- There’s no such thing as a peaceful protest in the eyes of a government. You either ignore or accept state violence or you’re considered an aggressor. Period.
- Gang violence and riots do not spring from a vacuum. They are responses to institutional and systemic discrimination, oppression, and abuse. What you see on the news is not an isolated story; it is simply another chapter in a very long series of unfortunate events against poor black people who are trapped in a cycle of violence that they did not start, nor do they perpetuate.
- Do not invoke the Civil Rights Movement and/or MLKJ in any of your anti-riot arguments. First of all, see Point 1. Second of all, if you’re using that same tired argument, I guarantee you that you are (a) not on the front lines of these protests, nor behind the scenes organizing them, NOR putting yourself on the line via social media or any other medium in support of the peaceful protesters or the #BlackLivesMatter movement in general, AND (b) you would not have done any of that in the mid-20th century, either.
- The police will be fine.
- The police deserve it.
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Baltimore is in a state of unrest, with rioting and looting breaking out after the funeral of Freddie Gray, the man who suffered a severed spine in police custody and died this month.
1st photo: Baltimore police form a perimeter around a CVS store that was looted and burned. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
2nd photo: A youth who has washed pepper spray from his eyes walks near a building that caught fire. Credit: Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency
3rd photo: A man has his eyes cleaned after getting pepper spray in them. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
4th photo: A man shouts for calm as protesters face off with police as the CVS burns. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
5th photo: Police move a protester back. Credit: Matt Rourke / Associated Press
6th photo: Police fire tear gas canisters as protests move along Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
7th photo: A police vehicle burns. Credit: Jerry Jackson / Associated Press
Los Angeles Times
Did you hear about the black man in Baltimore that was killed, while in police custody?
1. Freddie Gray, who had 80% of his spine severed at his neck? No. the other one.
2. You mean Trayvon Scott, who in February died in a police holding cell without any explanation? No. the other one.
3. You mean Tyrone West, who despite never committing a crime, was beaten to death in an abandoned lot last year, and Baltimore refused to release the autopsy? No. the other one.
4. You mean George King, who was tased 5 times in 10 minutes while laying in a hospital bed, suffering from meningitis? No. the other one.
5. You mean Anthony Anderson, whose death was determined a homicide by the state’s medical examiner after being brutally beaten by police?
NO. the Other one.
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All power to the revolutionary youths of Baltimore.
Here’s the thing about violence:
Baltimore and many other cities have been entrenched in anti-black violence from the get go. Every effort that has ever been made in Richmond, Philly, Baltimore, Durham… to build black power, black culture, black community has been met with fires, guns, bombs, murders. The black youth growing up in these cities have been trapped by the legacies of anti-black violence and slavery: an economy that does not employ black people, under-employs and then underpays, a system that ships black youth to segregated schools in segregated neighborhoods on segregated buses, a system that kneels and begs at the hands of investors and bankers and promotes gentrification in coded language, a system that humanizes and sympathizes with cops whose repeat offenses will never get them jailed.
There’s the thing about violence. You do not kill, repress, entrap a people and then complain about having rocks thrown at you when you show up in the neighborhoods you gerrymandered to tell them to quiet down.
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