police murder megathread

[ChainsawJedis]

I have been going off about this all day. Being from Maryland, seeing the ignorance, racism, and bigotry on social media is appalling. 

[ChainsawJedis]

I always love when white conservatives criticize black people for rioting as a "bad way to convince people." As if a peaceful protest would change their minds.

     So given a choice between a peaceful protest (doesn't change their minds) and a riot (doesn't change their minds and destroys their own homes and workplaces), we shouldn't want them to go with the former?

No, you should, but he does have a point.

[ChainsawJedis]

Serious question: did you know about Freddie Gray before the rioting began? I didn't know about Freddie Gray before I read about the riots.

Considering the riots didn't start until Saturday and the story was all over on the news earlier in the week, anyone who was paying attention to the news should have known about Freddie Gray before the riots.

What media outlets covered the death of Freddie Gray? I visit the New York Times' website every day and did not see an article about Freddie Gray or a death in Baltimore. I've been paying attention to the news on a more sporadic basis as of late but this behavior is actually pretty reflective of the average American.

We're actually discussing Freddie Gray on this forum now. Although I'm sure that the Baltimore riots will turn-off most of the public, there will be segments of the public that will be more concerned about Gray's death than riots. Again, I doubt that these sympathetic segments would have heard about Gray before the rioting.

In short: rioting is effective at raising awareness. It's possible to condemn rioting and acknowledge that rioting has played an important role in American history. Although endemic rioting was behind the inception of "backlash voting", it also produced a keen awareness among public officials that the living conditions in inner-cities posed a risk for all Americans. This isn't disputable: discussions of the material conditions and slum-like conditions played a much more prominent role in American public life after Watts.

Agree with alot of what you said here. However, I had heard about Freddie Gray's death for over a week now. That is very possibly because it is much more close to home for me.

[ChainsawJedis]

Here's a sample of upvoted comments from the Baltimore Sun:

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ing disgusting.

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-university-of-baltimore-closes-amid-high-school-purge-threat-20150427-story.html#page=1&panel=comments

Idiots post on the internet...news at 11

F-cking Disgusting.

[ChainsawJedis]

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-brutality-of-police-culture-in-baltimore/391158/

Yes those things are terrible, and those people deserve justice. But rioting isn't going to change any of that. If anything it will backfire and people will think "no wonder police officers have to be especially on guard around those people". The current story was gaining traction and most likely have led to reforms from the city's black mayor and police chief.

I just don't see how looting a liquor store and burning a CVS after raiding it for prescription drugs will help.

Nothing will help. No one is listening. No one cares about these communities. Baltimore's public officials are powerless to act in the face of Maryland's Police Officers' Bill of Rights (I've posted a link to the implications of this). Baltimore's residents are powerless at the polls: they're a small portion of Maryland's population and have entirely different concerns than African-Americans who live in Prince George's County. At this point, I don't have any public policy prescriptions or strategies to offer. These people are powerless in the face of a system that has been rigged against them at every possible point. Baltimore has de-industrialized, the welfare state has been gutted, incarceration rates continue to increase and the police have the carte blanche authority to do as they please. When has the fabled "median voter" expressed the slightest inkling of a concern about these facts? America's once great industrial cities are as impoverished and dangerous as parts of Central America. We've known this for decades. What has been done about it? Nothing. We had the ability to stop urban blight, white flight, the carceral state and slow the pace of de-industrialization: we didn't do anything because Americans don't care.

With this in mind, I understand the unalloyed sentiment that is embodied by throwing a brick through a payday loan office or a police car.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/24/the-police-officers-bill-of-rights/

Thanks for speaking the truth man. While I cannot condone the actions of the rioters (not protesters) in Baltimore, to put all of your focus on them is to lose sight of the real issues at hand. You are completely ignoring a majority of people peacefully protesting and only wanting change they have been promised but not given for decades now, whether that be economic equality, social equality, or racial equality.

[ChainsawJedis]

Yes, why exactly should any of us be made to apologize or even feel remorse over these outbreaks of destruction? The simple fact is that large portions of America - particularly white America - simply don't understand the level of systemic poverty, discrimination and lack of opportunity that exists (and has existed for decades or more) in areas where this behavior typically arises. All too many people want to refer to these people as animals, when in reality, it is a response from them being treated like animals.

They're not looting because they want free stuff. They're not burning down buildings in "their community", because nothing in their so-called community belongs to them in the first place. When dealing with areas where a majority of fathers and young sons are being hauled off for responding to their institutionalized poverty in mostly non-violent but unconventional ways, where generation upon generation has found itself denied equal opportunity, where education truly lacks in structure - let alone at home - and where justice seemingly doesn't exist, these people lash out because it is all that releases the stress and all that sends a message. Nothing around them is truly indicative of a community. Nobody at any other time ever listens.

The only way things change, whether pacifists and non-violent propagandists like it or not, is through systematic agitation of the power structures that wish it would stay the same. Sometimes, that means action like what we're seeing. Drawing the venom out is necessary, because it's seeping all over the place under the surface anyway.

Of course, latte-loving white suburbia is going to frown and flex its big, lazy mouth through internet commentary that calls them "animals" and says "shoot them all on sight!", because they haven't the faintest clue nor care about what is truly going on in these places except when it is to indulge their worst stereotypes with 24/7 media coverage. How inconvenient it must be for and how much skin in the game must there be from all of these tough-on-crime suburbanites and rubes who watch from afar and prognosticate about entire groups of people and their motivations! If there was a God, then these sorts of people would be blessed with the same sort of unrest and injustice within their own little posh ecosystems.