Baltimore (coming to a city near you)
“I’ve made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech. It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” -Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor of the City of Baltimore, 25 April 2015
Angry mobs and rioting are nothing new to Baltimore.
The first bloodshed of the American Civil War took place on Pratt Street, in April of 1861, when local sympathizers to the Southern cause, pelted the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment with cobblestones, while marching from the President Street Station in East Baltimore to Camden Station in West Baltimore, prompting the death of sixteen men and injuring thirty-six others, when the soldiers opened fire on what were locally known as the “Punk Uglies”. As a result, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln ordered cannon be placed atop Federal Hill, overlooking the city’s downtown, with orders to “level” the city in the event of further disturbances. This bloodshed, and Lincoln’s reaction to it, prompted the writing of Maryland’s State song, “Maryland, my Maryland”, by James Randall, as a rallying cry for Marylanders to join the Confederacy. Lincoln summarily jailed pro-Southern legislators, suspending habeas corpus, and thus prevented Maryland’s secession.
Fast forward precisely one hundred seven years later when in April, 1968, rioting erupted in Baltimore, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. For seven days, blacks rioted in the streets of Baltimore, setting 1,200 fires, looting thousands of local businesses, and terrorizing a city already struggling with race relations. Six people died, and seven hundred others were injured, resulting in 5,800 arrests and $ 12 million in property damages- the worst taking place in the US during that troubled year.
Fast forward, once more, forty-seven years. It is April, 2015, and the injury and subsequent death of a twenty-five year old black man, Freddie Gray, in the custody of the Baltimore Police, prompted demonstrations which began peacefully, but quickly turned violent on Saturday, April 25th, just outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards, when marching demonstrators attacked white fans, outside a nearby pub, and the police were nowhere to be found. Two days later, in northwest Baltimore, high school kids, prompted by social media, begin pelting police officers with bricks and stones, setting patrol cars on fire and sending fifteen officers to area hospitals, in what was a textbook example of that which happens when local law enforcement officers are ordered by their superiors to give leeway in the face of assault, and stand down on orders of the Baltimore powers-that-be. Baltimore Police had advanced warning of a “verifiable threat” when three black gangs, known as the Black Guerilla Family, the Crips, and the Bloods announced that they would join together, in concerted effort, to kill white cops, and the mayor of this city does basically nothing to stop what was to follow, until far too late. Later denying what she had said two days before, about “giving space to those who want to destroy”, she was also late in calling on Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to bring out the National Guard and, incredulously, announcing a city-wide curfew beginning TONIGHT, when she should have made it effective, LAST night. Mayor Blake, who is also secretary of the Democratic National Committee, reportedly consulted with President Barack Obama, who advised both herself and the Maryland Governor, to “show restraint” in dealing with the protestors and to give them leeway in their increasingly-violent expressions of anger.
Welcome to Obama’s America, where rioters and looters are labeled “victims of oppression”, and anarchy reigns. We are quite familiar with this section of Baltimore, where our mother grew up a half dozen blocks from the CVS pharmacy that was looted by the “oppressed”, and summarily set afire. Firefighters, attempting to put out the fire, were thwarted by other “oppressed” citizens, who used switch-blades to render their fire hoses inoperable. The assault on the police officers, by black high school students being incited to “purge” and thus create havoc, did so at an intersection where our father once worked at a gasoline station to support his family during the Great Depression. His family lacked what these “oppressed” people are given (welfare, food stamps, assistance) freely, showing the ugly reality of “dogs biting the very hands that feed them”. The looting continued- liquor stores, wig shops, all types of locally owned businesses were looted by more of the “oppressed” who, in reality, couldn’t have picked out Freddie Gray in a lineup of three people if they had to do so. A City Councilman, who was watching a liquor store being looted, ordered the police to retreat and allow the looting to continue, and then told a reporter that the looting was the result of “decades-long oppression and insensitivity to the needs of the poor people who needed community investment, jobs, and leniency from the police”. My father, back in the day, must have missed the memo which says, “it’s okay to loot a nearby business if you are poor”, but this is the reality of what has become of a once-great American city- the city of William Donald Schaeffer, urban homesteading, inner-city revitalization projects like Harborplace, and new baseball and football stadiums. That Baltimore died last night. No one in their right mind would bring much-needed businesses to a city whose police are ordered not to protect the very businesses on which a community depends for jobs and economic opportunity.
Weep not for Baltimore, for what has taken place there is coming to a city near you, thanks to the lack of leadership at the highest levels of government- including the Mayor, the City Council and yes, even the President of the United States.
-Drew Nickell, 28 April 2015
©2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved