Note: The following is dated Monday, April 27 as the mass protests in Baltimore were devolving into a riot that lasted until the early morning hours.
First things first.
Yes, there is a lot to be argued, debated, addressed. And this moment, as inevitable as it has sometimes seemed, can still, in the end, prove transformational, if not redemptive for our city. Changes are necessary and voices need to be heard. All of that is true and all of that is still possible, despite what is now loose in the streets.
But now — in this moment — the anger and the selfishness and the brutality of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray’s name needs to cease. There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that spoke in Mr. Gray’s name initially, and there was real unity at his homegoing today. But this, now, in the streets, is an affront to that man’s memory and a dimunition of the absolute moral lesson that underlies his unnecessary death.
If you can’t seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore. Turn around. Go home. Please.
Additional Notes:
Second thing second: The death of probable cause in Baltimore.
Third thing third: http://davidsimon.com/zero-tolerance-is-exactly-what-it-sounds-like/ . So eyes on the real prize here.
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Can everybody on this forum practice one thing tonight. Love, compassion and understanding? Please, I’m so sick of all this shit. It really doesn’t need to be this way.
Nothing but respect for you, but I feel this post is wrongheaded. I happened to be coming out of the Enoch Pratt yesterday as a group of so-called “violent rioters” were coming down Cathedral St. They were, at most, 13 or 14 years old. They were using their t-shirts as make-shift tear gas masks and they were clearly scared while attempting to put on brave faces. I (a middle aged white lady) gave them the peace sign and almost every one of them bumped my fist. But they were scared and you could see it in their eyes. I begged them to be safe and careful and I’m praying they made it through the night.
These are kids who see no future for themselves and why should they?
There’s something seriously wrong with a city that can muster riot gear teams, helicopters, a curfew, the National Guard etc etc in 10 minutes but over the course of several hours could not be bothered to find a fucking seat belt or a phone to call 911 for Freddie Gray. This isn’t on the citizens and it certainly isn’t on the frightened children who were in the streets yesterday bc they figure they’re gonna die at the hands of police pretty soon one way or another — whether they’re running towards them or running away.
I hope you come up with something better and more meaningful to say about this. Baltimore was and is counting on you.
First things first.
First things first is keeping kids from getting shot by a trigger happy police force that’s been running roughshod over its populace for decades in my book. I’d have asked where their parents were but let’s face it David, they’re probably dead or in jail already.
If all of them were as trigger-happy as advertised, there should be a lot of dead people tonight, but the coverage so far doesn’t indicate the death of a single protestor, rioter or looter. Clearly, the origin of this conflict is the brutal treatment of a young man in custody, and clearly there is a pattern of police brutality that extends over several recent years of beatings and city settlements.
There is much to address in the BPD. And Freddie Gray is the road to it.
But given what happened today and tonight in Baltimore, the body count from this riot doesn’t correspond to your claim of a department looking to murder people. At least in the present moment.
Their restraint in this moment — in THIS particular & singular moment, with the national media on them (finally), a DOJ investigation freshly underway (finally), and a lot of politicians’ careers on the line (anybody heard anything about Martin O’Malley’s presidential bid lately? No? I didn’t think so) — is indeed somewhat admirable.
It’s just too bad that they didn’t see fit to practice that restraint or encode it in policy anytime in what, the last 50 years or we wouldn’t be here in the first place.
And you cannot honestly tell me, after all you’ve witnessed, that if you saw a bunch of middle schoolers busting out the windows of a cop car that you wouldn’t be at least a little concerned about the outcome.
On a lot of levels, I’d be concerned.
I know I was.
Oh, and if anyone doubts my veracity on the age of these protestors, ask the police at the Enoch Pratt central library. If they’re not lying then they will have to co-sign.
[…] http://davidsimon.com/baltimore/ […]
[…] avoir été arrêté par la police, le créateur de la série The Wire, David Simon, a publié un post de blog pour demander aux émeutiers de cesser la violence. Plus tôt dans la journée, la famille de […]
I suppose that all depends on why you can’t effect change without the brick doesn’t it?
Yeah thats why its working so well for the Palestinians.
How is it working out for the Israelis?
It is the people with power we hold as morally responsible to end violence. Not the ones who are victimized by them.
Too glib by half. The Israelis do indeed need to own their intransigence and their unwillingness to empower the Palestinian authority. But the critique of the Palestinian cause for much of the last sixty years is straight-up true: If the Palestinian cause had manufactured some version of a Mandela, a King, a Gandhi or even a Michael Collins — someone capable of using non-violence, compromise and moral suasion to truly challenge the Israeli policies where they are most vulnerable, there would by now be a Palestinian state on the West Bank.
Michael Collins wanted peace, but he was the pioneer of guerilla warfare – not exactly a non-violent man.
There are many reasons the Palestinians haven’t produced a statesman along those lines, and they can’t be blamed for all of them. Mandela and Gandhi were born to prosperous families. Even Collins was able to get a job working with the Royal Mail in London, where he learned the skills to fund the War of Independence. It’s often forgotten that decades ago, it was the Israelis that were cannily discrediting moderate Palestinian voices, and giving oxygen to the extremists they knew how to handle. Repeatedly, they have made winners of Hamas, and they know what the results of that are.
Life in the open-air prison of Gaza, which is being razed every few years now, is not conducive to the production of charismatic political leaders. I’d guess that a DeValera is more likely: an American-born Palestinian who identifies with the cause.
I loathe Netanyahu and the marginalization and humiliation of Abbas as a policy, make no mistake. The Israelis are as much an impediment to peace as the Palestinians presently. Their use of Hamas as a whipping boy in Gaza to disempower Abbas is as cynical as it is effective. But in the long window of histor since 1948, you have to bend over backwards to explain that the Israelis are fully to blame for the empty wasteland of Palestinian leadership. Here’s a couple equivocations in that paragraph you just penned: The Palestinian people in 1948 were among the most literate and prosperous in the Middle East and until 1967, they controlled their real estate on the West Bank and Gaza, both. And still, they did not achieve a leader who could come to terms with the idea that the Jewish state was going to exist and that a two-state solution required coexistence and half a loaf for both sides. Not. A. Single. One. The Israelis couldn’t achieve such unanimity on their own; but the internal marginalization and assassination of any Palestinian openly contemplating a peace and a two-state solution with the Zionist entity — you could not even use the name of Israel — sure could.
It doesn’t exactly honor the Palestinian people to so infantilize them that you blame the Israelis for managing their entire political leadership over the last 70 or so years.
I have little to object to in your comment, apart from your reading into my post of opinions I’d never hold. I have no objection to Israel. I certainly don’t blame the Israelis for poor Palestinian leadership, which clearly exists. But neither do I blame the great mass of those currently eking out a living in Palestine for the decisions of the few among them, for the extremism of Hamas, and for the failures of Fatah.
My point is this: I would be wary of pointing to a mass of people in a desperate situation caused by previous generations, and wondering why they can’t get their shit together.
I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, for what it’s worth. But that is the point I make, rather than those you may have inferred.
I see we agree for the most part, and I don’t blame a mass of people for the desperate situation — certainly as Israeli leadership has exacerbated that situation, I don’t blame either side exclusively. But self-determination is exactly what it sounds like. The Palestinians have had 70 years to achieve a leader who could come to terms with the inevitability of a two-state reality. Mr. Abbas represents the first actual opportunity since 1948.
That the Israelis have so misused him is to their shame, to be sure.
Keep in mind that Collins was eventually assassinated by his own side for no other reason then signing a peace agreement with the British Government. He even famously stated, a quote you can find some where if you look for it – I can not site it now and I am sure I will butcher- that by signing the the Anglo-Irish treaty that he was more or less signing his own death warrant.
Collins used brutal tactics to achieve his ends, but he also realized that these tactics need to have a goal. They need to be directed towards a greater effort that will bring about the change you want, and not just spiral into a never ending conflict that passes from one generation to the next.
His tactics were also precise. He targeted informers and black-and-tan commanders. Military targets explicitly.
Far be it from him to walk a suicide bomber on a Dublin bus, or launch rockets randomly into Ulster, or kidnap and kill Protestant teenagers hitch-hiking in Connaught. And then yes, when the time came for peace, he took half the loaf from Churchill at the cost of his own life. That man was a nationalist, a hero, a warrior and ultimately, a peacemaker. And he paid the price for it.
The mirror of that is if the Israeli state had ever had a statesman of Mandela’s stature they would not have headed down the road of racism, intolerance, apartheid and war crimes
Well, they had Rabin, who the Jewish extremists — no better than any other fascists — managed to murder. And they had Barack, whose offer of Palisteanian statehood on the West Bank and Gaza, based on 1967 borders with some land exchanges was met with Arafat’s call for the second intifadah, so that’s a start. Apartheid is entirely hyperbolic given the fact that the Arab-Israeli political parties are the third largest block in the parliament and Arab-Israeli citizens carry the same civil rights as Jewish Israelis. I don’t recall the ANC being given seats in Pretoria or black South Africans having any civil liberties at all. So right away, you’ve embarrassed yourself.
Racism and intolerance? Yes, I think too many Israelis, in the 70-year run up to this moment, have lost sight of the humanity of their Arab neighbors. The reverse is also quite apparent, as well. I can certainly blame all parties for dehumanizing each other nicely.
The Palestinian cause would have to be universally comprised of Gandhis, Kings and Mandelas to have any chance at Israeli approval of any two-state solution. Forget about the 1967 borders.
The same standard is being applied to Ferguson and Baltimore protesters. As you say, one thrown brick “risks losing this moment for all of us.” That’s a pretty high standard for people who are justifiably irate and more than a little frustrated and impatient with the peaceful means of seeking a long overdue transformation.
You are historically wrong. The Israelis offered two states under the 1967 borders with land swaps under Ehud Barak. Offered it openly and directly, and not to a Palestinian Mandela or Gandhi. They offered it to Arafat. They got not merely a simple no, but the entire second intifadah in reply.
Bone up on the history, man. There’s a lot of it.
I was basing my observation on recent history, man. There’s a lot of that, too.
Netanyahu won the election with a last-minute promise to reject any two-state solution because he said it would give attack grounds to extremists and present an existential threat to Israel.
So I guess you could say we’re both wrong. As it stands, Israel would not accept any two-state solution even if Gandhi were leading a Palestinian cause comprised of four million Mandelas.
By comparison, Israel’s offer under Barak was very generous, but I wouldn’t go so far to say it offered the 1967 borders. It wouldn’t have given up sovereignty over the ever-expanding larger settlements, the Jordan Valley and nearly all of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. It offered something like 10-to-1 land swaps for West Bank territory and the right to return for a very limited number of Palestinian refugees.
And not to pick nits, but I’m pretty sure there was another event that sparked the second intifada.
I am in agreement with you regarding these recent years. The Israeli performance is untenable in every sense. And Netanyahu’s currying of the Israeli right to maintain his office was vile.
Don’t agree with you on your view of Israeli bargaining chips. I said the core of the offer was the ’67 borders. Yes, there were land swaps. Yes, the right to return is a non-starter and rightly so. That one has to fall if a two-state solution is ever going to be viable.
Let me sum it up this way. For years after 1948, Jewish liberals used to say — looking at Arab and Palestinian leaders from the Mufti, to Nasser, to Arafat — that the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. There was fundamental truth in the claim when no one dared offer any possibility of recognition of the Jewish state and when the constant refrain from Arab heads of state was that the Jews would be driven into the sea in the next conflict. But now, a Jewish liberal can be defined sadly as someone who is a little too quiet about Israeli behavior, and it is more honest to say that now, it is the Israelis, with the ready help of Hamas, who never miss a chance for peace, or for marginalizing and humiliating Abbas and the PA.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/dear-nick-kristof-your-palestinian-gandhis-are-already-here
I know. I read that and some other stuff as well. And I have some hope, especially on the West Bank. To God’s ear, I say. Sooner, rather than later.
Can you suggest any starting places for reading material? I’m interested but have no idea where to start.
I think you should bone up on history David, particularly your gross misrepresentation of the events leading to the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
“The primary innovation of Barak’s new plan is that the US-Israeli demands are to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive diplomacy, and in a harsher form, to punish the victims who refused to concede politely. The outlines are in basic accord with policies established informally in 1968 (the Allon Plan), and variants that have been proposed since by both political groupings (the Sharon Plan, the Labor government plans, and others). It is important to recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with the support of the US. That support has been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the Oslo process. Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from history in the US, it takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded.” Noam Chomsky – http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51a/092.html
A lot of writing to back up years before the singular moment when the ’67 borders were the core of Barak’s offer and half a loaf was not nearly enough.
Arafat walked from that moment, not the Israelis. And as the intifadah got underway, the moderate wing in Israeli politics was then doomed. You’d do better highlighting Netanyahu’s cynical performance in more recent years; Barak wanted a partner for peace. Instead, he got the mediocrity that was Arafat and a ticket to a no-confidence vote when the buses started blowing up. Cherry-picking your way back to 1968 won’t make that particular moment disappear. Sorry.
Ahh yes. I have heard this one before. It is the slaves fault that they have no peaceful leaders.
More sloganeering when a fact or two might suffice.
Between 1948 and 1967, to whom were the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza slaves? The Jews? They Israelis had no control over that real estate or its population. None. Zero. The Arab leadership was of its own creation, and the Palestinian leadership as well. And not a Michael Collins or Lech Walesa emerged.
Ah yes, we have heard this one before: It’s the Jews fault. Always and forever.
Yes. It is Israel’s fault, now, and always and forever. It is always the fault of the oppressor and never the fault of the oppressed. Its why we don’t tell rape victims that maybe they should just lay and take it and not fight because things might get worse. Matter of scale here but the principle is the same. Victims are not to blame for fighting back nor are they to blame for being victims.
Hiding behind the fact that no peaceful leader emerged for Palestine after 1948 is a ruse. Palestine rule didn’t exist prior to 1948. The British controlled the area prior to the partition plan and Zionist terrorism had forced the issue to drive Palestinians from their homes. Of course they fought. And after what would you suggest they do? Go gently into that good night?
More specifically Israel is unwilling to come to a solution which does not include apartheid and Israel can act unilaterally if they so choose. Palestinians aren’t a part of that political discussion, its between Israel’s liberals and Israel’s hawks and the liberals are losing. Palestinians do not control the settlements they do not control the borders they have no police force, no garbage collectors, no power plants. When they attempt to create them they are labeled as terrorists and bombed. As such, Israel is at fault. And they will forever be at fault until they stop oppressing.
Similarly in the United States, the United States is at fault, now and forever, for the systematic oppression of black people. Slavery was not the fault of the slaves it was the fault of the United States in allowing it. Freddy Greys death is not the fault of Baltimore’s black community it is the fault of the police officers for murdering him, the police force for allowing the systematic brutality to continue, the city for not reigning in the police force, and the United States polity in general for accepting and not changing the fact that we systematically utilize the power of the state to brutalize and murder unarmed black people.
And yet here you are, telling black people its their fault for being the victim and having the audacity to fight back. And its disgusting
And Israel is ever the oppressor? In 1947, after the partition vote? In 1973, on Yom Kippur? Really.
One side accepted partition and the other cried for war. The nakba and Israeli independence resulted. Given the resulting Jewish state, what should be done with the Jews and their state? Say the words aloud.
I know I believe in the Palestinian right of self-determination and fully support an independent Palestine. But what of the Jews? Do you believe in a two-state solution? Or do you think the Jews are going to dissolve their 70-year state and emigrate from their historical sliver of the Levant out into a world in which the great, civilized nations have long competed with each other to murder them en masse for the last couple thousand years? If you have possession over judgment day, what is the outcome? Explain the future if it were at your command. Be specific. This should be interesting.
As to your assessments of what I have said or not said, dishonest equivocations make for an easy argument. Only a straw man would claim that I told anyone it is their fault for being the victim and having the audacity to fight back. I said I stand with the protestors practicing civil disobedience and I blame those who loot and burn in their name, and in Mr. Gray’s name, with squandering a moment of great moral authority. Your reductive mangling is, as you would put, disgusting. Transparent, as well.
[…] Simon’s stance is the same following Freddie Gray’s death. He strongly criticized the violent reaction on his blog. […]
I’m going to say this one more time, then leave it alone.
I think far, far too many young people hear the phrase “ no peace no justice” and think “its time to get my tough guy act on”
I was once a wanna be tough guy. David claims to never have heard the call of the wild. I don’t believe him. I think all young men, no matter how nerdy, have a wanna-be tough guy streak.
What do you think these young men hear when they hear that phrase? “Go forth and peacefully protest”? No way. That’s not how they hear it.
I’m not saying that the police force doesn’t need to reform. It does. Badly.
But we also need rich, well dressed, middle aged men, to stop standing up and yelling “no peace no justice” to young impressionable, emotional audiences. That’s not Gandhi’s message. It’s not Dr. King’s message.
It’s just the wrong message.
Rioters caused millions of dollars in damage to my city in 2001 following the all-too-familiar story of the police shooting of an unarmed young black man. The people who bore the brunt of the damage were the people who also bear the brunt of police misconduct. I don’t see how anyone, anywhere, can claim that this is a good reaction. It harms the very community it claims to assist and it turns the people on the outside looking in against a just cause.
People can blame the media all they want for focusing on the violence, but the fact is that there wouldn’t be anything to show without the existence of rioters.
And people claiming in these posts that this is how the poor get a voice are out of touch. This is how the poor get poorer. Those rioters don’t speak for the downtrodden any more than I speak for “the whites.”
Some real reform did eventually come to our town too, but not because of the riots. National civil rights leaders were involved. Negotiations happened. And there was an extremely effective boycott that forces our city’s hand.
“The people who bore the brunt of the damage were the people who also bear the brunt of police misconduct.”
This cannot be repeated enough.
I see a lot of people arguing on here that these riots are going to have an effect, either positive or negative, on the outcome of the issue at hand: namely the systemic violence perpetrated against blacks by law enforcement officials. I disagree with both sides. I don’t think it’s going to matter either way. It doesn’t change anyone’s mind on either side of things. It won’t even be remembered unless it leads to sustained violent protest throughout the country for an extended period. Otherwise, it’s just last week’s news and in a month we’re too busy paying attention to something else to remember it. This story isn’t new and it isn’t shocking. It’s just the same old cycle that we already know about and everyone already has their trite responses and historical arguments to back up whichever side they’re on.
But when I say it won’t matter, I’m only talking in terms of a larger national debate. It’s going to matter very much to the people living in Baltimore. It’s going to matter very much to the people whose houses are being burned. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s net result negative. It does nothing to advance a cause and it fucks over people who are not even remotely the source of the problem.
The people who are losing their houses right now certainly don’t deserve it. Instead of sitting at our computers having a lively debate which will convince no one of anything they didn’t believe before, maybe we can come up with some ideas of how to help the area rebuild? Obviously that’s not going to solve the larger issue at hand re: police violence against blacks, but even if the rioters stop looting and burning and whatever else they’re doing right this very instant, those houses are still going to be burned and those people are still going to not have a home.
I’m not trying to imply here that this is going to turn a negative into a positive, though. If your street got burned down, people trying to help you rebuild it doesn’t erase the trauma of having your street burned down. But it might suck less than not having the means to rebuild it and having everyone be super interested in how it got burned and then completely indifferent to what happened afterward.
[…] Simon’s stance is the same following Freddie Gray’s death. He strongly criticized the violent reaction on his blog. […]
[…] Here is the powerful plea posted on Simon’s blog: […]
I don’t want it to be so, but maybe it’s time to revisit Segregation.
There was an interesting article in Slate magazine a year or two ago that suggested that black people in the 50’s & 60’s civil rights era never wanted Integration, which was a goal imposed on them by white liberals. All they really wanted was Jim Crow laws abolished + voting rights + equal dollars-per-public-school-pupil.
You fucking revisit it.
I don’t want to live around white people with opinions like the one you just offered.
Drysdale raised a possibility–he didn’t offer a firm opinion. If you want to foreclose the possibility you should work on your own attitude and hypersensitivity. Yours is the sort of reaction that indicates weakness and something to hide.