, 2015 at 11:48 am

    @Linnaeus:

    Good comment. sigh.

    Let us see what happens and do our best to make it positive..

  91. 91.

    Linnaeus

    April 28, 2015 at 11:51 am

    @Elie:

    At risk of sounding very trite, that’s all we can really do.

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