Baltimore
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.
late to the party here and for what it’s worth i like your shows. i’ve rarely watched any tv over the last two decades..don’t own one in fact… but think you’ve done about as much good as can be done in that context… but i also think you’re either in denial or being very disengenuous here. obama has continued in the tradition of every president since reagan. he intensified war efforts..actively,,some might say fiercely appealed an injunction against the ndaa that as you know allows american military to detain US citizens without trial, has more whistleblowers jailed than all other presidents combined (real american heroes we’re talking about..not low level ceo’s masquerading as progressives… manning was kept in a cage without trial for over a year and tortured). obama has executed american citizens in secret..actively fought for his right in fact to do so… he has given run of the US coast guard to a criminally negligent.. murderous foreign company in the gulf,,,and is now ,in the midst of massive unrest , persuing (in a pair of customized nikes no less) .. what is in fact the largest trade deal in history ..one that essentially puts the economic fate of 40% of the worlds population in the hands of secret tribunal made up of three corporate attorney’s and that gives corporations the right to sue nations..essentially bilk the public … not just for lost profits but for lost prospective profits. wrap your head around that one. i can’t. it’d have been better..not for his personal ambition maybe but for the public many of whom have had their progressive principles utterly passified had he simply stayed home (you know “with friends like you” etc. etc.). it is no longer sufficient or healthy with that kind of an aggressive track record to write it off as him simply having his hands tied. in fact it’s out and out stupid. furthermore the the reason a third party candidate can’t win in this country with all due respect… is because the media of which you are at least a part of of is corporate owned and won’t let it happen. so i really don’t think you have bigger stones and more principle than say… nader. you’re out of you jurisdiction there. and quite simply you voted for the wrong guy….it’s unfortunate that you still hold the mentality that it was nader and not your failed and bought corporate party was the spoiler. ..and if you vote for clinton you’re not a good person ..sorry. you might have asked the president when you talked to him why the corporations that he works for are now able to profit off of prison labor..if he thinks that just might indicate that we’ll be seeing that many more people locked up..or why the police during his time in office have become increasingly militarized.or even what he talks about at the g8… which is in and of itself a travesty. according to some the obama administration even blocked attempts to try bush for crimes. do you think that was okay? i don’t. again… i liked treme even better than the wire …it seems like at least for some of it you touched on some surprisingly difficult questions that probably pertained to things you were asking yourself…like what the hell you were doing down there…gentrification…exploitation…etc..it’s rare that any media has that kind of artistry..and artists aren’t perfect people… but i think we have to be somewhat honest. jobs weren’t coming back to detroit regardless of rioting. were they? certain other fundamental changes needed to occur…to pin that on people who have been fundamentally disempowered..as progressive as you may or may not be is much more grotesque than the the actual riots. for the most part protests have been shockingly peaceful..better to focus on that as much as possible…while taking into account that we have many justififiably angry people in the world… a few of whom may have their own idea about how to express it
hate the ndaa, blame Obama for embracing that. don’t agree that he has ratcheted up the militarism; raw troop numbers overseas and casualty lists say the exact opposite. can’t take seriously that hyperbole.
when a third party starts to poll seriously, i will consider its candidate. unless it’s a libertarian. i’m not a greedhead. i believe in the idea of society. my father voted for norman thomas in ’48, thinking Dewey had it in the bag anyway. my mother told him, “you just wasted your vote. tomorrow it will be truman by a hair.” then she went to bed. she was right.
i would love to see America become a legitimate government by coalition with parties to the left and center of the democrats and republicans both. and for the national legislature to give voice to a wider spectrum of argument. but i’ve read the constitution and I’ve read Citizens United. ain’t gonna happen. no matter how much you might deride my “mentality.” The real world is what is, regardless of how long a paragraph you offer against it.
Having run this one as far as it can go, and having all the fresh comments offering arguments redundant to all of those offered earlier, I’m closing this one out. To everyone who participated sincerely, my thanks and respect. I hope that the debate and discussion produced here gave people fresh grist or maybe even proved cathartic. This is an angry time, and rightfully so. I am glad that Baltimore is intact, and it’s my hope that all those practicing civil disobedience — not merely over the death of Freddie Gray, but over the documented pattern of police violence in Baltimore — continue to press for change.
Mr. Simon, good quote from a friend of mine regarding our discussion of your blog statement on Monday vs. your Marshall Project interview (which we both have mad respect for):
“It is easier to write thoughtful commentary on the past rather than the present.”
But here in Bawlmer, we never do nothing nice & easy, do we? We always do it nice…and rough.
Still looking forward to your essay. Still believe in you.
Bullshit. The rationalization is yours, not mine. I stand by it all.
First things first. Don’t riot. It’s going to hurt, not help. You will lose us audience and allies for real reform.
But let’s continue to confront what is going on in detail and demand change.
There isn’t a single fucking inconsistency in any of that. If you see one, it originates with your desire for some other message in which I do not believe.
The kids out there expressing their anger most likely aint reading this blog post and dont give a fuck about what any of us have to say here. It was politically correct for you to speak out against the violence considering your sentiments on the issue of policing and the inner city. Glad thats out of the way.
But we all know how this plays out dont we? Cop kills man. Cop is acquitted or found guilty. Some peaceful protests happen and a couple stores get looted. Politicians promise change to capitalize on situation. Change never comes. Another cop kills another unarmed man….cut and past that times infinity.
Why do you think assholes like Ted Cruz find it popular to all of a sudden speak on criminal justice reform? Is it because meth is on the rise and the poor white kids are getting locked up under the same laws put in place to squash the inner city problem? I think we are on to something here….maybe a few high profile killings of white unarmed criminals will hit the news….maybe then coincidentally real change will come.
I’d wager the kids are more concerned about, y’know, not dying at the hands of the BPD.
Usually I’d be as cynical as you, but I just heard the State’s Attorney’s office is taking over the Freddie Gray investigation though, so…maybe? Does anybody know if Martin O’Malley still wants to have a political career after this is over? Somebody hit him up and find out.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Not to be flippant but I guess we could use a laugh (or chuckle)…
“Maybe Freddie Gray broke his own spine. And maybe Michael Brown committed suicide. And maybe black people enslaved themselves.” @TheTweetOfGod
https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/593782058381668352
MLK Jr. ran right into that bullet. How rude.
How are people supposed to get anything? what’s wrong with fighting back? You decry the destruction of their neighborhood. But doing nothing, looking to politicians and business leaders to solve their problems for them is a joke. It boils down to looking to the very same people for a solution who have been destroying jobs, education, housing in their greedy search for ever greater profits.
As for violence: how many people do the cops kill every year, people who are unarmed. How many lives are destroyed by throwing people in prison?
Yet, you condemn the people who are trying to fight against that. Very, very sad.
Read into the comments some, or reread what I originally wrote. It is unequivocal support for civil disobedience — which is non-violent, yes, but never peaceful. It distinguishes between mass protest and relentless demand for reform and burning and looting. Can any of that penetrate?
If it wasn’t for the “anger” and “selfishness” as you call it, nothing, absolutely nothing, would be done. The killings by police would go on forever. And the reason why is that the “anger” and “selfishness” of the protesters is the one thing the power structure fears the most.
It’s a fight, David. And when people fight, you don’t make the rules.
The anger of that which brings mass civil obedience into the street, or the anger and selfishness that co-opts that movement into a burning senior center site and a looted liquor store? Don’t equivocate. I didn’t. I value one and I cringe at the diminished authority and moral force of the other.
It’s a fight. But it’s rigged. There was as much or more desperation in 1967 Detroit as there is in 2015 Baltimore. What did that riot do? It produced the counter-revolution of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and a national political career for race-baiters like Spiro Agnew, a man who made his bones the last time that North Gay Street burned. And oh yeah, Detroit.
Detroit. Never. Came. Back.
For everyone who called that city home, and who cared about it — black or white, poor, affluent or working class — the city was lost. Take a drive through Detroit and then explain to me about why a Baltimorean, any Baltimorean, should stay silent when legitimate civil disobedience goes to burning and looting. All this sloganeering doesn’t give one solid fuck about Baltimore and what happens here for all of us. Take it down the road.
Excuse me, anybody who drives through West Baltimore for five minutes knows it’s already been gone & wrecked for a long time, what the hell are you hand-wringing about?
I had a friend from out of town once call me on his way in to visit b/c he was concerned he saw a fire in the middle of the street there w/ no cops or fire engines anywhere in sight. I was just taken aback that apparently I’d lived here long enough that I didn’t find that unusual at all.
I’m starting to think David Simon hasn’t read any of the work of David Simon.
You are wrong about Detroit. I know the city and it’s history. I lived, went to school and worked there. What the Detroit riots (actually, a rebellion) produced was JOBS and it backed off the police for a little while. Before 1967, the auto industry was still segregated. Blacks were relegated to janitorial or the forge — when they got jobs at all. After the rebellion, — miracle of miracles — the auto companies set up hiring halls in the ghetto. You could get a job coming out of prison even. And much, much more. STRESS, the Detroit tactical police force was also disbanded a few years later.
I’m sorry, but it wasn’t the rebellion that led to Detroit’s decline. The decline was caused by a combination of worldwide economic crisis and the plunder of the city by the auto companies, big banks and real estate developers.
It’s really a shame that the lessons of the 1960s and 1970s have been so twisted and distorted, lessons that people paid for with their blood, sweat and tears.
Just saw this. Apologies that we crossed in communication. Ignore my pressing you to discuss Detroit elsewhere.
Deindustrialization was certainly going to impact manufacturing cities such as Detroit. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit — the rust belt was coming for all of us. But again, be comprehensive and ask yourself which cities have made the better transition into a tech-based service economy? The ones in which grave civil unrest drove white flight and corporate deinvestment to other places, or the ones that managed to duck that nightmare. The entire tax base of Detroit picked itself up after the riots and ran across the city line to Ann Arbor and Dearborn. That’s where the money and the jobs went. You want to bemoan white flight and an unwillingness to stick it out? Okay. But it is the given in the wake of rioting as bad as what Detroit endured.
Why is Pittsburgh doing so much better overall than say Detroit or Baltimore? Not because we’re still making steel or because anyone is still investing in their manufacturing base.
I can only counter by saying that you’ve learned the lessons you want to learn and you’ve ignored the ones that don’t gratify your support for a good riot. There is a lot of hard work to reform this country — and I don’t even know if we have the capacity for such reform. But a riot isn’t what won at Selma, or in Gdansk, or in Pretoria. Mass and sustained civil disobedience — which is non-violent, but never peaceful — gets the credit in my opinion. And saying non-violence doesn’t work because it’s hard, and painful, and prolonged is a lie. It is all of those frustrating things, but it can claim more permanent and unequivocal change than violence, in my opinion.
I am not glorifying anything, riots, rebellions, anything. But you just asked me what the Detroit rebellion won, and I gave you an answer, which you ignored. It brought JOBS. Get it? It was actually much more effective than what came to be known as affirmative action.
As for all the other examples you gave: Selma (40% unemployment currently), Gdansk (shipyard closed long ago), Pretoria (the Marikana masscare), you have the same problems as Detroit right now.
I never said civil disobedience never worked, by the way. I just don’t like people ganging up on those who are revolting against a horrendous situation.
Finally, I don’t think like a civic booster, trying to compare Pittsburgh to Detroit. Have you ever been outside Pittsburgh. Parts are very depressed, David. And that is because we are in a crisis, really a depression. Trying to blame Detroit’s decline on the riots is truly false reasoning.
Wait. Is Detroit awash in jobs since 1967? I’m at a complete loss.
The victories in Selma were for national civil liberties and the black vote in the American south. Those victories endure. The victory in Gdansk was representative government itself for an entire nation, which endures. The victory in South Africa was representative government and actual citizenship for a majority of the population, which endures. And all of those substantial things endure without the vastly greater body count that would have accompanied violent revolt. You’re now offering an incredible reach around to piss on some of the finest human political endeavors of the last century.
I’ve spent time in both Pittsburgh and Detroit. By every conceiveable measure of urban health, Pittsburgh is doing better than Detroit or Baltimore. And right now, absent a larger riot and due to other geographic factors, Baltimore is doing better than Detroit.
After the rebellions, there was indeed an increase in the standard of living of black people. And the gap between black and white peoples’ income was closed somewhat. For all intents, the high point was 1972. After that, living standards and unemployment grew nationwide, because of the first of many worsening recessions.
A little anecdote about Detroit, jobs and population illustrates what happened there. In the late 1970s, GM proposed to locate a Cadillac assembly plant in Poletown, a part of the city that still had a large white and black population, hospitals, churches, and other businesses. The city of Detroit used eminent domaine to force everyone out and vacate the vast area in the middle of the city (600 acres). It also gave GM 20 years of tax breaks, and spent hundreds of millions for the needed infrastructure. It put a great big hole in the city. Today, there is a factory that employes barely a thousand people and a jail.
GM, the city government, and all the rest destroyed the city, the population, and jobs.
But you as a champion of urban development should be pleased with what is going on now. in Detroit. Because having emptied the city of a lot of its black population, cut city jobs, pensions, wages, the developers are moving in, and bringing their middle class buddies with them. Another Pittsburgh and victory — except for all the workers and poor people who paid for it.
Agree fundamentally with your point about who gets to share in urban renewal. There is a swath of empty blocks around the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore where the poor used to be, struggling in the shadow of the largest employer in Baltimore. For decades, Hopkins could do little to address itself to the poverty or desperation. Now it is becoming campus housing and biotech park.
They destroyed the village in order to save it.
Your examples of Selma, Gdansk and South Africa mix everything up. First of all, the rebellions in the U.S. absolutely were key in winning social and economic rights, by breaking down job barriers in a big, big way., by forcing the government, at least for a time to set a floor for living standards. Remember the days when single men could qualify for welfare? That meant that people didn’t have to settle for the first low paid job that was offered, and forced wages to go up for a while. If you read the history of welfare in this country, you’d understand that is why the government went after those economic rights right away.
As for Selma, I don’t want to open up a whole new can of worms. But just let me say that five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, the Watts Rebellion broke out. The Voting Rights Act was a recognition that the black movement was radicalizing. Johnson and the others granted certain things– out of fear of a growing radicalization.
The Watts riot comes five days after the signing of the legislation, which of course comes after the legislative battle that passed the squeezed the Voting Rights Act through Congress, which comes immediately after Selma, which came contemporaneously with Lyndon Johnson telling Martin Luther King, Jr. directly that what was happening in Selma could be a transforming moment. And you want to credit Watts? Whhhhaaaaaat?
For the love of all that is empirical, go back and listen to the speech that the President of the United States gave after the footage of Selma — the non-violent, epic and righteously sacrificial footage from the bridge — was broadcast to America. Listen to that speech. MLK heard it and cried. Johnson used the moment at Selma for every bit of political power it had to begin to press Congress. For a perfect analogy to the Baltimore rioting, then research the exact moment when Mr. Bevel, MLK’s ally, encountered the young Turks of SNCC outside the statehouse in Montgomery about to do something ugly and angry for the cameras. You’re blowing it, he pleaded. Don’t blow it.
They sneered. The SNCC folks had been through hell in Alabama and Mississippi. They had seen and endured horrible shit. They called Johnson a cracker and said his words didn’t matter. And Bevel looks at them and says, correctly: “The man was preaching.” That, sir, is the precise analogy that I would offer to the imagery of Baltimore rioting amid this present window we have to ratchet down the drug war, demilitarize police, and reduce the prison population. You want to urinate on a statehouse to show your rightful disgust and alienation? Fine. But there is an absolute cost in terms of realpolitik.
Offering me riots that happen after the ceremonial signing of legislation that had to be fought through Congress for weeks and months prior in the immediate wake of Selma’s heroism as an influence on the course of events? Is that really the rhetorical hill that you want to die on here?
Watts was not the first rebellion. Officially, the first one took place in Birmingham in 1963, after the motel where Martin Luther King was staying was firebombed. In 1964, there was Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant. Everybody could see that pressure was building. Johnson was trying to get ahead of it. As for Johnson’s speech, many could only laugh when he pretended to be on the civil rights workers side by mouthing the words “We shall overcome.” yeah, he and the FBI. With friends like these….
If you don’t credit Lyndon Johnson with his role in civil rights, then there’s not much else to talk about. He was in no way a perfect mechanism, and he certainly was merely responsive and not the origin of change. But he blew up the political future of his own political party for the chance to use the window of Selma to change the country. He championed that legislation to the absolute political detriment of the Democratic Pary, knowing it would cost them the entire South for generations. I honestly don’t know where else to go here.
Read the Taylor Branch trilogy on King. Or the transcripts of the actual conversations between Johnson and King. If Lyndon Johnson doesn’t qualify for a moral moment in American history, then you’re right, no white person can be relied on to operate from anything beyond strict self-interest. In which case, it all makes sense. You can cease to worry about the power of moral suasion and pick up a brick. Good luck with that.
Hate when the thread gets too long you can’t comment directly but Mr. Simon, you really want to die on the rhetorical hill of being the person who would have said “rioters go home” following the death of MLK Jr. in 1968?
You are fucking breaking my heart right now.
Inevitability and understanding are wrapped into our collective understanding of 1968. To be sure, Americas inner cities were going to burn after Memphis. And in candor and fairness, those riots allowed African-American citizens to walk with their heads higher after the silencing of their greatest voice. But inevitability and understanding, in the long term, don’t matter to other, more lasting metrics.
Detroit was never again Detroit. Camden, N.J. was never again itself. And Baltimore has had a long fall before this moment of precious stability. If the dynamic that has taken hold nationally since Ferguson can’t be pressed to real reform through prolonged disobedience and protest — and permanent, transformational reform is honestly more about policy changes rather than specific outcomes in any single death from police violence, however appalling — then one can plausibly argue that non-violent mass disobedience can’t do the job. And yet it has in the past, time and again. And rioting? Truly a mixed bag, at best.
“…then you’re right, no white person can be relied on to operate from anything beyond strict self-interest.”
Understanding the role of a Johnson or Roosevelt in an earlier time period is key to understanding our present time period.
It is not a question of the color of their skin, but what interests they represent.
Both Johnson and Roosevelt engineered a political turn in response to potentially explosive social movements…. in order to keep the status quo, that is, poverty and unemployment amongst growing wealth and profit.
That’s just the facts of political life and how the political game is played.
If you’re going to wait on some political savior coming our way, you’ll be mighty disappointed again and again.
No one mentioned a political savior. Political allies will suffice. Johnson was a political ally of civil rights, for reasons both moral and practical. The transcripts of his presidency, read fully, offer evidence of both. All the cherry-picking in the world won’t erase the totality of the historical record.
The savior has to be us, collectively. And if we want to see the militarized law enforcement that has its hands around the throats of people curbed, then we need the awareness of more Americans than can be reassured by the imagery of burning and looting. I’m bored and weary of slogans and ideology. I’m intensely interested in any maneuver that stands a chance of changing shit.
Since when did the riots brought jobs to detroit? Detroit today is a shadow of its former self pre-1968.
That one got me. I’m arguing with an alternate universe.
Another thing. The rebellions of the late 1960s won a lot, as a matter of fact. You speak of Richard Nixon. But despite the fact that he was such a complete reactionary and disgusting person, under him, some of the most liberal legislation was pushed through, much more liberal than the Great Society. This included big extensions of Social Security and welfare benefits — the very things that people like Nixon decried. And why? Because the government was forced to do that — by the rebellions.
And if you read the Pentagon Papers, you will notice that one of the main reasons that the U.S. was forced out of Viet Nam was the fear of what was happening in the cities.
No, David. You couldn’t be more wrong.
The reason that America went into Vietnam was because most Americans affirmed for the domino theory and supported the military intervention. Look at the poll numbers right up until Tet in 1968. When the Tet Offensive, as failed a military endeavor as it was, succeeded in shocking the American electorate with the implications of a quagmire without end — that was the game-changer. From then on, opposition to the war went from a plurality to a majority of Americans. And Nixon was obliged to promise Vietnamization and a scaling back of the intervention as a preamble to his reelection campaign in 1972.
Linking what happened in American cities in 1967 and 1968 to the end of Vietnam — and ignoring the optics of Tet and how it brought middle America to a hard realization about what Vietnam promised long-term — is just absurd. It is quite close to a random junction of unrelated issues. Go on you tube and revisit the moment that Walter Cronkite — the most trusted voice for middle America — walked away from Vietnam after Tet. Lyndon Johnson watched that broadcast and said, knowingly, if I’ve lost Cronkite then I’ve lost the American people. You are overlooking an entire forest of history to stare down a single, remote tree. After 1968 there was a lot of fear of urban alienation for a lot of reasons; that it gets referenced in the Pentagon Papers, as wide-ranging as they were, is no surprise. That you cite that reference to the exclusion of the entire known historical construct by which Americans lost faith in the Vietnam intervention is certainly surprising.
As to the federal community block grants and UDAGs that followed the riots and provided resources for a slow rebricking of the ghettos and for community programming, that was indeed the result of the rioting in 1968. The government is very good at re-gilding the physical plant of the ghettoes; they threw that bone easy enough. But substantive economic change and a reincorporation of deindustrializing cities in the American economy? Never happened. And as for policing, you got Nixon declaring the war on drugs. To his credit, he upped treatment and education even more than he bumped enforcement during his administration, but of course the war footing was nonetheless established for Reagan and Clinton and Bush to exacerbate so disastrously.
I’m sorry. I would agree with you, but then we’d both be inaccurate.
As to Detroit, any reply? Or is the status of a dead American municipality that never restored itself after a culminating riot irrelevant? Don’t cherry pick my reply. Baltimore is not London or New York. We are a second-tier postindustrial city that has lost 35 percent of its population since 1960, with most of that fleeing in the decades following the 1968 riots. We are slowly reemerging with some very recent economic renewal and some very slight population increases. Your call for rioting — not for understanding the riot when it happens, or calling it an inevitability; I agree with such sentiments — but your claim that a riot will do us some good is an ugly and dangerous stretch of rhetoric. Do you live in Baltimore? Frankly, as a Baltimorean, it is fair of me to at least ask.
“We are a second-tier postindustrial city that has lost 35 percent of its population since 1960″
And yet you’re out here with nothing else to say but condemning the burning of a portion of the city that already looked like goddamn Fallujah to begin with.
Please. Read. Your. Own. Books.
Is that really what you took from David’s books? It’s cool to burn West Baltimore down, it was gone already anyway? You didn’t get, for instance, a profound sense of love and admiration for West Baltimore from reading The Corner?
Thank you. I was hoping someone might see it.
“If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence — these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.” — David Simon, THE WIRE: TRUTH BE TOLD
THE CORNER is one of my favorite books but it is rapidly going downhill in my estimation right now. My grandma, the one that knew H.L. Mencken, turned me on to it. I’d be real disappointed to have to tell her how its author has suddenly turned his back on everything he ever said overnight but she’s got Alzheimer’s now, so at least I’m spared that conversation.
Heck, I forgot it was on this very blog.
http://davidsimon.com/trayvon/
But apparently it’s different when it’s Watts. It’s different when it’s Selma. It’s different when it’s Eric Garner. It’s different when it’s Trayvon.
If someone, anyone can explain to me why David Simon understands this perfectly when it is happening anywhere in the world other than his own goddamn city, or why the only people who get this schoolmarm lecture instead of a fist of solidarity are his own goddamn fellow citizens, then I’d love to hear it. Honestly.
Good god. Read the quote carefully. I’m praising those who, despite the affront of Trayvon Martin’s outrageous death, did not riot. It is exactly consistent with the post on Monday that has you on a loop. And if you think a good riot in Florida would have changed the minds of the asshole Florida legislators as to the right of citizens to carry weapons and shoot black folk in ignorance and fear, then you really are wholly ignorant of the crippling effect of a riot’s optics on the minds of middle Americans.
It would feel damn good for a solid moment. And then, the wrong people would pay.
You think that passage, which specifically praises the folks who can refrain from being violent in the face of great injustice as patient and patriotic, was David Simon telling people to go throw a brick through a courthouse window? That looks to me like someone saying that they understand the source of the anger, even as they disagree with the violent reaction that stems from it. But maybe my reading of it is incorrect.
Exactly. And by the way, it’s a little perverse that kt would drag it forward in any event, given that she imagines a purposed silence over the death of Freddie Gray on my part. That post, and my defense of it, was on this blog way back at the beginning of this run of violence against unarmed African-Americans. But yeah, at least she posted the second part of the quote. The first sentence has been tossed around the internet out of context to argue a hypocrisy on my part.
All in the game, yo.
KT, I can explain:
you’ve fundamentally misunderstood David’s words that you thought painted him as a hypocrite.
It was a simple explanation
David, do you think you can post my response to this, with the quote from the Pentagon Papers?
Thanks,
ellis
ELLIS: SORRY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I NOT ONLY ATTEMPTED TO POST IT, MY REPLY WAS PREDICATED ON IT. IT MAY HAVE BEEN A PROBLEM WITH THE LINK THAT IT POSTED SOMEWHERE DEEPER ON THE STRING. I AM GOING TO GO BACK TO THE COMPUTER AND SEE IF I CAN DROP IT IN. IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE OTHERWISE.
POSTSCRIPT TO POSCRIPT: IT’S THERE NOW.
“And the reason why is that the “anger” and “selfishness” of the protesters is the one thing the power structure fears the most.”
With all due respect, I think it’s exactly what the powers-that-be don’t fear. Rioting is handing the racist, abusive, hyper-militarized National Security State a gift on a silver platter.
It’s fascinating watching people on the left saying essentially the same thing that people on the right say: that justice will come at the end of a gun. They’re peas in a pod, though they’ll never admit it.
Leaving aside the fact that the violence they seek won’t help them one bit, they refuse to acknowledge that they can never win that way. The State will always be able to out-gun, out-run, out-beat-up, and out-kill them. Look what it did in Waco. Look what it did in Ruby Ridge. Look what it did in Philadelphia in the ’80s — dropped a frigging bomb on a house. If the government has no qualms about dropping a bomb on the house of its own citizens in a densely populated city, does anyone actually think it would have qualms about doing anything and everything else?
I get that people are fed up. They damn well should be. Cops in this country maim and murder people with impunity. Anyone who isn’t furious either isn’t paying attention or is a sadist. But mirroring the behavior of the National Security State is precisely the wrong way to go about creating lasting change.
Where are these on-going riots that you and Mr. Simon are seeing? I’m not seeing them. I did see and join in a peaceful protest march of thousands of people – black, white, Latino, Asian, old, young, mothers w/ strollers etc. – on St. Paul St. yesterday. Of course the national media and the fucking NEWSPAPERS (!!!) that Mr. Simon is using for his sources weren’t there.
“Of course the national media and the fucking NEWSPAPERS (!!!) that Mr. Simon is using for his sources weren’t there.”
God, it’s amazing how one person can be so consistently, willfully full of shit. That protest — and all the other ones — have been copiously reported in the news. Maybe it’s you who’s reading the wrong sources. (And I thought you were on deadline?)
Maybe I was busy actually being there (did you come out? Hope you saw my invitation) but I didn’t see a single mainstream media news camera. Lots of independent photographers though.
Erm, these large, peaceful protests pretty much lead the news every morning on NPR. I don’t care about cable news and rarely watch the networks, so I can’t speak for them. I don’t think you should expect much out of them, though. All our local outlets have been putting the word out about the solidarity rally in my city tonight.
So, what do you propose? Elect a liberal Democrat?
“So, what do you propose? Elect a liberal Democrat?
Good god, no. Not a Republican either. I’ve lost faith in the electoral process, especially on the national level. If I even vote in 2016, it’ll be to write in the name of Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders. (I believe David Simon disagrees on this.)
I’ve already said throughout this comments section (but I realize this thing is almost 900 comments long by now) that I believe in civil disobedience. Strong, sustained, relentless civil disobedience. Calling the police to account, taking it seriously when they abuse people, demanding a stop to it, changing the power structure. All these things are interrelated — the TPP, the surveillance state, the trashing of the economy by Wall Street, the outsourcing of jobs, unemployment, U.S. warmongering abroad, so many things.
If I get a good third-party candidate with a shot at winning, I’ll vote for a third party to be sure. But he or she has to have a chance at the brass ring. Anyone who thinks there aren’t gradations of bad isn’t even remembering as far back as 2000. It can always get worse, and Ralph Nader taught me that in spades. Mr. Obama exists in a purchased political realm and operates within a rigged game. But there are things that have not gotten worse, and some things that have improved, because he occupies that seat rather than a reactionary.
If the Republican Party finds someone to the left of the Democratic choice, I’ll vote for him. If the libertarians were to abandon their entire sociopolitical creed and acknowledge the selfishness inherent in calls for liberty and freedom without the slightest nod to concommitant civic responsibility, I’d listen to their fellow and consider his campaign. I’m not holding my breath for such outcomes, which is why my vote is likely for the Democratic nominee. Again, bad is not worse. At some point when the tanks started rolling toward Baghdad, I thought that any sensate Nader voters might voice their regret. But, no.
Well, first things first, Nader didn’t lose Dems that election. The machinations of Jeb Bush and the refusal to ever count the Miami-Dade county vote did. Throwing out the votes of any urban district is tantamount to a Republican coup.
But let me still take this opportunity to vent my spleen at Nader. I voted for him in 2000. In my defense, there was a purpose to that (getting the Green Party federal recognition) and I was living in New York; I did a vote trade with a red stater.
Him running again in 2004 without the Green Party’s support was unfuckingforgivable and the height of ego. I saw him at a book signing in Union Station a couple of years later and I had to restrain myself from going over and kicking him square in the ass. (Nobody wanted his book btw.) Last I’ve seen or heard of him.
Thanks for the seat belts anyway, Nader. Dick.
Why blame Nader when this was the Gore and Kerry days. Swift boated and outmaneuvered by ballot counting lawyers. Both just folded when they should have come out swinging. Nader wasn’t the problem, weak ass Dems were.
Plenty went into the outcome. The point is that the election proved so close that any sensate voter has to acknowledge that a scenario exists in which a vote for a third-party candidate that has no remote chance of victory could be a wasted one.
My parents were New Deal Democrats. In 1948, my father cast a protest vote for Norman Thomas, the socialist candidate. He wasn’t overjoyed with Truman, but he had reasoned that Dewey was going to win anyway, and this would be his stand against some of Truman’s disappointing compromises. My mother went to bed on election night saying he wasted his vote, that Truman would win.
She never let him forget it, either.
Please, John Kerry was the goddamn Winter Soldier and picky-ass liberals let him get dumped on b/c he windsurfs. I give them all the gasface.
And I am pretty fucking sure Gore would not have taken us to war over oil rights.
Sorry, I don’t think Obama’s drone murders are any improvement.
You got me there. Isn’t politics a Hobbsian exercise?
What you forget about the Bush years is that he couldn’t have carried out any of his policies without key Democratic support: the wars, the Patriot Act, the tax cuts, the bailouts… etc.
You also forget that after Obama took office, he brought several Bush people with him, and that he continued all of those policies.
The Democrats and Republicans play the oldest political game there is: they appeal to their respective voting bases by blaming the policies that they themselves carry out on the other party.
Yep. Disappointments abound, some worse than others. Again, a vote cast in this republic — or any republic for that matter — seems always to be a Hobbsian exercise.
VOTE HILLARY 2016. Her statement on this matter was a hell of a lot better than Mr. Simon’s (or Barack’s for that matter) and I’d wager she’s probably a bit busier than him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMOrFjP-tTY
This is just a salient clip but the full speech is definitely worth watching. Khaleesi is coming to Westeros!
Oh, god. Hillary is a hawk of the first order. She voted for the AUMF. She supports the drone strikes. She loves war.
And the GOP are pacifists?!?!?
Enjoy wasting your vote.
David if you want me to keep it 100% 100 with you right now I will. Go back and look. Apparently during Ferguson I was the one uber-fan of yours on this blog that did not expect you to comment on the BPD at that time and actually defended you for not doing so (I was quite surprised when you responded saying you’d get around to it — NOT surprised when you never did) — because like any intelligent person who has actually read and watched all of your work carefully, I have sussed that you probably have long-term sources in the department, and if you ever actually throw down hardcore for the people against them the Thin Blue Line will ensure that those sources dry up pretty fucking quick.
Meanwhile my acquaintance in the BPD — and again, if I named him and his position the nards of everyone on this blog would shrivel up and fly away — doesn’t mind telling me in writing that there will be NO CHARGES brought* against the six officers responsible for the death of Freddie Gray because he’s seen the autopsy report and they’re already working on concocting their excuses. So I don’t know what you’re so worried about.
But keep on writing, it might be of some use if you can bring yourself to be honest.
*At least according to him, but he’s kind of a dick if you hadn’t figured that out already, so hey, we’ll see.
Kt, I’m out. If you’re disappointed, that’s what you are. No need to continue this stuff.
When a man who loves to argue as much as you do gives up then I know I’m right. Whether you have too much pride to admit it or not.
Looking forward to your essay.
I love to argue about stuff that has substance. Very true.
I must tell you, I’m less disappointed that you were wrongheaded in your timing and tone on this in the first place than that, even after peace and quiet has prevailed and much better information on the source of the riots (aka the police) is emerging, you’re still doubling and tripling down on it.
I thought you were better than this, or at least more intelligent.
Now I’m just glad your next work is a period piece b/c you honestly do not have your finger on the pulse anymore. Maybe get out into the Baltimore streets again and actually talk to the people. You might learn something. Worked for you before.
David,
I’m sorry but I have spoken with the invisible internet Illuminati and it has been decided. From this point forward davidsimon.com will now be known as KT.com . Obviously, you have dropped the ball and KT will be taking over as spokesperson for Baltimore. Crabs? Leave it to KT. A story concerning Domino Sugar. That’s right, KT will be fielding all inquiries. Drug war/police brutality/inequality, yep you guessed it, its now KT’s job.
Now if you don’t go ahead and start forwarding your domain directly to KT, appropriate virtual tarring and feathering will commence. Of course you can stop all this from happening if you give up and concede to KT and promise never to let her down again.
That is all.
Thank you.
Half coyote: love!
I thought I was lucky to have ONE conspiracy theorist but now the Illuminati is behind my reign of terror on this blog?!?! I. LOVE. IT!
Sorry to disappoint you though, if there is one thing I still agree with Mr. Simon about right now it’s about the crabs in Baltimore. I don’t know what the best crabhouse is anymore now that Obrycki’s shut down but the man is speaking nothing but the Goddess’s honest truth when he says it’s a Faidley’s crabcake or bust. I’ll defend him on that to the death.
Gunnings is gone, too. I travel to Costas Inn over on North Point. But I am unsure of any true ranking.
Dang it. I guess if I had to advise anyone I’d say just hit up the fish market and make your own. Although I did see Oprah and Steadman went for Captain John’s Landing a couple of months back.
Side note: H.L. Mencken taught my grandmother how to crack crabs. If anybody can come up with a better Baltimore bonafide than that, BRING IT. lol
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