Baltimore Rebellion Prompts Nationwide Protests
Militarized police state fails to halt mass demonstrations
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Note: Six police officers were indicted by the Baltimore State's Attorney on May 1 in connection with the violent death of Freddie Grey. Nonetheless, the beatings and arrests continue.
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Reports say that 7,000 police and Maryland National Guard troops are occupying the city of Baltimore. A curfew has been imposed for two nights while dozens have been arrested for violating the ban on being on the street during the hours of 10:00pm to 5:00am.
So far over 300 people have been detained in Baltimore. Police jailed children as young as 11 and 12 years old for three days without charges. Over 100 people were released on April 29 because there was no evidence to continue to hold them in custody.
On the first night of the imposition of the curfew April 28, police fired teargas canisters and rubber bullets at unarmed nonviolent protesters. All during that same day, the corporate media and governmental officials described the demonstrations as “peaceful and lawful.” Yet these same peaceful protesters were gassed and fired on just minutes after the 10:00pm curfew.
Humvees, armored vehicles and columns of cop cars patrolled the commercial and residential sections of West and East Baltimore. Helicopters flying above told people that they must be off the streets or they would be arrested.
Corporate media outlets such as CNN featured commentators who decried the rebellion as violent criminal activity, drawing the distinction between peaceful protest as opposed to attacks on police and private property. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said that April 27, the day of the most intense fighting, was one of the darkest days in the history of Baltimore.
These news agencies described the police response as “methodical” and “restrained.” It was the youth and workers who broke store windows, set fires and damaged police property that were the real culprits, not the law-enforcement agents responsible for the death of Freddie Grey and hundreds of other African Americans in Baltimore and across the United States over the last year.
National Response to the Rebellion
Despite the efforts by public officials and corporate media houses to put a negative slant on the rebellion, people across the U.S. went into the streets to demonstrate in solidarity with Baltimore. In New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver and other cities, actions were held calling for justice in the Freddie Grey killing as well as raising issues related to police brutality in their own cities.
In Ferguson, Missouri, the suburb outside of St. Louis and home to 18-year-old Michael Brown who was gunned down by white patrolman Darren Wilson, where a rebellion sparked anti-racist protests nationwide last Aug., people took to the streets once again. The response to the Baltimore rebellion in Ferguson was one of the most militant so far.
According to a report published by KSDK-TV in St. Louis, “Shortly before 10 p.m. local time, officers were called to West Florissant Avenue for a shooting outside a restaurant. That person sustained minor injuries. A city spokesperson said protesters were throwing rocks at patrol vehicles while officers tried to help the victims of the shooting.”
This same dispatch went on to say that “Protesters started lighting dumpsters on fire, and standing in the street, prompting officers to don riot gear and close the street while they regained control of the situation. The streets of Ferguson have been relatively calm since two officers were shot March 11 outside the police department during protests. Those officers are recovering from their injuries. A 20-year-old protester was charged with shooting the officers — one was shot in the face, the other in the shoulder.”
Perhaps the largest demonstrations took place in Manhattan where thousands marched through the streets from Union Square to Times Square and beyond. Police were ordered to keep people out of the streets resulting in ongoing clashes and the arrest of over 100 people.
Late last year tens of thousands had marched through New York City in the aftermath of the grand jury exoneration of a police officer in the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island. Activists blocked tunnels, highways, transit centers chanting “We Can’t Breath”, evoking the last words of Eric Garner whose killing was captured on a cellphone video.
Many more demonstrations were planned for May Day on Friday and throughout the weekend.
Standing Between the State and the Masses
The most decisive factor in the clearing of the streets of Baltimore after 10:00pm was the large-scale presence of the police and National Guard. Surrounding crowds in helmets, flak jackets, holding shields and armed with numerous weapons including firearms and so-called non-lethal devices, i.e. tasers, guns that fire pepper and rubber bullets, which can kill as easily as metal rounds, the armed agents of the state are carrying out their traditional role of protecting private property and the government.
Nonetheless, another factor has entered the fray in Baltimore where a section of the elected officials, religious figures, community activists and even street organizations have been mobilized to serve as a buffer between the restless youth and workers and the police who are protecting private property and the state. These individuals and groups are interestingly enough facing the demonstrators with their backs turned to the police and National Guard troops.
These politicians, religious leaders and street organizations are telling the masses that they must honor the curfew, to refrain from breaking windows and remain peaceful in light of the full-scale militarization of their communities. Even representatives of street organizations were portrayed repeatedly telling CNN that they had nothing to do with the rebellion and that reports indicating they were linking arms to attack the police were untrue.
Former Baltimore Raven football player Ray Lewis is shown on television yelling that youth must stop rebelling and get off the streets. He is brought in to speak to young high school students, who sparked the unrest on April 27, telling them that they must be more concerned about ending violence among the people than overturning the social violence of the state, which is the real cause of street crimes and instability.
A mother worried that her son would be killed by the police in the rebellion is shown every hour striking the young man in a manner that would normally prompt an investigation by child protective services. Yet this incident is upheld by the corporate media and the politicians as a heroic act to be emulated by other parents in Baltimore.
It turns out that this mother is unemployed. She has several children and is facing a perilous situation socially and financially. Rather than focus on the dilemma of such families in the city, the media and politicians divert the discussion to the supposed need to discipline youth.
When interviewed the youth said that he had joined the demonstrations because his friends were there seeking to avenge the deaths of their colleagues at the hands of the police. This too was routinely ignored where reporters asked questions such as: why did you join the rebellion; do you regret having set out to protest the police killing of Freddie Grey and so many other young people in Baltimore?
What the ruling class is really interested in is whether there is a growing mood of defiance among African American youth. On April 27, when the rebellion erupted on a broad level in several areas of Baltimore, corporate media commentators repeatedly referred to the mass hostility towards the police, private property and those perceived as representatives of the oppressive state apparatus.
Of course this narrative was turned on its head by April 28, where those standing between the cops and the masses were highlighted emphasizing the need to end the rebellion and to demonstrate peacefully until 10:00pm and then go home. One aspect of the reversal in messaging was that the protests must remain focused on holding several police officers up to scrutiny in the death of Grey.
Yet there is the underlying national and class oppression that is the source of discontent in Baltimore and African American communities throughout the U.S. Notions of personal responsibility for the youth took precedent over ending police brutality and state repression.
The New York Times drawing a distinction between the rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore noted that “In Ferguson, Mo., community leaders seemed unable to come together to stem the violence after the police killing of Michael Brown in August. But in Baltimore, an array of pastors, politicians, community leaders and even gang members have repeatedly taken to the streets to calm crowds, effectively helping the police impose a curfew so far.” (April 30)
Continuing to report on this phenomenon, the same article goes on to say “Many local politicians, notably Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat whose district includes West Baltimore, have also spent hours walking the city’s blighted neighborhoods to discourage any repeat of Monday’s disorder. When schools were closed on Tuesday, some teachers came to churches to help feed children who rely on meals they get at school. Ordinary citizens, by the hundreds, have swept up the mess and repeatedly formed lines to create a buffer between police officers in riot gear and angry demonstrators.”
Any objective observer or participant in the Baltimore rebellion and mass demonstrations would have to ask where these religious, community and street organizations were while thousands of families facing foreclosures by the banks were being evicted from their homes. All throughout African American communities in Baltimore there are blocks and blocks of abandoned row houses slated for demolition.
Are these people prepared to stand in between the city employees seeking to terminate water services and the households of the victims who will be faced with the denial of this essential resource to maintain a decent life? In other words it is not the ruling class that should define what criminality is but the people who are victims of state-sanctioned violence everyday of their lives.
Ideological Clarity and the Character of the Racist State
The mass anger in Baltimore is by no means subsided. On April 29, thousands took the streets in defiance of the militarized police state and marched from several areas of the city including John Hopkins University to City Hall.
The police in a press conference on April 30 announced that they had completed their investigative report on the death of Grey one day early and would turn over their findings to the State Attorney’s office for review. Apparently the report is concealed only releasing what they said was new information about a second stop of the police vehicle which contained Grey. People are highly suspicious that another cover-up is in the works.
Local politicians and media pundits had begun to announce on April 29 that the law-enforcement and prosecutorial investigation into the death of Grey would not be complete by the end of the week. This was coupled with two lead stories, one by the Washington Post saying that another detainee heard Grey slamming his own head against the wall of the vehicle.
The second story revolved around an interview aired over CNN with a person said to be a relative of an officer targeted in the investigation, saying that this cop was not responsible for Grey’s death. These developments continue a similar pattern that was advanced in the cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless others.
Michael Brown was portrayed as a dangerous criminal who attempted to seize Officer Wilson’s weapon. Eric Garner was said to have been selling loose cigarettes on the street and was obese, therefore resulting in his death despite the police chokehold and medical neglect.
These rationalizations and outright lies by the state and capitalist class must be rejected by the African American community and its allies in Baltimore as well as throughout the U.S. The capitalist system in the U.S. has nothing to offer the African American masses other than more police terror, mass incarceration, joblessness, poverty and social degradation.
A speech delivered by Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton supposedly questioning the policy of mass incarceration of African Americans, can only be regarded as campaign posturing. This same Democratic Party twenty years ago engineered the passage of the dreaded crime bill, the effective death penalty act and the intensification of anti-immigration laws, which have resulted in more deaths, imprisonment and deportations of oppressed peoples.
Objectively the socio-economic conditions of African Americans have worsened since the Clinton, Bush and current Obama administrations. The gap between income and wealth among African Americans and whites has widened.
African Americans were disproportionately impacted by the bank-led predatory lending that brought about the loss of millions of homes throughout the U.S. The federal government, the courts and Congress have facilitated the enhanced disempowerment and exploitation of the workers and oppressed by the capitalist ruling class.
In essence there are only two paths to take in the struggle for the total liberation of the African American people and all oppressed and working people. Either the movement will turn in the direction of an uncompromising opposition to capitalism and imperialism or remain subjected to the manipulations and constraints imposed by the bipolar two-party political system.
African Americans, the oppressed in general and working people as a whole need their own political party that speaks in the interests of the majority. From 1968, after the mass rebellions following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., thousands of African Americans have been elected to political office. Nonetheless, the people have not been liberated. It will take a protracted revolutionary struggle to overturn the system of oppression.
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Note: Six police officers were indicted by the Baltimore State's Attorney on May 1 in connection with the violent death of Freddie Grey. Nonetheless, the beatings and arrests continue.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reports say that 7,000 police and Maryland National Guard troops are occupying the city of Baltimore. A curfew has been imposed for two nights while dozens have been arrested for violating the ban on being on the street during the hours of 10:00pm to 5:00am.
So far over 300 people have been detained in Baltimore. Police jailed children as young as 11 and 12 years old for three days without charges. Over 100 people were released on April 29 because there was no evidence to continue to hold them in custody.
On the first night of the imposition of the curfew April 28, police fired teargas canisters and rubber bullets at unarmed nonviolent protesters. All during that same day, the corporate media and governmental officials described the demonstrations as “peaceful and lawful.” Yet these same peaceful protesters were gassed and fired on just minutes after the 10:00pm curfew.
Humvees, armored vehicles and columns of cop cars patrolled the commercial and residential sections of West and East Baltimore. Helicopters flying above told people that they must be off the streets or they would be arrested.
Corporate media outlets such as CNN featured commentators who decried the rebellion as violent criminal activity, drawing the distinction between peaceful protest as opposed to attacks on police and private property. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said that April 27, the day of the most intense fighting, was one of the darkest days in the history of Baltimore.
These news agencies described the police response as “methodical” and “restrained.” It was the youth and workers who broke store windows, set fires and damaged police property that were the real culprits, not the law-enforcement agents responsible for the death of Freddie Grey and hundreds of other African Americans in Baltimore and across the United States over the last year.
National Response to the Rebellion
Despite the efforts by public officials and corporate media houses to put a negative slant on the rebellion, people across the U.S. went into the streets to demonstrate in solidarity with Baltimore. In New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver and other cities, actions were held calling for justice in the Freddie Grey killing as well as raising issues related to police brutality in their own cities.
In Ferguson, Missouri, the suburb outside of St. Louis and home to 18-year-old Michael Brown who was gunned down by white patrolman Darren Wilson, where a rebellion sparked anti-racist protests nationwide last Aug., people took to the streets once again. The response to the Baltimore rebellion in Ferguson was one of the most militant so far.
According to a report published by KSDK-TV in St. Louis, “Shortly before 10 p.m. local time, officers were called to West Florissant Avenue for a shooting outside a restaurant. That person sustained minor injuries. A city spokesperson said protesters were throwing rocks at patrol vehicles while officers tried to help the victims of the shooting.”
This same dispatch went on to say that “Protesters started lighting dumpsters on fire, and standing in the street, prompting officers to don riot gear and close the street while they regained control of the situation. The streets of Ferguson have been relatively calm since two officers were shot March 11 outside the police department during protests. Those officers are recovering from their injuries. A 20-year-old protester was charged with shooting the officers — one was shot in the face, the other in the shoulder.”
Perhaps the largest demonstrations took place in Manhattan where thousands marched through the streets from Union Square to Times Square and beyond. Police were ordered to keep people out of the streets resulting in ongoing clashes and the arrest of over 100 people.
Late last year tens of thousands had marched through New York City in the aftermath of the grand jury exoneration of a police officer in the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island. Activists blocked tunnels, highways, transit centers chanting “We Can’t Breath”, evoking the last words of Eric Garner whose killing was captured on a cellphone video.
Many more demonstrations were planned for May Day on Friday and throughout the weekend.
Standing Between the State and the Masses
The most decisive factor in the clearing of the streets of Baltimore after 10:00pm was the large-scale presence of the police and National Guard. Surrounding crowds in helmets, flak jackets, holding shields and armed with numerous weapons including firearms and so-called non-lethal devices, i.e. tasers, guns that fire pepper and rubber bullets, which can kill as easily as metal rounds, the armed agents of the state are carrying out their traditional role of protecting private property and the government.
Nonetheless, another factor has entered the fray in Baltimore where a section of the elected officials, religious figures, community activists and even street organizations have been mobilized to serve as a buffer between the restless youth and workers and the police who are protecting private property and the state. These individuals and groups are interestingly enough facing the demonstrators with their backs turned to the police and National Guard troops.
These politicians, religious leaders and street organizations are telling the masses that they must honor the curfew, to refrain from breaking windows and remain peaceful in light of the full-scale militarization of their communities. Even representatives of street organizations were portrayed repeatedly telling CNN that they had nothing to do with the rebellion and that reports indicating they were linking arms to attack the police were untrue.
Former Baltimore Raven football player Ray Lewis is shown on television yelling that youth must stop rebelling and get off the streets. He is brought in to speak to young high school students, who sparked the unrest on April 27, telling them that they must be more concerned about ending violence among the people than overturning the social violence of the state, which is the real cause of street crimes and instability.
A mother worried that her son would be killed by the police in the rebellion is shown every hour striking the young man in a manner that would normally prompt an investigation by child protective services. Yet this incident is upheld by the corporate media and the politicians as a heroic act to be emulated by other parents in Baltimore.
It turns out that this mother is unemployed. She has several children and is facing a perilous situation socially and financially. Rather than focus on the dilemma of such families in the city, the media and politicians divert the discussion to the supposed need to discipline youth.
When interviewed the youth said that he had joined the demonstrations because his friends were there seeking to avenge the deaths of their colleagues at the hands of the police. This too was routinely ignored where reporters asked questions such as: why did you join the rebellion; do you regret having set out to protest the police killing of Freddie Grey and so many other young people in Baltimore?
What the ruling class is really interested in is whether there is a growing mood of defiance among African American youth. On April 27, when the rebellion erupted on a broad level in several areas of Baltimore, corporate media commentators repeatedly referred to the mass hostility towards the police, private property and those perceived as representatives of the oppressive state apparatus.
Of course this narrative was turned on its head by April 28, where those standing between the cops and the masses were highlighted emphasizing the need to end the rebellion and to demonstrate peacefully until 10:00pm and then go home. One aspect of the reversal in messaging was that the protests must remain focused on holding several police officers up to scrutiny in the death of Grey.
Yet there is the underlying national and class oppression that is the source of discontent in Baltimore and African American communities throughout the U.S. Notions of personal responsibility for the youth took precedent over ending police brutality and state repression.
The New York Times drawing a distinction between the rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore noted that “In Ferguson, Mo., community leaders seemed unable to come together to stem the violence after the police killing of Michael Brown in August. But in Baltimore, an array of pastors, politicians, community leaders and even gang members have repeatedly taken to the streets to calm crowds, effectively helping the police impose a curfew so far.” (April 30)
Continuing to report on this phenomenon, the same article goes on to say “Many local politicians, notably Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat whose district includes West Baltimore, have also spent hours walking the city’s blighted neighborhoods to discourage any repeat of Monday’s disorder. When schools were closed on Tuesday, some teachers came to churches to help feed children who rely on meals they get at school. Ordinary citizens, by the hundreds, have swept up the mess and repeatedly formed lines to create a buffer between police officers in riot gear and angry demonstrators.”
Any objective observer or participant in the Baltimore rebellion and mass demonstrations would have to ask where these religious, community and street organizations were while thousands of families facing foreclosures by the banks were being evicted from their homes. All throughout African American communities in Baltimore there are blocks and blocks of abandoned row houses slated for demolition.
Are these people prepared to stand in between the city employees seeking to terminate water services and the households of the victims who will be faced with the denial of this essential resource to maintain a decent life? In other words it is not the ruling class that should define what criminality is but the people who are victims of state-sanctioned violence everyday of their lives.
Ideological Clarity and the Character of the Racist State
The mass anger in Baltimore is by no means subsided. On April 29, thousands took the streets in defiance of the militarized police state and marched from several areas of the city including John Hopkins University to City Hall.
The police in a press conference on April 30 announced that they had completed their investigative report on the death of Grey one day early and would turn over their findings to the State Attorney’s office for review. Apparently the report is concealed only releasing what they said was new information about a second stop of the police vehicle which contained Grey. People are highly suspicious that another cover-up is in the works.
Local politicians and media pundits had begun to announce on April 29 that the law-enforcement and prosecutorial investigation into the death of Grey would not be complete by the end of the week. This was coupled with two lead stories, one by the Washington Post saying that another detainee heard Grey slamming his own head against the wall of the vehicle.
The second story revolved around an interview aired over CNN with a person said to be a relative of an officer targeted in the investigation, saying that this cop was not responsible for Grey’s death. These developments continue a similar pattern that was advanced in the cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless others.
Michael Brown was portrayed as a dangerous criminal who attempted to seize Officer Wilson’s weapon. Eric Garner was said to have been selling loose cigarettes on the street and was obese, therefore resulting in his death despite the police chokehold and medical neglect.
These rationalizations and outright lies by the state and capitalist class must be rejected by the African American community and its allies in Baltimore as well as throughout the U.S. The capitalist system in the U.S. has nothing to offer the African American masses other than more police terror, mass incarceration, joblessness, poverty and social degradation.
A speech delivered by Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton supposedly questioning the policy of mass incarceration of African Americans, can only be regarded as campaign posturing. This same Democratic Party twenty years ago engineered the passage of the dreaded crime bill, the effective death penalty act and the intensification of anti-immigration laws, which have resulted in more deaths, imprisonment and deportations of oppressed peoples.
Objectively the socio-economic conditions of African Americans have worsened since the Clinton, Bush and current Obama administrations. The gap between income and wealth among African Americans and whites has widened.
African Americans were disproportionately impacted by the bank-led predatory lending that brought about the loss of millions of homes throughout the U.S. The federal government, the courts and Congress have facilitated the enhanced disempowerment and exploitation of the workers and oppressed by the capitalist ruling class.
In essence there are only two paths to take in the struggle for the total liberation of the African American people and all oppressed and working people. Either the movement will turn in the direction of an uncompromising opposition to capitalism and imperialism or remain subjected to the manipulations and constraints imposed by the bipolar two-party political system.
African Americans, the oppressed in general and working people as a whole need their own political party that speaks in the interests of the majority. From 1968, after the mass rebellions following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., thousands of African Americans have been elected to political office. Nonetheless, the people have not been liberated. It will take a protracted revolutionary struggle to overturn the system of oppression.
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