Last Monday “rioting” broke out in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. Today, Huffington Post is reporting that the Baltimore State’s Attorney called his death a “homicide” stating “We have probable cause to file charges” including second degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and assault, among others. Charges will be filed against the six officers involved in Gray’s arrest.
The State’s Attorney further noted that “no crime had been committed by Mr. Gray.” Police had said Gray was arrested for possessing a switchblade, but the knife in Gray’s possession was not a switchblade and was lawful. Gray was “illegally arrested”.
I lived in Baltimore for 11 years. My daughters grew up there and went to public schools. I worked everyday in the heart of downtown Baltimore – before there was a Camden Yards and an Inner Harbor – when the Baltimore Colts played in Memorial Stadium. I was there when they moved in the middle of the night – before there was a Baltimore Ravens.
The state of Maryland always prioritized the protection of police officers charged with abuse over the citizens being abused.
“Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson ….
And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims—if charges were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him—a beating that led the police commissioner to say he was “shocked.”
Now we hear the calls everywhere for the young people of Baltimore to remain “peaceful” and “non-violent”. I guess we equate broken glass with broken spines.
The call for non-violence is a ruse. It is call for compliance.
Nobody and no media was asking the question: Why is Freddie Gray dead?
Where are the calls for “peace and non-violence” when citizens are being abused by police power?
Everyone knew. The Baltimore Sun did an intensive investigation of wanton police brutality back in 2011:
http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/
Why are there always calls for “non-violence” when the people being oppressed rise up?
The calls for non-violence ring hollow when they begin only after the violent repercussions of years of police brutality begin. Where were the calls for non-violence before? It’s like calling a time out. It’s 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.”
Does that make violence right? No. But it is the natural response.
And it gets attention.
And sorry, but it feels good to get the oppressors boot off your neck – even for just an hour or two so you can breathe again.
This country has made Martin Luther King into the icon of non-violence. He was nothing of the kind. Dr. King believed in confrontation – not compliance.
And the racists of the 1960s came to believe he was the better choice than Malcolm who told any white man who attacked black citizens to expect bullets. Civil rights came to America not with a mealy-mouth “non-violence” – it came with confrontation, busted heads and the burning of a few cities.
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toritto 
The ruling elite and their puppet media always promote non-violence because it allows them to continue business as usual.
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Indeed Doc. Regards
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Very little has ever been achieved since the dawn of civilisation without some violence along the way. When we support regimes who ‘throw off oppressors’, we don’t go around advocating non-violence then. We give them arms to fight with, and bomb their enemies.
Regards from England. Pete.
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“Non Violence” a la Gandhi is the effort to get those in the ruling class to sympathize with the plight of the poor and oppressed, to feel guilt and to act in a moral way. When the ruling class doesn’t give a shit it doesn’t work. Regards
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Freddie Gray is dead and for no reason whatsoever and the FOP(Fraternal Order of Police) is already calling for the state prosecutor to recuse herself and is making excuses for those cops that murdered an innocent man. That is just ludicrous and beyond the end of enough!
Malcolm X was always spot on and this video was no exception! After all these years and still his words resonate with what’s going down today! Now that, is telling!
Thank you for posting this Toritto!
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Hi Shelby – Malcolm was spot on concerning many things. Did you see my post on Kent and Jackson State?
https://toritto.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/forty-five-years-ago-kent-and-jackson-state/
No one remembers Jackson State. Regards.
Frank.
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If you promote violence, then you might as well throw the judicial system out of the window and let chaos reign. The system needs improvement, so try to change that – not throw rocks to destroy the buildings – what does that prove or accomplish? Then you need tax money to clean it up and rebuild – that’s going backwards.
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The judicial system threw the judicial system out of the window when it became more criminal than the so-called criminals, it was set up to lock up. The entire judicial system is filled with more criminals than I can shake a stick at. Judges are for sale. There is no due process. Prisoners are denied an attorney and the basics while being held waiting on charges to be presented against them.
Here in Minnesota, the Gang Task force had to be disbanded because it was doing far worse than the gangs that it was set up to infiltrate and bring to ‘justice’. There is no fair and ‘just’ judicial system and anyone who cannot see that is either willfully blind or willfully ignorant. Do you seriously think that the U.S. government needed to hand over military equipment to police forces all across this country just because the equipment was excess equipment from Afghanistan and Iraq? Oh, I suppose in YOUR opinion, it’s needed to squash any rebellion against outright murder of innocent citizens. As long as the government is destroying Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and elsewhere, that sort of violence is condoned by you, but Black folks better not commence to burning down a CVS pharmacy that you need to get your oxycontin from. How dare they! Buildings have ALWAYS been more important than the loss of human life and if that ‘human’ life does not look like you, why, what’s the problem?
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I do not appreciate the implication that I am racist or stupid. You are ranting like one of the cowards I’ve seen on TV with scarfs to hide their faces, therefore I’ll cut off this conversation and leave you to stew in your hate and anger.
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Clearly, any ‘violence’ that could remotely threaten the mechanisms of entrenched repression, or the rule of the rich, is verboten. Beating and shooting people is fine if it’s being committed by the professional ranks of institutionalized violence.
This culturally pervasive attitude obviously needs to change so that more effective strategies might be devised to counter the illegitimate repression.
Unfortunately, the bigger part of the problem is that the majority of the oppressed (meaning, the marginally economically coddled ‘white’ demographic, but more generally, the ‘educated and professionalized’ classes who with their skills and abilities to ‘organize’ could make a world of difference) don’t even recognize their own oppression or the violent and iniquitous nature of what in their indoctrination is a perfectly legitimate social order.
Hopefully, the unrest in the street can wake some of those who sorely need to be awakened or incite action elsewhere. But that, of course, is the danger. And the reason for the repression in the first instance.
Historically, mass ‘violence’ or the threat thereof is all that has ever worked to move things in a meaningfully progressive direction. Sad but true. Would that it was otherwise.
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“Historically, mass ‘violence’ or the threat thereof is all that has ever worked to move things in a meaningfully progressive direction.”. Indeed.
Everyone talks of MLK but forget Malcolm, SNCC, the Panthers, Stokley. They also forget Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles.. Regards
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Reblogged this on shelbycourtland and commented:
This post speaks volumes!
Thank you toritto!
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