Baltimore erupts
We must have all heard the news by now...
First of all, nothing says "protect and serve" like someone who is safely apprehended and then mysteriously shows up at the police station with a deadly spinal injury and crushed voice box - right?
Here's a nice collection for your contemplation. The off-duty police officer that shot and killed unarmed Rekia Boyd in Chicago was found not guilty. A cop was heard saying "Fuck your breath" while Eric Harris was dying because a reserve officer thought he was using his taser. A while ago we discussed how Walter Scott in South Carolina was shot and killed in cold blood by a police officer, with multiple other officers who aided and abetted. If that crime had not been recorded, that officer would not be charged. And now, Freddie Gray was killed in police custody due to a severe spinal cord injury in Baltimore.
I think it's hardly a surprise at this point that the amount of frustration, anger, sadness, and nihilism out there right now has reached a breaking point. Evidently, black people are sick and tired of being treated like shit, like dogs. People who are more interested in critiquing the riots than they are about critiquing police brutality might be in need of looking from the other side.
That said, let's indeed look from the *other* side. No doubt, there's mounting evidence of the police systematically being wrong in many instances, including the above listed. But what the rioting is doing is to draw the story away from the injustice of police brutality (which has been all over the news for quite a while), and turn it into a violent spectacle that is (incorrectly) making people think that perhaps the police brutality was warranted.
It's also undeniable that rioting is just NOT ever going to fix this problem or help in any way. Injustice ends up no longer being the narrative when people act the way the rioters in Baltimore are acting. Makes you wish that people could take all the energy they put into destroying stuff into expressing their frustration in a way that doesn't harm others... Although, granted, sometimes it doesn't happen that way and cannot happen that way. But again, I'd caution us about potentially getting sidetracked by the spectacle of rioting and forgetting who's *actually* harming who in the larger picture of things - who the perpetrators are and who are the victims. And the perpetrators will continue to be the police if they continue to be an untouchable entity acting from the position of power while remaining unchecked and not being held accountable for their actions. Until this is fundamentally changed, the riots will continue to erupt at an alarming rate.
Btw, kudos to the peaceful moderate protesters who really wanted to make a point, and tried to stop the more extreme ones from turning the whole thing into a brutal mess by actually putting themselves between the rioters and the police. Obviously that failed, and things have now spiraled downwards.
First of all, nothing says "protect and serve" like someone who is safely apprehended and then mysteriously shows up at the police station with a deadly spinal injury and crushed voice box - right?
Here's a nice collection for your contemplation. The off-duty police officer that shot and killed unarmed Rekia Boyd in Chicago was found not guilty. A cop was heard saying "Fuck your breath" while Eric Harris was dying because a reserve officer thought he was using his taser. A while ago we discussed how Walter Scott in South Carolina was shot and killed in cold blood by a police officer, with multiple other officers who aided and abetted. If that crime had not been recorded, that officer would not be charged. And now, Freddie Gray was killed in police custody due to a severe spinal cord injury in Baltimore.
I think it's hardly a surprise at this point that the amount of frustration, anger, sadness, and nihilism out there right now has reached a breaking point. Evidently, black people are sick and tired of being treated like shit, like dogs. People who are more interested in critiquing the riots than they are about critiquing police brutality might be in need of looking from the other side.
That said, let's indeed look from the *other* side. No doubt, there's mounting evidence of the police systematically being wrong in many instances, including the above listed. But what the rioting is doing is to draw the story away from the injustice of police brutality (which has been all over the news for quite a while), and turn it into a violent spectacle that is (incorrectly) making people think that perhaps the police brutality was warranted.
It's also undeniable that rioting is just NOT ever going to fix this problem or help in any way. Injustice ends up no longer being the narrative when people act the way the rioters in Baltimore are acting. Makes you wish that people could take all the energy they put into destroying stuff into expressing their frustration in a way that doesn't harm others... Although, granted, sometimes it doesn't happen that way and cannot happen that way. But again, I'd caution us about potentially getting sidetracked by the spectacle of rioting and forgetting who's *actually* harming who in the larger picture of things - who the perpetrators are and who are the victims. And the perpetrators will continue to be the police if they continue to be an untouchable entity acting from the position of power while remaining unchecked and not being held accountable for their actions. Until this is fundamentally changed, the riots will continue to erupt at an alarming rate.
Btw, kudos to the peaceful moderate protesters who really wanted to make a point, and tried to stop the more extreme ones from turning the whole thing into a brutal mess by actually putting themselves between the rioters and the police. Obviously that failed, and things have now spiraled downwards.