I really don’t have anything to say. But I can quote.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Nonviolence as Compliance“:
Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and “nonviolent.” These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. To understand the question, it’s worth remembering what, specifically, happened to Freddie Gray. An officer made eye contact with Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?
The people now calling for nonviolence are not prepared to answer these questions. Many of them are charged with enforcing the very policies that led to Gray’s death, and yet they can offer no rational justification for Gray’s death and so they appeal for calm. But there was no official appeal for calm when Gray was being arrested. There was no appeal for calm when Jerriel Lyles was assaulted. (“The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping down my nose and out my eye.”) There was no claim for nonviolence on behalf of Venus Green. (“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up.”) There was no plea for peace on behalf of Starr Brown. (“They slammed me down on my face,” Brown added, her voice cracking. “The skin was gone on my face.”)
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.
It has been 15 days since Freddie Gray was stuffed into a Baltimore Police Department van and no officer, elected official or agency has taken any responsibility for his subsequent death or the policies that allow it to stand.
Therefore, we continue to witness the further erosion of the already broken relationship between Black communities and law enforcement.
The truth is that our region’s elected officials have not seen it as politically useful to act on the long-standing issues of police violence in Black communities. What we are witnessing today is the crossing of a tipping point by communities that have remained unheard for far too long.
Baltimore United For Change is fundraising for Legal/Bail Support for Baltimore protestors. If you support the protests, I would think that even a small donation would help.
And another writer (pdf):
America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.
And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.
Perhaps he was thinking “If I don’t get away from these fucks, they’ll kill me”.
Might I suggest that the good folk of Baltimore mount a running away protest? Every time you see a police officer, run away. As fast as you can. Every black person (and allies too). Every time. I can see two possible benefits to such a form of mass protest.
1. It would remove the “he ran, so I have reason to suspect him” grounds.
2. You might actually get away from them, which could save your life.
Why isn’t this a murder investigation? Why haven’t the police involved been arrested?
Because you can be damn sure that if a policeman had died in such suspicious circumstances, there would have been none of this “we’re just trying to find out what happened” nonsense. It would have been treated as a murder inquiry from the start. Arrest first. Figure out exactly what happened later. That’s how it works for the rest of us. Why not the police?
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/40521
Some other reactions.
Personally, I’m a rather disturbed about those in the media who are advocating more violence. Is that really how far civil rights discourse has fallen?
I agree. More violence is not the answer, despite what some think.
“fallen”, desipis? From what?
I feel like Franz Fanon would have something to say about this
Coates is a smart guy, but he is (perhaps deliberately) misunderstanding the call for non-violence as enunciated by Martin Luther King and others. (In the 60’s King heard the kind of objections Coates is making now. And then some. There were many people advocating deliberate and calculated violence against the repressive regimes of the time.) Dr. King did not preach non-violence as “an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality.” Non-violence as practiced by saints like Dr. King or Gandhi is anything but evasive, and is a tremendously powerful tactic.
Furthermore, and on the same line of argument, it is difficult to see how breaking windows, burning down buildings and destroying countless small businesses, mostly owned by black people, will produce anything but more sorrow, more devastation. That sorrow and devastation will not reach the people who are ultimately responsible for this situation. Those people, mostly white, are safe in their gated communities or in one of their countless houses in beautiful places overseas. They are not in the slums in Baltimore. The wrong people are suffering.
All of that said, I am personally so angry that I am having a very hard time holding on to rationality. Why now and not before? Maybe repetition…maybe that I did not find Michael Brown a particularly sympathetic character to hang my outrage on. Freddie Gray wasn’t an upstanding citizen either, but the cold-bloodedness of deliberate murder in this case is hard to absorb.
And so far as I can tell nothing has been done to bring the murderers to justice. Are the police simply waiting us out? Is the administrative mumbo-jumbo just going on and on? Are they relying on the crowd’s short attention span? Thinking that makes me angry all over again.
Perhaps I should post when I have a better grip on myself.
In the context of the article, Coates is referring to the politicians and pundits who are lecturing the protesters that they should be practicing nonviolence–a very different thing from calls for nonviolence within the community itself. (For example, earlier tonight on Twitter I saw a bunch of people chronicling news anchors saying variations on “The violence started on Saturday,” which implicitly excludes what happened to Gray as violence.)
I agree that nonviolence is crucial. It’s the only moral way to deal with other human beings, and thus I would encourage the Baltimore Police Department to adopt it immediately.
—Myca
The formerly-prolific Coates has bestowed white liberals/leftists with something else they can feel good about themselves for agreeing with and sharing.
The sometimes-right Freddie DeBoer:
Besides, I’ve been reading – from the same people – that while the people are right to riot, the media/the right has been ignoring all the peaceful protestors to focus on a few hooligans. So, what is it? Do we celebrate the rioters for doing something about being disrespected, or do we sweep them under the rug for the sake of bashing the people we always bash?
These sorts of riots, of the ’60s sort or their much, much smaller 2014/2015 editions, are doomed to fail because they are disorganized and look more like opportunism and chaos than the plaintive cries of the oppressed. To say so isn’t to take a position against violence against property in every circumstance, or in favor of a harsh police crackdown. But this sort of Che-shirt activism focuses on all the romance and ideology and not the day-to-day process that leads to real change.
That would be the same Dr. King quoted in Amp’s last paragraph, Susan?
As Harlequin points out, Coates is not cheering for riots. He is pointing out that the tut-tutting about riots is the language of the bully who punches a smaller child and then shouts “no tagbacks”.
Mythago, Dr. King’s entire life and work stand for the proposition that the way to profound social change lies through firmness in love and not through breaking windows and destroying small (or large) businesses. No isolated quote can change that. He fought long and hard for that proposition as against many popular black leaders of his time, and was vilified for his views by many an angry radical. If we imagine that blacks in Dr. King’s time were not treated with violent injustice we are far astray. To suggest that he would approve of burning down Baltimore as a necessary vehicle for change is to betray a profound ignorance of the man, his work and his life.
One may disagree with Dr. King on this point, or one may find his teachings too difficult, as I do, but nothing is accomplished by suggesting that he stood for violence as a road to justice. No, not even if the other side has been violent first, as was certainly the case during the struggles of the 60’s.
There was this, from an editorial in today’s NYT from D. Watkins:
Which is pretty damn understandable, given the situation in Baltimore for years. But it makes a false dichotomy between mealy-mouthed, submissive nonviolence and righteous, dynamic (if despairing) violence. The fact that nonviolent protests don’t have to be peaceful, that you can resist police without burning down stores and directly harming people, is totally lost.
A lot of that is a consequence of pretty much constant disappointment since the 1960s, there’s no denying that. But there’s definitely a powerful strand of left thought that promotes violence and holds non-violence in contempt. Coates may not be a cheerleader for rioting, but he’s definitely in that camp.
Good question. I don’t know. Yet.
And neither do the authorities. And neither does Mr. Coates, for that matter. Investigations take time. Especially those that are being done in preparation for a possible criminal trial where the prosecution hopes to make a solid case without getting it tossed because of technical errors.
Which is precisely what they should do in such a circumstance.
I’m willing to wager that he’s quite wrong. My guess is that the Police Department has solid guidelines and training on the appropriate levels of force to be used in various situations. Now, we may well find that those were violated in this case. If so, see my point about why investigations of matters like this take time.
And yet in Baltimore the Mayor, the Police Commissioner, the Police Deputy Commissioner, the majority of the City Council, and nearly half the police force are black. Is the author seriously claiming that they do not find it politically useful to act on the issue of police violence in the Black communities?
Just what are those issues? And spare me the anecdotal stories. I’ll grant that in any major (or even middling) city where there’s a black population, you can dig up a story of a black man being beat up or shot by the cops for no good reason. Not good. Indictments, convictions, punishments, etc. should follow. But with a little digging (because the media does not find it useful to sensationalize them) you’ll find stories of white people being beat up or shot by the cops for no reason too. What are the actual figures of black people being beat up vs. white people being beat up vs. # or % of contacts with police? Or vs. incidence of blacks and whites perpetrating or being involved in crimes? Or income?
Part of the problem is that you can’t trust some of the data. Cops get let off for abusing their powers because people are reluctant to disbelieve cops or to punish those that they may well end up depending on later on. The groups responsible for disciplining police may be too well connected to the cops. Police unions may make it difficult. On the other hand, many accusations are very likely bogus, being brought by criminals who have a good reason to try to discredit the very people arresting them for a criminal act. Body cameras would help a lot here.
What we know about the particular incident here is damning towards the police. So far. But no good towards any objective you want to achieve here will be obtained through violence. That’s simply a fact. The business burned out will leave. Insurance will not pay out their total loss and the rates will jump up. Many of them will either stay out of business or relocate to somewhere safer. What areas in what cities that have seen riots have recovered from them?
Well, it’s certainly true that Stonewall was a disaster for LGBT rights.
LTL FTC:
I don’t see how that DeBoer article is anything but another smug ad hom attack on people DeBoer doesn’t like. (Which seems to be DeBoer’s specialty).
Yes, I’m sure there are people who are saying that it’s more important to question and oppose police violence than it is to tut-tut at property damage, who are saying it out of bad motives or the desire to look good; that is true of any position that more than a dozen people hold, including the position DeBoer is touting. But it’s also the case that some people are stating that position because they believe it to be true.
Susan, I don’t appreciate the implication that I’ve dishonestly quoted Dr. King out of context. There’s a link to the entire speech’s text in my post; I read the whole speech (as I’ve read many other works of MLKs); I think what I quoted was fair.
Furthermore, if you think the quote I included says that “the way to profound social change lies… .through breaking windows and destroying small (or large) businesses,” or that MLK was “suggesting that he stood for violence as a road to justice,” then you read the quote incorrectly. The quote in no way advocates riots or violence. With all due respect, maybe you should reread it?
Ron –
Since the issue is police bias and violence, including against innocent people, and including unjustifiable levels of violence even against people who have committed crimes, it’s hard to argue that “vs. # or % of contacts with police? Or vs. incidence of blacks and whites perpetrating or being involved in crimes?” really closely addresses the issues here.
Amp,
Yeah, that quote doesn’t advocate riots or violence. But it’s getting throw around by a lot of people who do, or by people who look down on any kind of nonviolent protest, regardless of what it actually entails.
Also:
Stonewall promoted a model of LGBT political activism and pride that was really, really not accessible to LGBT people anywhere outside of major urban centers (like myself). I’m not going to deny its value as a symbol or as a historical turning point. But I’ve seen tons of posts in the past few days to the effect that, because of Stonewall, LGBT people are required to embrace a specific model of political activism that embraces violence, and it’s irritating, to say the least.
Seconding Amp’s comment about relationship to these things being somewhat of a red herring. But, hey, have some data: FBI data on police-involved deaths says black teen boys are 21 times as likely to be shot by police as white teen boys are. The actual crime rate ratios are something like 2:1 or 3:1, so even if you took that as relevant, it’s still wildly disproportionate. (Violent crime is a little more skewed, but as we have amply seen, the severity of the response often has little to do with the severity of the crime, and it’s still nowhere near enough to make up that difference.)
And you’re right, less severe police misconduct is hard to know as well. But it turns out we do have some data on the worst abuses in Baltimore in particular, because the Baltimore police have so many problems that they’ve paid out a lot of money lately to victims of police misconduct. Here’s that Baltimore Sun article again that I linked in the open thread. Partway down the page you can explore the largest payouts. 18 of 43 cases don’t have photos; of the ones that do, all but one are black, and many of the others have names that strongly suggest they are as well.
Black people have disproportionate contact with police even considering crime rates, and that contact is more likely to result in injury or death. This is known information. It is obvious, and severe, and widespread, and far more than merely anecdotal.
In re the race of the political leadership in Baltimore, I thought Adam Serwer at Buzzfeed had an interesting piece on that.
That is irritating, I agree. That’s a stupid argument.
That wasn’t what I was trying to suggest, obviously (I’m pretty sure RonF isn’t LGBT). I was trying to say that the proposition that riots are never an effective tactic in civil rights movements is clearly not true.
TO EVERYONE
From now on, if you’re referring to an argument made by no one in this thread, please:
1) Keep in mind that the people here on this thread are not responsible or answerable for arguments made by other people, elsewhere. And…
2) If at all possible, link to a specific example of the bad argument you want to critique.
OTOH, if you think someone in this thread has made the argument you’re refuting, please quote or other indicate exactly what you’re referring to (for instance, by saying what comment number you’re responding to).
I am saying this in order to try and head off places I’d rather this thread not go in the future. I am NOT saying this as a criticism of Vilfredo, so please don’t read it that way.
It’s true that riots can, rarely, produce good (or at least acceptable) outcomes.
But it’s also true that riots usually make things worse. And even when it produces good outcomes, that shouldn’t suggest that it was the best, or even the right, choice.
Stonewall was a direct response to abuse of power, at the time and place the abuse was being carried out, implemented by the people being abused, directly against their abusers.
In other words, Stonewall was self-defense. Riots after the fact are reprisal.
Grace
Has there been any official statement on why the bus station at Mondawmin Mall was closed on Monday? I just can’t see how anybody thought that was a good idea — the high school kids all arrived at their bus stop to go home, and they were surrounded by police in riot gear, and they had no way to get out. What did people expect to happen there? That a bunch of teenagers would just sit around quietly for a few hours?
And spare me the anecdotal stories.
You mean like your own anecdotal story that you presented in the open thread to refute claims that ‘whiteness’ is a factor in police violence?
Does your “guess” about the alleged training of the Baltimore police force rely on anything other than similar anecdata or wishful thinking, particularly as Ruchama pointed out to you in the open thread actual statistics suggesting that the police either are not appropriately trained or are not applying that training?
That was Harlequin in the open thread, not me.
I entirely agree with the (substantive) positions you’ve articulated here. Whether people are saying these things are honest or dishonest in their motivations seems to me to be a very strange matter to be concerned about.
But I don’t see DeBoer talking about this. His target isn’t the people who object to the one-sided tut-tutting at property damage. This target is the people who positivly advocate such violence, while having no skin in the game themselves. His target are the chattering-class armchair generals willing to fight to the last drop of black people’s blood.
My one criticism of DeBoer’s piece is that he doesn’t provide a link or citation. He says he “hear[s] it all the time, these strutting, self-impressed invocations of the righteousness of political violence.” I haven’t, but I’m not well-read on the matter. If he really does hear it all the time, it should be easy for him to find a link.
Yes, and such investigations are called “murder investigations”, and those apparently involved in the death are arrested and held on “suspicion”, until sufficient evidence is uncovered for them to be “charged”, or alternatively evidence emerges which clears them. If charged, the investigation continues while they prepare the case for trial.
At least, that’s what happens when the apparently involved person is anyone other than a police officer. It in inconcievable, that if a police officer, or even an ordinary person had suffered unexplained fatal injuries in my car, while I was at the wheel, eighteen days would pass without an arrest unless there was an immediate credible explanation which exonerated me.
@Daran I have to agree, and enthusiastically. That nothing at all has yet happened to the police officers involved is unconsciounable. Any of us, in parallel circumstances, would have been arrested a couple of weeks ago.
Looking outside America, I think we can all agree that the Soweto riots in South Africa were ultimately a positive thing.
I just saw a snippet interview on CNN of the Mayor of Baltimore during which the interviewer asked specifically why the police officers involved have not yet been arrested. You will not find a slimier, less direct non-answer to any question anywhere on the internet, nor will you find anyone more determined to change the subject.
The only thing I can think after watching this film clip is that indeed the fix is in.
Some excuse for the inexcusable will be found in due course, and none of these (so far unnamed) police officers will suffer for this in the end.
@Daran: the same police officers who insist that people should talk to them as long as they ‘have nothing to hide’, should trust the police to investigate fairly, and should freely consent to searches and inquiries, have strong union rules that block and shield them from any investigation of wrongdoing. Absent a police officer committing a crime off-duty that has nothing whatsoever to do with their job, they are provided with enormous workplace protections that would be the envy of any criminal in the most soft-on-crime bleeding-heart left-winger’s imagination.
@Ruchama and Harlequin, my apologies.
I oppose property destruction and violence as a means to reach political goals, which is why I oppose both the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution.
Look, more seriously, I’m all in favor of nonviolence. I really am. I would like this entire conflict to be nonviolent. I would like all conflicts to be nonviolent. But that means, actually, nonviolent on both sides. When you show up to a peaceful protest in riot gear, you are creating an atmosphere of violence just as much as the guy showing up to the peaceful protest with a molotov cocktail or a sawed-off.
Not to mention the death of Freddie Gray. I would love if each new death was met with calls for police nonviolence, but weirdly, it never is.
Part of the problem is that years of abuse and corruption within the Baltimore PD has lead to a situation where much of Baltimore doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of their government’s monopoly on force. If you want to change that, you have to offer something more than scolding.
—Myca
Amp:
It’s hard to pin motives on people – especially the kinds of slacktivists who choke my Twitter and Facebook feeds with Coates pullquotes and false bravado about how the time for nonviolence is over.
But when you look at who is out in the street breaking and burning, it isn’t activists. It’s chaos filling an intermittent void.
And how many among those justifying or excusing violence really believe the sort of sporadic opportunism we have seen in Baltimore will bring about real change? By what mechanism? How many among them are simply making excuses for pointless behavior because it’s unfashionable to ask for any particular standard of behavior from those higher up on the Oppression Olympics podium?
There may be a bit of the former out there, but the latter are the large majority, I believe. Reasonable people can disagree, but that’s the state of play from my perspective.
Me, I’m all about process. Do the careful work required to put cops in prison. Do the hard work required to elect the people who will install judges who will put teeth back into the fourth amendment, which has been decimated by the drug war. Mass pardons for people who can’t get a job or vote because of a criminal record.
Marches (on all issues) are too common to arouse anything but mild annoyance. Riots are unfocused and produce nothing more than backlash and wreckage. If violence is the language of the unheard, it’s also a language that doesn’t translate well into Majorityish.
The Baltimore police didn’t just show up at a peaceful protest in full riot gear, they shut down bus service at the end of the school day (including school bus service) and then showed up at the local high school in full riot gear and started aggressively herding high school students who had no means of escaping, all on the basis of sourceless rumors on social media advocating violence.
A situation that called more clearly for a de-escalation response and police non-violence is hard to imagine. The actual response of the Baltimore police demonstrates the illegitimacy of their power pretty bluntly. The Baltimore police could hardly have acted more effectively and efficiently if their specific orders had been to go out and start a riot.
It wasn’t one local high school where the police showed up in riot gear — it was a bus depot at a mall where kids from several neighborhood schools go to catch the bus home after school. There had been a thing going around social media earlier in the day about a “purge” starting there, but it was also where several hundred high school kids go EVERY day after school, because that’s where they’re supposed to go. And then that day, the buses were shut down. The official police twitter account tweeted something about a crowd of juveniles gathering there, at least 20 minutes before any violence was reported, and they got a whole bunch of responses along the lines of, “LOL. Of course they are — they’re getting the bus home.” According to some people who were there, the police weren’t letting anyone leave the area on foot, either — once the kids got to the bus depot, they were stuck there, surrounded by police in riot gear. Anyone who has spent any time at all around teenager could predict that, eventually, someone was going to find something to throw and think that those shields made a great target.
That’s a pretty outrageous mis-characterization of a thoughtful post by a very intelligent blogger, Amp. I don’t agree with everything Freddie writes, but the notion that he’s just some kind of mud-slinger is total BS. He may be smug on occasion, but I wish every blogger wrote with his level of fair-mindedness and integrity.
Good point, Charles S. Half a century ago, Paul Goodman said, “The police create all the riots,” and while one would hope he was wrong, it would be hard to know so based on what happened in this case.
Ruchama,
Thanks for the correction and additional details!
“Proving” that the police in this situation are wrong is redundant. All thinking people can see that what happened to Freddie Gray is wrong, what happened at the bus terminal is wrong. A more useful question is, what can we do from our side to improve this situation?
I submit that burning the local CVS out does not improve the situation. Violence in response to violence is human and understandable, and yes the police are in the wrong (we agreed about that already, right?), but let’s go back to, what can we do to make things better for the people who live there, rather than worse? Removing the major drug store in the area (which will almost certainly not be replaced) might feel good (or maybe not) but it does not make life easier or better for the people who live in that neighbourhood. Rather the contrary I would think.
LTL FTC has an interesting and useful analysis. After all, who exactly burned out the CVS? Were these activists, people of principle, seeking to redress the wrongs of racism? Almost certainly not.
It all depends on what you want, I suppose. Blowing off steam by rioting is understandable, but to the people who have real power, riots are only “a minor annoyance.” It doesn’t matter that in some cosmic sense we are right and they are wrong. What we really want is a way to produce substantive and lasting change. I submit that riots are not the way home.
From what I’ve read from people who were in the area, once word started getting out that there was a riot at the mall, people started showing up in cars (thus, driving in from other neighborhoods) to join in. Though it started with those high school kids waiting for their buses, it was pretty quickly taken over by adults. The vast majority of people arrested were over 18. (And, at one point, the police actually sent out a tweet telling parents to come pick up their kids at the mall, at a time when all public transit in the area was shut down, and lots of streets were closed to cars.)
Susan:
I submit that most of the commentary on these events from certain familiary circles is in defense of the right to rage above all else. Any caveats or negative language regarding the absolute right to feel your feelings in public (violently, if necessary) are now public enemy #1 on the left.
Realistic strategies to fixing the myriad social and political problems that got us here? They take a back seat to making sure nobody says any not-nice things about some guys who burned down the neighborhood drugstore. Mainly because advancing that cause fits in a hashtag.
That’s funny, because some people on the left are are saying not-nice things about the opportunist hooligans who are hijacking the protests, for example, the statement that they’re opportunist hooligans who are hijacking the protests.
I think what people here are saying is that realistic strategies to fixing the myriad social and political problems that got us shouldn’t take a back seat to insisting that everyone says any not-nice things about hooligans.
See, what you’ve done? You’ve got us talking about the hooligans. Congrats on the derailment..
Mythago:
And this is consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment how?
Daran:
When were we not talking about hooligans? Right, when we were instead talking about the imaginary freedom fighters. You know, the ones filled with nothing but righteous rage and “the right” MLK quotes, who took to the streets to give voice to the voiceless, all up and down the snack aisle.
Bottom line, DeBoer is right that you would be hard pressed to find any defenders of rioters who really believe that they’re advancing a violent revolution that will be successful and lead to the end of privilege.
It’s 50% signaling within the peer group and 50% romanticizing of political violence.
I hate myself for sounding like a law and order right-winger, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I am one. Let me be clear: disapproval of political violence, or opportunism dressed up as political violence, doesn’t mean that you think the police have “a few bad apples.” In my case, it means that the rot within law enforcement, the destruction of the fourth amendment, the drug war, etc… are not a problem fixed by it either.
LTL FTC:
Please reread comment #21. Thank you.
Probable cause and charges to be filed against six police officers:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-freddie-gray-mosby-presser-0502-20150501-story.html
This just in.
-Jut
Beaten to the punch!
-Jut
Here is a link showing an image of the actual press release from the State’s Attorney’s office.
Good. Now I presume that there will be a Grand Jury hearing and one or more trials and we’ll finally hear what can and cannot be proven. If these cops did these things I hope they’re punished to the fullest extent of the law.
I had never heard of “second degree depraved-heart murder”. Interesting phrase.
I’ve listened to State’s Attorney Mosby’s speech announcing these charges. She went out of her way to note that she was the daughter and granddaughter of law enforcement officials and had aunts and uncles on the force as well, and that she did not want the actions of these officers and the presentment of these charges to damage the work that police and the prosecutor do together. She thanked the officers of the Baltimore police for their dedication and courage to their duty.
…and the best the cop apologist side can do is claim that he banged his head against the interior of the van until he severed his own spine.
At least “he tried to reach for my gun” was physically and medically possible.
Physically impossible hasn’t stopped them before. Wasn’t there a case a few years ago where a guy’s hands were handcuffed behind his back, and the police said he shot himself in the side of the head?
I remember that one. Throw that on the compilation album “Now That’s What I Call Impunity Volume 34”
Presumably the defense won’t be just that he beat his head against the door until his spine severed. Presumably they’ll argue 1) that the initial tackle was reasonable, 2) that reasonable in the context of wrestling with a suspect doesn’t mean completely safe and eggshell plaintiffs happen, 3) that the initial choice not to rush him to medical attention was reasonable given his behavior at the time suggesting that his injuries were not severe, and 4) that worsening of his condition inflicted by violent thrashing while restrained and alone is not the officers fault. The prosecution will presumably have to elaborate upon a scenario that undercuts at least one of those assertions or inferences. I am not optimistic.
I’m not in charge of such things, but if I were in charge of coordinating a litigation response to police violence, this would not be the case. I’d prefer that kid who got shot in that Cincinnati Wal Mart.
Responding to the Baltimore Sun article posted by mythago:
Well it’s a start. There won’t be justice until they’ve been convicted or acquitted after a fair trial. And by fair I mean not unduely favourable to the defence as much as I mean not faourable to the prosecution.
And why did they wait after charges were laid to issue arrest warrnnts? And why did it take so long to charge them? I realise it can take a while to dot the is and cross the ts, but the rest of us get arrested and charged long before those is and ts get dotted and crossed. I’m repeating myself, I know.
Good, they’re taking it seriously. And that gives me confidence that the evidence against those facing only lesser charges does not warrant more severe ones.
What they anticipated when the left home is irrelevent. It’s what they did that matters.
Bullshit! He died in their custody. Of course they’re responsible his death
The police lied. What a surprise.
ORLY?
.
The police investigated themselves!
Doesn’t that just reek of mutual backscratching?
Well in this case, I agree.
But none, apparently about those presented by the Police investigating themselves.
How about calling on the Police to remain calm?
Well, yes. But that is because “one of us” would be likely overcharged, which is not a justification for overcharging these officers. They’re also entitled to justice, not charges motivated by revenge (or to satisfy the crowd).
Then they should turn themselves in, so that they can be kept safe, which is more than they did for Gray.
Patrick:
I don’t think that this is a good or reasonable way to think about prosecuting police who murder people. There isn’t some extremely limited number of “prosecuting police officers for murder” tokens. Prosecuting police who murder people, even though it is imaginable that a jury will buy the defense, seems like a better option than only prosecuting the rarest of perfect cases, particularly since a police officer can shoot an unarmed person while off duty and claim that they were defending themselves because they thought they saw a gun, and a judge will acquit them because intentionally shooting at someone and hitting and killing someone standing next to them can’t be negligent homicide for … reasons, really.
At least with Mr. Gray’s murder, there is no imaginable way the police can claim that they were in fear for their lives… Presumably the officer who murdered John Crawford was in fear for his life seeing a man holding a toy gun in a store (and the officer had been primed by a lying caller who claimed there was a man with a gun in the Walmart, so that doesn’t seem like an absolutely absurd claim, just a patently inadequate justification for shooting). Or were you conflating John Crawford (who was 22) with Tamir Rice (who was 12) who was murdered while playing with a toy gun in Cleveland, and whose murderer also presumably “feared for his life.” The prosecutor in Cincinnati decided not to prosecute the murderers of John Crawford, while the prosecutor in Cleveland is apparently still “investigating” and slow walking a grand jury proceeding for the murder of Tamir Rice (5 months and still going, as far as I can find).
Having a prosecutor who doesn’t intend to fuck the dog in a grand jury proceeding (or just decide to take a pass on a not absolutely perfect case) is probably a lot more important than having a perfect case.
If you missed it, there was an excellent (and relatively brief) statement by Orioles’ Executive VP John Angelos on the Freddie Gray protest.
Jesse Browne at CanadaLand did a good show about the Baltimore situation with an interview of Paul Jay of Baltimore’s Real News Network.
I was referencing John Crawford. I’d like to see that case prosecuted because it’s so easy to argue that Crawford’s actions were reasonable and normal and fair, and that any similarly innocent person in his shoes would, if treated that way by police, have been killed as well. The case even has a strong guns rights angle, which would be an invaluable public relations boon in Ohio. Plus, the entire killing is on tape- good tape, too, well framed, with no ambiguity. There are almost no questions or ambiguities about his killing. Whether it was murder depends entirely on whether you believe it is reasonable for police to respond to a man with a gun who has done nothing except exist and be a man with a gun (…and be black so he’s extra scary…) by running up at him and screaming at him over drawn weapons, and then opening fire a heartbeat later when he responds in a manner completely typical of a terrified, innocent person- throwing up his arms in fear as he falls down, then stumbling while trying to get back to his feet, placing him slightly closer to the apparent gun on the ground.
You can look at a jury and say, if you were in that Walmart, and you picked up merchandise off that shelf, and the police approached you like this, you would probably be dead too.
Like it or not, any prosecution of a police officer for the death of a civilian who’s death was national news will, itself, be national news, and will, itself, be part of an ongoing conversation about when we do or do not accept police violence. It will be part of a conversation between people who believe that the police get away with using far too much violence far too frequently with far too little consequence, and people who believe that those who think that are police hating jerks. Individual cases ARE being taken as representative samples of a larger whole, by both sides, and how those cases work their way out during trial WILL be taken as such as well. We’ve seen this multiple times, and we’re seeing it right now.
I recognize that there is no coordination. One prosecutor can’t coordinate with another to create a national litigation strategy.
I just wish they could. We could really use some PR wins.
If police were prosecuted as often as they murder civilians (and brutalize civilians, the police who have cost Baltimore tens of millions of dollars in civil penalties for paralyzing people by rough riding them should be prosecuted for assault), then police murder and assault trials would no longer be national news.
Prosecutors could certainly coordinate with each other to create a national prosecution strategy, although it would still make no sense for it to be based on only prosecuting a few high visibility cases. The National District Attorneys Association has a bunch of different coordinated campaigns on prosecuting specific sorts of crimes. The reason they don’t have an official one for police violence is because they already have an unofficial one of only prosecuting the absolute most egregious cases.
Only in cases where a police officer is caught on video shooting a fleeing man in the back, and then caught on video also planting evidence on him as he dies do we see prosecutions. Only when an off duty police officer unloads his gun into a crowd because someone talked back to him do we see a prosecution. Otherwise, we see no charges in a case you find particularly perfect for prosecution or we see the prosecutor fuck the dog in a overcomplicated and slow grand jury proceeding, and then no charges.
And it would be as easy to write the police defense excuses for the murder of John Crawford as it was for you to write the police defense excuses for the murder of Freddie Gray. At least in the murder of Crawford the police were acting in the heat of the moment, having been given false information by Ronald Ritchie. That doesn’t excuse or justify their actions, but it might well in the eyes of a jury (particularly with a friendly prosecutor). In the murder of Freddie Gray, the police officers intentionally and repeatedly violated multiple department policies that would have prevented his death, policies that were almost certainly put in place to end the specific practice they were engaged in, and it wasn’t done in the heat of the moment, so no jury will have to second guess police judgement in a potentially life threatening situation. And we have a prosecutor who actually has gives a damn about police violence.
The national campaign we need is one of firing prosecutors and replacing them with prosecutors who give the slightest damn about police violence. The national campaign we need is one to force city governments to make reigning in police violence an actual priority in police contract negotiations. We need governments that are willing to disband and reconstitute police departments with a culture of violence and impunity. A campaign of prosecuting only the absolute most egregious police violence is one we’ve already got, and it doesn’t seem to be accomplishing much.
At least two people have mentioned union rules which hinder prosecution of police officers who are accused of committing crimes of violence. I know that I, a member of a fairly weak union, would get no help from my union other than legal representation, up to a point.
I’m not arguing the claim, I’m just wondering about details. What are these rules?
Grace
Grace, I think this is what people are referring to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/24/the-police-officers-bill-of-rights/
Regarding the Freddie deBoer essay–
I don’t think that anyone on here is arguing that riots are a good response. (Saying that riots are kinda understandable, or that they don’t feel like they can judge the rioters, or that spending a lot of time being outraged over riots and not much time outraged over murder is telling–those aren’t the same as saying that riots are a good response.)
But I have seen people elsewhere saying that riots are a good response, that they are better than peaceful protests alone–or at least criticizing people who throw in a “violence is not the answer” disclaimer. Not Sorry Feminism has a couple of recent posts: “Is Violence Always Bad”* “Riots are the language of the unheard” (there was at least one similar one during the Ferguson riots, too). I’ve also seen a couple of Facebook acquaintances seem to take that position, though they were a bit vague about it.
While it’s tempting to agree with deBoer that white people who are not involved in the protests or riots nor will face any repercussions from them cannot legitimately advocate/defend violence, does that not apply to white people like deBoer, or like me, who chime in with our opinions when we are not out there protesting either?
*Apparently if you advocate violence (or condone property destruction) in literally any situation, you cannot criticize violence in any other situation (at least if you agree with the larger goal of the person being violent) or else you’re a hypocrite.
I thought that this article was pretty good: Why the CVS burned: The rioting in Baltimore wasn’t hooliganism. It was a protest against the depredations of the ghetto economy. It’s by a historian and has some interesting context comparing the 1960s riots with the Baltimore one.
Thanks, Mythago.
Grace
@closet, I don’t think the CVS article holds up, at least not as to CVS. The author goes through a list of predatory check cashing outfits as legitimate targets for consumer rage. How does CVS fit into this picture?
It doesn’t. This was just looting so far as I can tell.
To justify the headline all the author can think of is “then again, you might not ever have had to choose between paying your rent and paying for a badly needed prescription.” Perhaps not, but prescription drugs just do cost money, for everyone. The author does not explain why this is an injustice, if it is one.
True indeed, now that you have burned down the CVS you can choose between paying your rent and paying for a badly needed prescription PLUS bus fare and time to get to a distant drug store. There is no evidence that this CVS was engaged in predatory practices. I suspect that since this is a big chain their prices were about the same as the one in my neighborhood.
I don’t have any personal investment in this neighborhood in Baltimore. I’ve never even been to Baltimore. It would be painless for me personally to endorse burning out that CVS, since I will not henceforth be put to the trouble and expense of a longer journey to get a “badly needed prescription.” (This will be an especial pain in the neck since getting a prescription often means a long wait or two trips to the drugstore or both.) I’m just pointing out that this particular instance of violence did no good, and possibly a fair amount of harm, to the people living there.
Susan:
I don’t think the CVS article holds up, at least not as to CVS.
Are you saying that you don’t think perceived financial injustice was really the motivation, or that you don’t think that the CVS was a fair target and that the looting was bad? I’m not arguing, and I don’t think the author is arguing, “We should burn the CVS, that was a good thing,” just explaining the motivation and that there’s more to it than “hey, free stuff”.
I was in Oakland last night with a friend who is large, gay, black and male. His constant, needful vigilance for people who may be violent is horrifying. Literally, I am horrified. When we discussed police violence, his real fear for his life, culminating in him saying “I just have to accept I won’t live long” and starting to cry… I can’t even. I can’t.
It was… I’m having almost as intense a personal reaction to that conversation as I did when a member of my immediate family started uncovering and processing the effects of their child abuse. At least that was over. And I knew this stuff, of course I did, but it’s so easy for me to abstract into righteousness rather than being immersed in the pain and fear.
It makes a furious part of uninvolved, middle class, white female me want to riot. I’ll take burned cars and looted cvs stores and property damage 1000x over if it can help stop the murder and fear of people like him. Maybe it can’t, but good lord, it’s understandable. And one reason MLK’s nonviolence worked, as far as I can tell (and to the extent it did) is there was a visible alternative which made MLK seem like a moderate.
And I hate that. But it’s not like this is a new problem. Social media facilitates nationwide coverage of these stories, but they were common long before the current crisis point. It’s not like this went from zero to riot. It’s decades of unaddressed deaths.
I don’t seem to be able to edit on this tablet so I’ll dual comment instead —
I know my loved one’s personal story of abuse is not the same magnitude as ongoing systemic murder. But the personal emotional effect on me was very strong because the person involved was my (specific relationship redacted, but feel free to mentally insert brother, sister, father, mother, or husband).
ClosetPuritan, I am doubting that any perceived injustice was an important motivation for burning CVS in Baltimore, unless all commerce of whatever sort is perceived as being unjust, which is a completely different kettle of fish.
It is going to be nearly impossible, of course, to divine the “motivation” of a mob. Some people are thinking one thing, some other things, most are not thinking at all. Are even payday lenders perceived by the mob as agents of oppression? I know that middle class people see them that way, but do poor people see them in that light? Or is it just, this is the only way I can get a loan?
No way to know. But I thought the author’s attempt to somehow include an ordinary drug store in the perceived machinery of oppression was somewhat strained. He goes on and on about payday lenders and people who sold TV’s on the installment plan in the 60’s, and only sticks CVS in there in the tag end of that one sentence. He doesn’t really attempt to make a case for it, which is probably a good thing, because I’m at something of a loss to see how it could be done. Was there more to it than hey, free stuff? No way to know.
I don’t see that it matters. If one takes the position that CVS is taking advantage of people just by being a drug store, it would seem that it’s taking advantage of me too in my middle class neighborhood. (Why not? Same drugstore, same prices.) So what then? We should remove all chain drug stores from the slums? Well, the rioters have done that, as to this one slum. We should get rid of CVS entirely? In favor of what? Walgreen’s? Same diff, no? My neighborhood likes our CVS ok. We certainly like it as opposed to not being able to fill prescriptions at all. So we’d request rioters not to burn it down, thanks.
Is looting bad? Well, it’s theft, which is commonly considered a crime, certainly by the people who are being stolen from. It’s arson too, in this case. It will have a bad effect on this one neighborhood, because I doubt that that CVS will be replaced, which means everyone will have to go further and maybe pay more for prescription drugs. I very much doubt that this will be an improvement in the quality of life of the people who live there, but you’d have to ask them I guess.
(Ironically, the article closes by saying, “In the months ahead, we must remember that it will be not enough to stop police brutality—we need to provide better economic opportunities as well if we want to improve the lives of Baltimore’s poor.” Sadly, that was what the people who worked to get a CVS into that neighborhood thought they were doing. It did provide jobs, and a discount chain drugstore probably had reasonably good prices on a lot of merchandise. I guess this one attempt didn’t work, and it’s hard to see that anyone will make further attempts of this sort anytime soon.)
I don’t think you can make very specific predictions about mob violence. I think it has to be viewed more like an angry bull. You can say why the bull is angry, you can even say why he charged a particular person at first, but once he’s on a rampage he’s just gonna go after anything in his field of view.
Yes, I am from the Midwest.
I don’t know anything about this newspaper, but here is a local article which deals with this CVS and related topics. I have no idea how accurate this may or may not be.
http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2015/05/01/heres-why-that-burned-up-cvs-matters-so-much-to.html
Whoever tries to reform Baltimore PD has their work cut out for them.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ex-baltimore-labeled-rat-police-brutality-claim-article-1.2077632
When doing the right thing means that you lose your job, possibly your career, and have to move to another state, fewer people will do the right thing. That’s just a fact of life dealing with human beings. And that also means that your principled people are one-use, because after that they’re gone. It’s hard enough to find people like that in the first place, and you can’t afford to lose them, and keep the ones who forced them out.
Baltimore PD has a long, hard road ahead, with no certain good ending at all.
There are three bright notes, in that story above: Crystal survived it, and he’s still working as an officer (though the community of Baltimore has lost him), and his parents, both retired officers, had correct moral compasses:
Damn straight.
Grace
I don’t see that it matters.
Then I guess you don’t see people dismissing all protesters as rioters and all rioters as animals and using the whole thing to justify racist theories about what motivates them all.
If one takes the position that CVS is taking advantage of people just by being a drugstore…
Literally no one is taking that position. having to choose between paying rent or for prescriptions is terrible and the anger should not be directed at individual CVS stores, but it’s not hard to imagine that someone deeply angry about that situation might take it out on the CVS anyway.
Much of the rest of your comment talks about why we shouldn’t get rid of drug stores. I think you understand that that’s not something that people are advocating to improve people’s economic situations, so I’m not really sure why.
There are lots of people in the world who are forced to choose between rent and meds. I assume that they are all very unhappy about being forced to make that choice.
Almost none of them are rioting or looting, though.
There are lots of people in the world who are forced to choose between rent and meds. I assume that they are all very unhappy about being forced to make that choice.
Almost none of them are rioting or looting, though.
Gin-and-whiskey:
I’m not sure how to interpret this.
My first instinct was to assume that you were also attributing a pro-riot opinion towards me, but I don’t think I can make myself any clearer on that, so whether you are or not I’ll skip over that possibility.
So I’ll skip to the second possible interpretation, which promises to be a more interesting conversation. What you’re saying, perhaps, is that I’m wrong to say that riots are somewhat understandable, that not rioting is doing the bare minimum and that praising people for not rioting is the equivalent to giving someone a cookie for not raping anyone. IOW, that not rioting is expected behavior, and rioting is worse-than-expected behavior.
I would argue that rioting, in this situation, is expected behavior, and not rioting shows admirable restraint. The police corruption and brutality and the poor economic conditions have been going on for a very long time, there have been pretty frequent news stories of black men, women, and children experiencing police brutality, then one happens in your own city, then a bunch of other people are looting and destroying things, so that the chance you will personally face consequences are low, perhaps some of your friends or family are even involved–It takes an admirable amount of restraint, and an impressive amount of pserspective, to still be able to still see the pain of others while you yourself and your loved ones are hurting, to retain empathy for the stranger who owns the CVS store.
And, Susan, that’s why it’s NOT the same when people in that neighborhood not only have to choose rent and food, but have to deal with police brutality etc. etc. while in your middle class neighborhood, if it’s anything like mine, you’re more likely to have to choose not to go out to eat or to the movies as much, maybe get a used car instead of a new one… not the same.
There’s something about the rhetoric surrounding the CVS that’s bothering me, but I’m having a bit of trouble putting it into words. Here’s a try:
When people say things like Susan @68 “because I doubt that that CVS will be replaced, which means everyone will have to go further and maybe pay more for prescription drugs” (definitely not the only person to say so that I’ve seen, just as an example) I think that is probably true, but I find the plausibility that the CVS won’t be replaced very telling. Because it seems like it’s saying, “Okay, poor black people, we took a chance on you, but I guess you didn’t really want us here, so goodbye.” It treats being burned in a riot as revealing something about the kind of people who live in the neighborhood where the store is, something that is different from the kind of people who live elsewhere.
And while I’m sure that if businesses were burned in some of the white rioting that’s been discussed elsewhere on the web some of them wouldn’t reopen, I find it hard to believe that we’d be discussing it in this way, as though it’s a foregone or well-motivated conclusion that they won’t.
I guess, overall, it seems to me like this kind of rhetoric treats businesses in poor areas as gifts to the local population, who have now shown themselves to be ungrateful and/or unworthy by rioting, so there’s no point in trying again. You know–if they were properly thankful for the opportunity, they’d treat any and all businesses as sacrosanct, because of how much of a favor it is for the businesses to be operating there at all.
Again: I’m not disputing the fact that “the CVS won’t reopen” is an accurate description of how many people making the decisions are going to lean, or an accurate description of how the rioters should have been thinking about the businesses around them. It’s the fact that it’s an accurate description that makes me unhappy.
To go back to that article I posted:
To justify the headline all the author can think of is “then again, you might not ever have had to choose between paying your rent and paying for a badly needed prescription.” Perhaps not, but prescription drugs just do cost money, for everyone. The author does not explain why this is an injustice, if it is one.
Susan:
The authors don’t write the headlines. And Slate sometimes chooses some pretty bad headlines. Still. The headline says that it was not “hooliganism”, it was “a protest against the depredations of the ghetto economy”. The headline does not claim that it was a just way of protesting, or make a statement about whether prescription drugs should cost money for everyone, or anything like that. I think it’s common to lean too heavily on the title in interpreting an article. I think the takeaway is in this paragraph:
I think the caveats in this paragraph are important:
I think the author knows that the CVS is not his strongest example.
Patrick, I’m not sure you’re wrong. I put forward this article more as an interesting hypothesis, and one that seems plausible to me and seemed to make everything make more sense, than as a strongly-evidence-backed theory. And it’s hard to even know how to judge whether it’s correct, even if we could talk to all the people involved in the CVS’s destruction, because there is probably a mix of motivations with more than one motivation per person. It may be hard for even the rioters themselves to know which motivation was foremost.
I think, though, a weaker version of the author’s argument is probably still correct: that the residents do not experience the neighborhood, or at least the business in it (vs residential buildings) as “their own”, and this is necessary (but not sufficient) for people to burn the buildings in “their own” neighborhoods as an expression of anger.
OTOH, there’s this: Crime unrelated to Freddie Gray protest spikes. So it could also be (as others, including protesters, have argued) that those primarily responsible are people who are primarily motivated by wanting to burn/loot the CVS and other stores because Free Stuff/Burning Things Is Fun, but waited until now to do it because now they can take advantage of chaos and distraction.
My work is very related to insurance.
Riot damage is insurable. This article is really basic, but it then there’s not much to say.
http://www.ibamag.com/news/ferguson-what-insurance-agents-need-to-know-19262.aspx
The fact that your business was destroyed in a riot is going to affect your rates, precisely because the fact that your business was destroyed in a riot tells you something about the likelihood that your rebuilt business will be destroyed in another riot. Either your rates will go up, or, you will not be able to purchase riot insurance in the future. And in that case you’ll have to decide whether you can take the risk of rebuilding in that location given the possibility of further riots that will not be insured.
Somewhere there’s an accountant looking at profits for that CVS since it opened to now, comparing them to a bunch of other numbers, and based on that alone, deciding whether to reopen.
Well, I don’t agree with your “IOW” because I think you’re saying two different things. But to avoid that discussion, let’s just go with the second half, because I still see a problem here.
I said:
1) EXPECTED = No Rioting
2) WORSE THAN EXPECTED = Rioting
Using the same format, you said:
0) BETTER THAN EXPECTED (“admirable restraint”) = No Rioting
1) EXPECTED = Rioting
2) WORSE THAN EXPECTED = _______?
You added a new level in there.
For me, the “better than expected” would be (among other examples) the people who actively mobilized to stop the rioters, and/or who actively protested through deliberately non-violent means;
the “expected” would be the people who basically stayed home;
and the “worse” would be the rioters.
You’re moving that down a level. Where do you fit in folks like my first link? What’s your “worse” behavior, once rioting is normal?
closetpuritan-
“I think, though, a weaker version of the author’s argument is probably still correct: that the residents do not experience the neighborhood, or at least the business in it (vs residential buildings) as “their own”, and this is necessary (but not sufficient) for people to burn the buildings in “their own” neighborhoods as an expression of anger.”
A Neo Nazi group rallied in a town I briefly lived in. They used standard modern Neo Nazi tactics- follow every rule down to the letter, say nothing that could be considered significantly inflammatory, bring only trained people who can be trusted to stand at attention and do absolutely nothing that could remotely be conceived of as criminal… but rally in a poor black neighborhood, and stay there juuuust long enough to really irk people.
Basically MLK tactics. I’m not kidding. It’s a straight copy for the MLK playbook.
What followed was completely predictable.
The counterprotesters started throwing things. This was inevitable- the Neo Nazis can train their protesters. The counterprotesters are stuck with whoever shows up. Some are going to be violent.
The police were obliged to step in- that’s their job. The police can’t pick the dozen or whatever people who are throwing eggs or rocks (eventually bricks) out of the several hundred who are massed together, so they have to just move back the whole protest line so that they can’t throw far enough. So the counterprotesters interpret the police as not only defending the Neo Nazis, but also pushing around innocent people. This radicalizes those who aren’t yet personally throwing things.
Soon it clicks that there are hundreds of them, and nowhere near the same number of cops.
It ended with a bunch of stuff on broken glass and ruined businesses, of course. Everything happened per the Neo Nazi’s script, and no doubt they took all the news reports on the incident and played them at their next recruiting outlet. That’s the game. Follow rules; but provoke; record overreaction; use overreaction as propaganda.
The businesses that were smashed up were local. They appeared to have been targeted based on sheer physical proximity to the riot, and nothing more. Or the fact that one of them was full of hard liquor.
I think that people who are trying to come up with explanations for why this or that business burned, explanations that conveniently line up with their political views, need to actually watch a riot up close. Its a mix of cathartic release of energy, glory in transgressing boundaries, joy at the strength of numbers that lets you stick your thumb in the eye of the authorities, and straight up opportunism. Not everyone is in it for all of those things, but… that’s what shapes it.
Someone on DailyKos did an search of social media posts in the lead-up to the Baltimore police shutting down transportation at the Mondawmin Mall (which is both a transportation hub and across the street from Fredrick Douglas High School) and couldn’t find any reference to “The Purge” or #Fdl on social media sites other than a tweet by a Baltimore Sun reporter reposting an image they claimed was posted by a friend on Facebook that the friend claimed to have seen on Instagram.
Adam Johnson at FAIR also notice this absence of evidence. He queried the Baltimore Sun Reporter on her source and on what Instagram account had posted the image originally, but got no meaningful answers.
So the source for police claims of a credible threat to the mall that justified massive riot police presence and abuse of teenagers trying to go home remains a mystery.
Are these police officers spraying a peaceful protestor full on in the face with pepper spray, knocking him to the ground by grabbing his hair and then dragging him across concrete acting “as expected” “better than expected” or “worse than expected”?
And when we answer that, should we answer it relative to how a decent human being should be expected to behave, how a police officer should ideally behave in the face of political protest, or how we would predict that some Baltimore police officers will behave in a situation like that?
[edited to add]When another officer (at the end of the video) rinses his face and calls a medic, is that “as expected” or “better than expected”? By which standard?
What’s the point you’re trying to make, Charles?
You’re moving that down a level. Where do you fit in folks like my first link? What’s your “worse” behavior, once rioting is normal?
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. You say that I just “added a level” but then you wrote the rest like the “levels” are some reified set in stone thing. I mean, I wasn’t even trying to write it as “levels”, just put accurate descriptions on things.
You act like “where do you fit in [people who tried to stop the riots]?” like it’s some kind of “gotcha” question, like you can either be good, neutral, or bad and it’s impossible to be more good or less good within those categories. The fact that within the “good” category there can be “more good” and “less good” seems like a basic, trivial thing to me, so your whole question seems very strange to me and I wonder if I’m misunderstanding you somehow. But if you want an honest answer, people who tried to stop the riots, at risk to their own lives, are basically heroes. And that still stands regardless of if they acted to try to protect the owners of the property, the reputation of the peaceful protesters, or protect the rioters themselves from counter-riot violence.
I mean, do you want examples of things people could be doing that would be worse than burning and looting stores? (I mean, besides breaking someone’s spine.) Even sticking to the category “Riots”, riots have gotten worse than that one. How about burning down hospitals and killing somewhere between 39 and 300 people? [The fact that riots have often been tools of oppression, as in the Tulsa riots, is one reason I look askance at arguments defending them as an effective tactic. Those arguments make it easier for the next group of oppressors who wants to do it to convince themselves they’re in the right.] Over 60 people died in the LA riots (ten shot by cops, others a mix of homicides/manslaughter by rioters and accidental deaths). Or… let’s pick a random riot from Wikipedia’s list of riots… The Know-Nothing Riot of 1856–people died during that, too. It could be a lot worse in Baltimore.
Or, I guess I could just say, “So you don’t believe that the people trying to stop the riots are heroes, huh? HUH? Gotcha!”
Patrick–it sounds like you have greater expertise in riots than me at least. Possibly not greater expertise than Louis Hyman (the author of the “Why the CVS burned” article), but OTOH he may have lots of expertise in one very small subset of riots and may be improperly trying to make them fit the template of the ones he has the most expertise in… On the other other hand, perhaps these riots are more similar to the 1960s Baltimore riots than an anti-Neonazi riot?
But anyway, it sounds like you’re right that people who feel that a neighborhood is “their own” will still destroy buildings there (or, alternatively, that not feeling like a neighborhood is “your own” is the rule, not the exception).
g&w,
I think the issues of police behavior in the US are far more interesting and significant than the issues of rioter behavior in the US. In the slums of Baltimore, the police beat and kill people all the damn time. They do it in Portland, OR (where we have DOJ consent decree for our police habit of unnecessarily killing mentally ill people) and in Seattle, WA (where they also have a consent decree for racist murder and brutality). They do it in Ferguson, MO. Maybe they do it in your town too, I don’t know.
People loot and burn a CVS… not all the damn time. The police are a part of a formal institution governed by formal rules and are answerable to public opinion. Looters are… not either of those things.
We can change policy in the US and have that result in the police not rough riding civilians to death. We can change policy and have police not provoke riots. We can change policy and have police not pepper spray civilians during protests. Or we can change policy and not have police wash detainees faces and call medics after they have been pepper sprayed in the face. For looters, we can’t change any policies I can see except those that prevent the conditions that lead to riots (like maybe banning professional sports teams and pumpkin festivals).
So discussion of looters just comes down to some people talking about the social conditions that create out of control riots and people with so little investment in their community that they loot and burn drug stores, and other people talking about how people who loot and burn drug stores are bad people and no one should defend them, and that is a pretty boring and pointless conversation in which people talk past each other.
The O.P. included pictures of what was happening in Baltimore. For some reason, it failed to include a picture of a burned out CVS. Maybe you think that was just an oversight on Amp’s part. I took it to mean that the video I linked of police officers assaulting a protestor was more on topic than a continuing discussion of the morality of looting a CVS.
I thought your question of more or less than expected had some merit, but lacking sufficient clarity on what we mean by expected, it was just an opportunity to talk past each other. Do we expect the best of each other, do we expect that we’ll all behave decently, or do we expect that in any group of people, there are some who will have reasons to behave pretty badly? I’d say we mostly do all three of those things, so that was why I highlighted that question and its context in relation to the video and police behavior.
I mean, y’all are free to continue talking about why people loot/ the ethics of looting as though they were the same thing. I’m not putting on my mod’ly hat and telling you to take it elsewhere or whatever, I just thought I’d point out the difference in possible meanings of “as expected” without engaging in the looting question, and instead going back to the police violence question. And also point out the police violence, again.
Really I’m just bouncing off some of the reading I’ve been doing about nutrition and “food deserts,” areas where reasonably priced produce and such are not available. (One article I read claims that the area in Baltimore where the CVS was burned was something of such a desert, and that the CVS was an attempt to correct this situation since it apparently sold some food too.)
Given that big supermarkets and chain drug stores are not charitable enterprises, what motivates them to open stores in a given area? Well, the prospect of making a profit, that’s what. Contrarywise, what motivates them not to open a store in a slum? They claim that they operate on a slim profit margin, and that rampant theft day to day (to say nothing of looting) makes such stores losers from a financial standpoint.
Is this true? Well it’s more plausible than other explanations I’ve read for food deserts (like, that supermarket owners are just bad people who affirmatively desire that the poor be condemned to live on potato chips).
None of this adds up to the idea that a store is some kind of “gift” to its neighborhood, be that a wealthy neighborhood or a poor one. Supermarkets are not in the gift business. This Baltimore neighborhood will not be judged “unworthy” if no new CVS opens up there. As Patrick said, that decision will be made strictly on a dollars and cents basis.
Now there has been some effort to persuade supermarkets and the like to open in depressed areas as a sort of public service. Hard-headed business people have not been very susceptible to that argument, though some attempts have been made in that direction. To the extent that this CVS was evidence of such a motivation, I imagine the people who made that decision feel somewhat burned now, as anyone would, and disinclined to make the same mistake again. If you open such a store you’re being patronizing and that’s bad. If you do not open it you’re oppressing the poor. No way to win anyway I guess.
I’m skeptical of any connection between a protest against “ghetto economics” and looting, at least as applied to the CVS (and the wig store). If it is a protest it is not a very effective one, since it usually makes matters worse rather than better.
xxx
This police brutality thing has apparently gotten completely out of control, at least in some areas, and what needs to happen is to haul these police departments back into line, the sooner the better. It would be wonderful if we had some leadership along the lines of MLK, someone to galvanize the troops and focus the effort. And offer hope. Without that I’m afraid that we’re all going to stagger around in the dark to some extent. I do not personally believe that burning down a local drug store is likely to have a good effect. And I don’t believe it was done in the service of some larger principle, particularly.
Interesting NYTimes article about a police movement to change police training:
An interview with some of the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I do not personally believe that burning down a local drug store is likely to have a good effect.
I agree! I don’t think anyone here, or the article I linked to, disagrees! Areas of agreement!
closetpuritan- I don’t want to make it sound like I think of myself as some kind of Riot Whisperer. I’ve just been near a few, but at a distance because riots… not really my thing. And the dynamic is usually pretty clear. You have some people who start sh&t, and you have others who go along for the ride once it’s clear that the police can’t stop them. The guys who start sh&t are not a representative sample of the community. Even if the community as a whole “feels a sense of ownership” or whatever (not sure how coherent type really is on a community level but whatever), the specific people throwing a cinder block through a window probably don’t. And once the window is smashed and the looting starts, the “everyone is doing it so it’s not really that wrong” effect kicks in.
In my city’s neo nazi rally riot, there was a group of people who probably did feel a strong sense of community ownership. A group of ministers worked with the fire department (the hope was that minimal police presence would help, and the fire department would be more accepted by the rioters) tried to talk the rioters down. They had to stop for their own safety when bricks started flying.
“Police brutality thing”.
I can’t even.
Interesting reading this Sunday in the Chicago Tribune. A columnist interviewed a black preacher about the riots. The preacher’s insights were especially of interest because in 1967, when Rev. Martin Luther King was shot, he himself was a rioter in Chicago who participated in arson and other destruction.
The interview was done in part at the exact location where he participated in the riots. He pointed out something significant. The riots happened in April of 1968. The area had been full of businesses and homes and people. When they were done, the place had been burned to the ground. And now, in May of 2015, 47 years later – most of the area was still empty and desolate. In large part, the people and the businesses have not come back.
He has a lot of excellent insights. But there’s one spot where I think he misses the point.
Well – no. The lack of urgency to rebuild wasn’t because it was a black community. The lack of urgency to rebuild was because of the risk.
It wasn’t the State that built those homes and businesses in the first place, it was private enterprise. It’s not up to the State to rebuild it, it’s up to private enterprise. But once an area is destroyed by the very community that lives there, why would anyone with any sense risk re-investing their money there? What’s to stop it from happening again? Not to mention that a) insurance very likely did not pay to replace what was lost for what it would cost to replace it, and b) what do you think happened to insurance rates in that neighborhood for people who actually did consider trying to build there and run a business or a rental or lease or residential property there?
If that pastor, if those people who were in that community wanted to know why there was no urgency to rebuild in that neighborhood, don’t look at someone else for the answer – look in the mirror.
Well – no. The lack of urgency to rebuild wasn’t because it was a black community.
Well, yes, RonF, it was. You may recall that in the United States, government and property restrictions go hand in hand, and in 1967, redlining and discriminatory loans and deliberately racist housing policy were much more widespread and aboveground than they are today. Governments “rebuild” all the time directly, by offering low-cost loans and incentives and direct funding, and indirectly, by insuring that communities have infrastructure and support to allow private enterprise to safely operate.
You’re both a bit right. It’s certainly true that governments often participate in rebuilding (the extreme example is stadiums; the common example is limited subsidy for affordable housing)
But absent a full blown subsidy or a wholly government-owned building, private enterprise is also involved. And usually, any government action is started behind the scenes by folks who want to make money.
There are a lot of places to build in most cities. There are only so many projects which people can invest in. Most of the time, only the top few get picked.
But absent a full blown subsidy or a wholly government-owned building, private enterprise is also involved.
Of course. And, as you say, it’s often private enterprise driving government policy for its own interests. I was just marveling at RonF’s mash-up of “na na na racism doesn’t exist can’t heeeaarr you” drivel and a simplistic paen to Free Enterprise.
Are you really going to employ such a broad strawman when you can read what he actually wrote just inches upthread?
Think of the small business owners who got burned out. Considering the consolidation the US economy has experienced since 1968, there were a lot more of those in the affected areas back then.
Even if they got money to rebuild, do you think they would want to open up and serve the very people who burned them out? Charitably, the rioters torched them as a symbol of racist capitalist oppression. Less charitably, the rioters were exploiting chaos. Either way, do you want to see those people every day, or would you rather take your insurance money somewhere they don’t hate you?
Same goes for big businesses – how do you explain to shareholders or the board a decision to plow more money into a place that hates you and what you stand for, deservedly or not?
Sure, there will be some gladhanding, silver-shovel-posing rebuilding projects from big companies pandering to the white do-gooder crowd, but your average dry cleaner or pizzeria owner usually wouldn’t offer to martyr himself to the cause.
Your average dry cleaner or pizzeria owner doesn’t have a choice, because he lives in that neighborhood.
He also doesn’t have a choice because he’s bankrupt now and couldn’t reopen if he wanted to.
Boy, do I wish I hadn’t said anything.
Look, yes, clearly, there are a lot of reasons businesses might not open again after being destroyed in a riot. Again: I don’t dispute that the characterization is accurate; I’m just annoyed at how it’s deployed to chide the rioters. It’s the rhetoric of it, not the reality, that’s bugging me. I’m hard-pressed to believe that white rioters in a similar situation would be discussed in quite the same way. But then, it’s impossible to know, because there aren’t any white neighborhoods like those neighborhoods in Baltimore.
I’m sure, for example, that there are things businesses near colleges have to be insured for that other businesses do not, because they deal with a lot of drunk young adults. But even if something bad happens, like a big fight that does a lot of damage, and the business closes, no one talks about it as though the business was doing a favor to the college kids by even being there, even though–like most small businesses anywhere–many of them are unable to turn a profit. And yes–that difference is also because the college kids have more money to spend, and other establishments to choose from–but to treat that as a pathology of the people who live in the poor neighborhoods, and not a pathology of the society as a whole, is again placing blame where it does not belong.
Susan:
I’m sure it was a food desert. Black neighborhoods in cities often are. But a CVS, even if it sells food, isn’t enough to offset a food desert. (I used to travel through a bunch of food desert neighborhoods in Chicago–I lived on the south side, and my neighborhood wasn’t, but all the surrounding neighborhoods were, and I primarily used public transit–and they would have convenience stores and pharmacies and fast-food restaurants, often locally-owned fast food restaurants in addition to the chains. A food desert isn’t defined by lack of food, but by lack of healthy or diverse food, or lower-level ingredients as opposed to preassembled dishes: you mostly can’t buy produce or meat except in frozen single-serving meals, for example; you can probably find flour and sugar for baking, but it will be more expensive than it would be in a traditional grocery store. Etc. A CVS is better than your local gas station, but still nowhere sufficient to feeding the surrounding population in a healthy way.)
@LTL FTC, yes, I can read what RonF wrote: blaming the entire black community for 1) the actions of rioters and 2) lack of businesses where they live. I don’t think you could possibly make that any worse with a strawman.
Small businesses open there if they think they can make money, and if you think insurance companies were writing modest, affordable insurance policies for stores in impoverished black neighborhoods before the CVS got busted up, I recommend you refrain from a career as an underwriter. Big businesses, ditto. But again, one thing that they need is government intervention, in the form of infrastructure and effective policing. “Free enterprise” doesn’t do that, unless you’re encouraging them to hire assassins.