The creator of the HBO show “The Wire,” David Simon, denounced the violence that some displayed while protesting the death of Freddie Gray, which occurred while he was in police custody.
Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun posted the letter to his website on Monday after the situation in Baltimore escalated.
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.
Read his full post here.
h/t Mother Jones
As with all these situations, the destruction and violence have become the story. The fraction who are acting out have overshadowed the many who are justifiably demanding structural change. Fox News and the white supremacists are having a field day, and even the “liberal media” is consumed.
I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
On the other hand, why will I probably not be surprised when, after things have calmed down, the commission report will say that the death and funeral were mere merely a catalyst. That the root causes of the violence were long standing grievances and poor relationships with the police, intractable unemployment, a poor education system, lack of training programs for youth. In short, a general neglect of a poor community. These were some of the root causes behind the Watts Riots in L.A. I remember, because I was just about ready to go into college at the time and, being born into a white, middle class, blue-collar family, I was lucky enough to be living in Huntington Beach, CA. We could see the glow of the fires from there. The sad fact though was that few of the McCone commission’s recommendations for dealing with these problems were ever implemented.
https://lcrm.lib.unc.edu/blog/index.php/tag/mccone-commission/
Mr. Simon needs to address the cause of the riot before excoriating the effect of abuse by the police, state attorney’s office, and courts with their pro-cop rulings that makes these thugs (cops) feel they have NOTHING to worry about.
Why not simply keep your mouth shut? Ah, you have noble things to utter.
He’s been addressing it for years. Simon’s life’s work has been about the effect of police abuse, war on drugs, poverty, racism on these communities …