One of the most important things folks can and should be doing with regards to the Freddie Gray situation is pay close attention as to how and why a city wide curfew was allowed to be imposed on the entire city of Baltimore… That’s serious biz. It was a the manifestation of a police state.. It was an over reach that last night (Friday) resulted in abuse of power and gave those institutions responsible for killing Freddie Gray, who expressed open and public hostility at the indictment of its officers, a working blueprint on how to contain folks in 2015.
These police agencies now understand how to get widespread community buy in and compliance. They know that if they frame the curfew as ‘concern’ and ‘fear of wildness’ by youth, then high profile community leaders and others who have genuine concern for the well being of young people in the community would actually publicly model compliant behavior and in many cases actually help the police enforce the curfew…. A curfew that in the minds of many, was something that was needed to quell and punish the youth but in reality applied to EVERYONE… If there was any doubt about that, then folks found out last night when police moved in aggressively and started arresting folks whose only crime was being out after 10 PM and in a celebratory mood as a result of the indictments.
Folks should stop and think about that for a minute. The main agency enforcing this city wide curfew (BPD) is the same one that has massive amounts of lawsuits and settlements lodged against them for abusing citizens.
The National Guard was also called in to enforce a city wide curfew. No one challenged as to why Baltimore police who are at odds and in conflict with many of its citizens weren’t taken off the streets and made to go home as well, if one believes a curfew was necessary.
One needs to ask if the strict enforcement of this curfew was applied all over the city of Baltimore with the same intensity? Where there scores of police in riot gear banging on their shields with bully clubs as they did last night telling folks to stay inside or get smashed?
If you was a tourist visiting Baltimore or someone on a business trip and staying at hotels near the Inner Harbor was the curfew strictly enforced? On a Friday night folks visiting couldn’t go enjoy nearby restaurants and clubs?
How strictly was the curfew enforced in affluent neighborhoods like Canton?
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/61781172
From the Stackizshort video stream shown last night and according to folks like Alicia Garza of Black Lives Matter who were there on the ground, police from various jurisdictions all over the country were on the ground. There was military folks and police from places as far away as New Jersey. Were they there to help and provide additional resources and bodies or were they there to observe and be trained? They appeared to be testing and pushing of the limits to see exactly how one can blackout and quarantine some news agencies while simultaneously getting compliance and stenographic/PR servicing from others.
If anyone was watching some of the video streams you saw that police ‘revoked the rights’ of Human Rights and Legal observers.. They also arranged themselves in particular formats to prevent anyone filming to get views of the people they arrested..They also formed snatched squads which was perfected during the Ferguson protests so they could go after people who had ‘blended in’ with media. It was some straight up fugitive slave catcher tactic.
Citizens attempting to avoid arrest for being outside as an adult in a city they live, work and pay taxes had to hide amongst ‘credentialed journalist and hope the roving eyes of numerous police agencies didn’t spot them, snatch them up. If someone didn’t have a press pass they were going to jail. For those who don’t know police issued press credentials are often awarded to ‘accredited journalists’ who the police determine are ‘legitimate’ because reach a sizeable audience. In short it’s awarded to corporate media who are embedded and in cahoots with police.
The most egregious aspect of this week long curfew was the glaring silence from any quarters that routinely rail and push back on the government and those in power for encroaching on people’s lives. Many of these folks saw the endless loop of a CVS store burning, got enraged at the site of broken windows and started talking about how the protection of property and restoring of order was more important than healing broken lives traumatized by continuous police terrorism and loss of human lives at the hands of police.
Props to James Rucker who captured this best when he posted up an excerpt from Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It reads as follows:
Reverend Dr Martin Luther King came from a long line of Black preachers who represented Prophetic Teachings
<< I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.>>
<< I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” >>
<< Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. >>
Last night more than 500 people took to the streets of Oakland in an anti-capitalism march,.. They smashed up all the banks along Broadway and in the downtown area. They destroyed many of the car dealerships on Autorow and busted up a Kentucky Fried Chicken..
Will there be city wide curfew for that? Will a state of emergency be called? Will there be stark silence and compliance if one was attempted? Will those who gave a thumbs up to the curfew in Baltimore give a thumbs up if one was proposed in Oakland after last night’s ‘mayhem’? This is not the first time this has happened. In fact such activities routinely went down when current Baltimore Police Chief Anthony Batts was chief here in Oakland he wasn’t riding the hard for city wide curfews here so why in Baltimore?
The continued institutionalized containment and repression of Negroes and those who support, justify and actively and passively go along with it reflects the long standing inability of our humanity to be recognized even when its our own in power.
PS The first two pictures you see are Baltimore police last night enforcing the curfew..Embedded with BPD are police from other agencies. As they advanced on a crowd that they vastly outnumbered the officers would bang their shields with their night sticks..The other photos are from last night in Oakland where car dealerships and other spots were jacked up..