By Walter L. Hilliard III
If America Can’t Stop A Couple of Terrorist Bringing Down The World Trade Center, How Is It Going To Stop 45 Million Angry Black People.
According to a Baltimore Sun investigative reporter who researched issues in the Baltimore Police Department records, there were 102 lawsuits and $6 million in payouts by the department since 20011, but none of the officers were charged with any of the crimes they were accused of, including brutality incidents. In fact, many of these officers were promoted and moved up the chain of command, which helped create the culture of police brutality the department is now known for.
So here we are once again, more drama in Baltimore, MD, on the day of the funeral of Freddie Gray, the young Black man who recently died from a severed spine while in police custody. Reportedly, Black kids at local schools decided to do what was called a “purge,” leaving their schools to rob, which sounds like a media lie. It appears to be that they were really hitting the streets to protest the death of Grey.
Additionally, media outlets reported that the police announced that they had received information, a credible threat, that Black gangs, including the Bloods, Crips, and the Black Guerrilla Family in Baltimore, were possibly coming together to organize and start attacking policemen. Is it true? Well, one Black church leader said he didn’t think gangs could come together and agree on anything. However, this issue didn’t seem to be directly related to what happened when regarding the school kids– other than everyone being extremely angry about police abuse.
“They’re running into stores… and stealing whatever they can…they’re gang members,” said a racist, clueless Wolf Blitzer, host of CNN’s “Situation Room.” My message to Wolf: “Spend less time at the ‘Soul Train Awards’ pretending to be “down” with Black people and more time learning about institutional racism, police brutality, and how White Supremacy works.– starting with media personalities like yourself.”
What was also interesting is many of the Black men from the Nation of Islam and several of the churches, many of whom had attended Freddie Gray’s funeral, organized and went and tried to get the angry Black crowds of youth to stop looting and go home. Nonetheless, I saw some of the protestors yelling at the church leaders (not the NOI) and defying their orders as the men walked up to the protestors in their church suits, long coats and ties. Obviously, this was a class issue and the poor Black folks in the streets didn’t want to hear anything from the bougie pacifiers whom they typically don’t see.
It’s quite telling how indifferent the mainstream media and government are to the millions of Black people “rotting” away in our American ghettos. For example, a CNN report stated: “Breaking News: Rioters Turn Baltimore To ‘Absolute War Zone.’”
Any day of the weak, you may see, say, Anderson Cooper, or others, reporting on death and destruction clear across the world, and yet he won’t step foot in Black neighborhoods being wrecked by violence and poverty right down the street from the CNN media outlets in Chicago, Atlanta, and hundreds of other Black cities.
Baltimore, an American city, actually ended up looking like South Africa during the apartheid riots once the youth got warmed up, throwing rocks and bottles. In fact, early on during the protest, hundreds of Black kids ran scores of cops back up the street with rocks and bottles after the cops started sending helicopters telling the crowds to disperse over a loud speaker. Cops were also out in riot gear and in armored vehicles pushing kids around, demanding they disperse, leading to the kids retaliating.
In one scene on CNN, shot from a helicopter, Black kids saw a police car on a side street and charged the car with their rocks and bottles, as the police car tried to turn around. Eventually, the kids reached the car and started pummeling it with rocks. A White officer got out as they ran back down the street. He must have pulled his gun and pointed it at them because they took off running, or maybe they were just satisfied after hitting the car?
In other helicopter shots, the kids found other police cars in the middle different streets and burned them or tore them up with rocks, sticks, and by jumping around on top of them. Also, at the time of this writing, there were fourteen police officers reportedly injured. And CNN and MSNBC spent a lot of time showing a CVS being looted. There were also residents yelling at policemen standing in lines on their home blocks.
The reality is that the police were really only out to protect property and they have never cared about protecting the Black citizens that pay their salaries. Yes, these are many of the same Black bodies they also make money off of by way of fines, as they harass, beat, incarcerate and even kill people. So the criminal justice system, including the very existence of great paying attorney, cop, administrator, and judge positions, is a money making machine.
The level of anger and extreme behavior of these young people in Baltimore is in proportion to the amount of exploitation they’ve faced at the hands of the police, including the shooting of Black men all around the country. The bigger causes of these issues stem from White supremacy facilitating, through institutional racism, the exploitation of poor Blacks in ghettos, allowing and creating the circumstances for poverty, dysfunctional schools, etc, to fester and grow. Yes, the American government has allowed and organized their system to allow the mistreatment of Black people for hundreds of years and at some point the oppressed will “naturally” push back. However, Black people are going to become extremely dangerous, as dangerous as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or any other type of serious terrorist group because this is their home and they are tired of the systematic police abuse. America is creating Black terrorism, evolving out of police or state-sponsored terrorism, and so once these Black gangs commit to terrorist acts against the police, their movement will grow because there are 45 million angry Black people in America.
These Black kids, many of whom are gang members, have a low quality of life and no opportunities outside of gang life and a future in which they will be jailed or killed by the police or rival gang members.
During the many reports I watched on CNN and MSNBC, not one report, analysis, or commentary asked the question: “Why are these Black kids so angry—why would they act out in such a way?”
And this is what’s so sad. This is what’s so racist!
(I wrote this article at midday, 4-27-15, and I’m thinking all hell is going to break loose tonight.)
