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Violent Protests in Baltimore

Is the violence by Baltimore Protestors Justified?

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I can't answer the poll. To say that it's justified implies that it's okay to brutalize innocent people and destroy property. To say that it's not justified implies that many of the people involved don't have a valid grievance. It just makes me sick that this can still happen in 2015.
 
Police brutality and discrimination against black people are a structural problem in the United States. They're not "a few isolated cases committed by bad apples".
In essence: The system has failed to provide fair and equal conditions and the systemic problem is endangering the lives of black people.

If a system fails... is it not justified to riot to try and get rid of it?

The fact that it's not an issue for whitey doesn't mean that the system isn't in need of change. Guys like fonzob surely don't see the system as fucked up enough to warrant getting rid of it or "rebelling". But it's not guys like fonzob who are on the receiving end of this structural problem.
Peaceful protest would be ideal (like Locutus said) but it's not like that's the norm. People who were being treated terribly by an oppressive system (be it political or a police structure) have always rioted.

I mean, shit... the American colonies rioted over less vital issues than this and didn't go all Gandhi on the British. It's a shame trekbbs wasn't around during the Boston Tea Party! :p

The riots are justified. Whether the problem is really that bad that even violence is justified as an attempt to get rid of the system I simply don't know because I can't imagine what it's like to be a black person in America.
 
teacake said:
I'd imagine if there was a peaceful sit-in style protest of police violence in Baltimore a lot less people would have heard about it and the sheer anger of many people at an abusive system would not register very loudly.
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White folks ignore peaceful protest, and just sort of "tsk tsk" when the police use "excessive force" to quell it.
 
The Baltimore Sun did a lengthy expose on the problem of police brutality back in September. With a police abuse problem this chronic, it shouldn't surprise anyone that it reached a breaking point. It was only a matter of time. Clearly, the city has been unwilling to change anything when the only consequence is cutting checks to victims' families. Will breaking lots of shit work better? I guess we'll see.
 
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The NYTimes in-depth article on the Baltimore unrest Link

BALTIMORE — Engines raced across this city early Tuesday as the Fire Department strained to extinguish blazes, even as the police said some firefighters were reportedly having cinder blocks heaved at them as they responded to emergencies.

As Baltimore residents recoiled from the rioting and looting that struck largely in the west of the city on Monday, the police said officers were deployed overnight alongside weary and harried firefighters to ensure their work was not disrupted by people with “no regard for life.”

As dawn broke, the city was relatively calm compared with the violence that had left 15 officers injured — six seriously — from thrown bottles, rocks and bricks, as well as dozens of businesses, homes and cars damaged or destroyed by looting or arson. It is not known how many protesters were injured.

Fires started by rioters burned throughout the early morning on Piedmont Avenue on Tuesday.Baltimore Enlists National Guard and a Curfew to Fight Riots and LootingAPRIL 27, 2015
The police also reported that two people had been shot, each in the leg, in separate incidents overnight. One victim, a woman, was shot on Fulton Avenue near where some of the worst rioting and looting had occurred hours earlier. The other victim, a man, was shot about two miles west of the Mondawmin Mall.
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Members of the National Guard began to deploy in the city just after daybreak on Tuesday. Wearing tan and earth-green military fatigues and driving sandy-color humvees, they took up posts around the city’s Western District police station, the scene of earlier protests. More than a hundred National Guard members with rifles lined the street in front of Baltimore’s inner harbor.
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Mr. Gray’s death on April 19 has opened a deep wound in this majority-black city, where the mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, and the Baltimore police commissioner, Anthony W. Batts — both of whom are black — have struggled to reform a police department that has a history of aggressive, sometimes brutal, treatment of black men.

Mr. Gray was chased and restrained by police officers on bicycles at Gilmor Homes on the morning of April 12; a cellphone video of his arrest showed him being dragged into a police van, seemingly limp and screaming in pain. The police have acknowledged that he should have received medical treatment immediately at the scene of the arrest and have also said that he rode in the van unbuckled.
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At the New Shiloh Baptist Church, Mr. Gray lay in an open white coffin, in a white shirt and tie, with a pillow bearing a picture of him in a red T-shirt, against a backdrop of a blue sky and doves, with the message “Peace y’all.”

The service was more than a celebration of Mr. Gray’s short life; it was a call for peace and justice — and for residents of Baltimore to help lead the nationwide movement for better police treatment of black men that emerged last August after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

The Rev. Jamal Bryant, who delivered Mr. Gray’s eulogy, insisted that Mr. Gray’s death would not “be in vain.” He vowed that Baltimore residents would “keep demanding justice” but also issued a pointed rebuke to the congregation, telling members that black people must take control of their lives and force the government and the police to change.

Mr. Bryant came back to the neighborhood after the burial on Monday afternoon to appeal for calm.

“This is not what the family asked for, today of all days,” Mr. Bryant said. “For us to come out of the burial and walk into this is absolutely inexcusable.” He said he was “asking every young person to go back home,” adding, “it’s frustration, anger and it’s disrespect for the family.”
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Some additional information from the streets of Baltimore - reading this you can feel the weariness and anger.

Link

“This is what you have from years and years of police brutality and abuse in this city,” said Deontrae Lucas, standing near a car burning outside her house. “It’s just now boiling over.”

Minutes later, Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, appeared in the middle of a spontaneous march. He was surrounded by several hundred people, walking arm in arm down West North Avenue, singing, “I’m going to stay on the battlefield.”
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A couple of the young men wore bandannas to hide their identity. The young men identified themselves as members of the Crips, Bloods and Black Guerrilla Family street gangs. One of the Crips members, who called himself Charles, wearing a red Chicago Bulls Derrick Rose T-shirt, said the gang members had taken to the street because “there is only so far that you can push people into a corner.”

“We’re frustrated,” he continued, “and that’s why we’re out there in the streets.”

Then he described how he and some Bloods had stood in front of black-owned stores to protect them from looting or vandalism. He said they had made sure no black children, or reporters, were hit by rioters. They pointed them toward Chinese- and Arab-owned stores. Charles said Mr. Gray had brought gangs together.
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Then he described how he and some Bloods had stood in front of black-owned stores to protect them from looting or vandalism. He said they had made sure no black children, or reporters, were hit by rioters. They pointed them toward Chinese- and Arab-owned stores. Charles said Mr. Gray had brought gangs together.
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That'll teach those racist cops a lesson!
 
Tiger Devil Dog said:
That'll teach those racist cops a lesson!
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Smugly stated. Do you know what a race riot is? Do you have any idea why they occur?

It's pretty certain that you couldn't practice, in your own life, the kind of turn-the-other-cheek forebearance in the face of continual provocation that you think these kids should.
 
Do you know what a race riot is? Do you have any idea why they occur?
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Apparently it's a riot where people destroy private property and attack innocent bystanders.
Why are they going after the Asains and Arabs? Are they responsible for the oppression of the black community?
 
They're attacking the police? Where? When? Link?

I've seen reports of them attacking white Orioles fans and burning down a senior center. Nothing about the rioters going toe to toe with the police.
 
Why don't you pay something more than the most superficial attention to what's going on, then?
 
It's pretty certain that you couldn't practice, in your own life, the kind of turn-the-other-cheek forebearance in the face of continual provocation that you think these kids should.
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Oh I wouldn't. But they're not attacking the people responsible. They're just destroying the private property and attacking people that have done nothing to oppress them. Let me know when they start going after the police or national guard and not innocent people trying to earn a living.
 
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