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