I woke up this morning to heart rending news:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/04/protests-baltimore
Another young black man has died at the hands of the police, and this time nobody has any idea why. No self defense, no resisting other than a brief sprint, and yet somehow his spine was severed and now, after several weeks in the hospital he has passed away leaving every aspect of the case a mystery.
And now Baltimore is burning, and that's all anyone wants to talk about. Even those who style themselves as sympathetic to the protests can't help but conflate it with the rioting, as though this were an expression of resistance. Look at the facts, and you notice something immediately--the protestors were well organized and peaceful. They marched into the city to express their justified anger at a system that has built itself on the sweat of their backs and returned nothing for too long. The riots are not part of this, these are lawless people taking advantage of the fact that the Baltimore police are unable to cope with the city at the best of times, and now that they are so terrified of a justified and peaceful demonstration of this fact to the world they have left the rest of the city totally undefended.
So seriously, everyone, stop conflating the two. The riots are not part of the protests, they are results from what the protestors are demonstrating against. And everyone who thinks they are helping by voicing sympathy for the fictional "violent protests" are unintentionally feeding the false narrative that blacks and other people of color are unable to give themselves voice as responsible citizens without resorting to lawlessness and destruction.
The protestors themselves are putting the lie to this slander right now, by following the best example of their own from decades past despite the tyranny they live under every day--and make no mistake, tyranny is what it is when citizens feed the institutions of government and get none or little of the protections they are entitled to. And this tyranny should burn the soul of every free American, because some of our brothers and sisters are not free, and every day live under a yoke. The black citizens of Baltimore deserve better, and all of us should join them in demanding that they get it; otherwise, we might very well have a real and organized revolution on our hands, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. And no free citizen of the world will feel sorry for us.
Nor should they.
