A bold voice in Baltimore

[ralis]

[noonespecial]

In other news, this guy was easily the highlight of the riots.

 

BALTIMORE —

 

In the middle of rioting in Baltimore Monday, a man identified as Dimitri Reeves took to the streets to "spread love and peace" through dance.

 

In various videos posted on Twitter and the web, Reeves can be seen dancing to Michael Jackson's "Beat it" in what appears to be near the area of Baltimore ravaged by rioting.

 

dimitri the moonwalker tweeted spread peace and love not violence

 

article

[manitou]

(I just don't think he should be tweaking her boob when she's trying to yank his hoodie off)

[zerostao]

i admit i am not a 12 step expert. from what i have seen in my limited view, is that it works for a small % of the population.

a % that had problems or issues to begin with,specific ones, and even then, not everyone who attends these 12 step rooms/circles finds success. in fact it is rare for anyone deep into alcohol or drugs to ever climb back despite what approach is taken or what care is given. and i do acknowledge that even one success story in these types of situations are to be admired and celebrated. the 12 step program is by no means a fix all type of solution to every type of problem. "a hammer looks at all issues as a nail" Jamal's proposition is one of desperation.  i am not saying it should not be tried. i just wouldnt get my hopes up with this approach alone.

a lot of focus and energy needs addressed to OUR problem. we are all complicit.we have sat idly as law enforcement becomes armed like a military. we all accepted the patriot act without even as much as a whimper.

the very first time a cop street executed a civilian of any race, we should have verociously demanded quick justice. each and every time a cop over steps their boundary and murders a citizen they are sworn to protect--we should demand swift execution of that cop. it is the highest crime of all. it is the highest level of betrayal and treason.

 we all have fallen under the spell cast illusion the authoritarian/paranoid elite have weaved.

if you see this as a race problem then you cant see the forest for the trees.

[ralis]

Accurate stats are difficult to come by given there is no Federal database. These are the best I can find at the moment which details several major cities on racial breakdown percentage regarding what race is most likely a target of police killings.

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/24/1324132/-How-Often-are-Unarmed-Black-Men-Shot-Down-By-Police.    Other stats are included in this lengthy article.

[Marblehead]

(I just don't think he should be tweaking her boob when she's trying to yank his hoodie off)

Look closer.  That's not what's happening.

[manitou]

Look closer.  That's not what's happening.

Oh, I know that, you big nut, lol. I was trying to inject a tad of levity.

[ralis]

Thom Hartmann states the problem well. I stated similar thoughts earlier in this thread.

 

Edited April 29, 2015 by ralis

[gendao]

As always you seem to have all the answers, which by the way are talking points from media propagandists such as Fox News and so forth.

The Prophet Obama is on Fox News now?

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference - April 28, 2015:

my thoughts are with the police officers who were injured in last night’s disturbances.  It underscores that that’s a tough job and we have to keep that in mind, and my hope is that they can heal and get back to work as soon as possible.

Point number three, there’s no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday.  It is counterproductive.  When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting, they’re not making a statement -- they’re stealing.  When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson.  And they’re destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area.

So it is entirely appropriate that the mayor of Baltimore, who I spoke to yesterday, and the governor, who I spoke to yesterday, work to stop that kind of senseless violence and destruction.  That is not a protest.  That is not a statement.  It’s people -- a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes, and they need to be treated as criminals.

My understanding is, is you’ve got some of the same organizers now going back into these communities to try to clean up in the aftermath of a handful of criminals and thugs who tore up the place.  What they were doing, what those community leaders and clergy and others were doing, that is a statement.  That’s the kind of organizing that needs to take place if we’re going to tackle this problem.  And they deserve credit for it, and we should be lifting them up.

they’ve got parents -- often because of substance-abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves -- can't do right by their kids; if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead, than they go to college.  In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men

the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks -- in those environments, if we think that we're just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities

then we're not going to solve this problem

And as Obama noted...no employers are going to set up shop in a riot/looting-prone urban warzone with very few qualified or even willing workers...  A competitive business must locate by the best customers and best workers it can afford to...not the worst.

Baltimore woman now jobless and homeless after rioting mobs burned CVS where she worked, then torched her home — even after she begged them not to

In one night of mayhem Katrice Gardner lost her home, her job — and nearly her life.

 

And when dawn broke Tuesday, the 30-year-old Baltimore woman said she couldn’t understand why the mob that battled the police all night firebombed her house and reduced the CVS where she worked as a manager to ashes.

 

“I was yelling at them, pleading at them not to burn my house," Gardner, 30, said outside her boarded-up rowhouse. “They had set the houses around me on fire. They were throwing stuff into the house. They were throwing Molotov's and very flammable stuff. All I could do was beg them not to burn my house."

 

Gardner, who is married, said she now has no place to live and no place to work.

You really think many businesses, much less any industry leader like Google or Apple, would set up shop here???  Would you?

Edited April 30, 2015 by gendao

[Spotless]

I have not been reading the headlines and so I am very much out of the loop but it does seem that riots are extraordinarily overdue.

 

How we got through the last 12 years with next to nothing in the way of riots is somewhat beyond me.

 

How we have not seen large amounts of high profile assassinations and bombings is nearly incredible.

 

How corporations can take entire pension programs and absorb them away from the employees on the way to bankruptcy and give their hierarchy bonuses on the way out with no repercussion other than some muted outrage is fascinating.

 

How Monsanto executives are allowed to walk the streets alive and with families - it's amazing.

 

How Bush Jr. Is not in Jail and Obama appears on television shows with the likes of Bill O'liely.

 

Fox calls itself a News Network - and their buildings are not in exploded ruble.

 

The AMA is a wholly owned subsidiary of big pharma and insurance companies.

 

We could have sent 80 million Americans to college for 4 years for the price of as John MacCain and Alan Greespan called it: "the Oil War" in Iraq / Afghanistan.

What are they putting in our drinking water? (Those who own our drinking water - we have been selling our water rights out from under us for decades now).

 

What "scares" me is that we look for medicine to placate and heal the rioteers - but they are not powerless to control their addiction, they have become an addiction of the system and the system continues to imbue them with the reasons for which they are rioting.

 

The system needs a 12 step program not the rioters. It also needs fish bat therapy - the one where you take a bat to the idiot system of systemic imbalance and godless greed.

 

We need riots - lots of them.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Spotless

[Marblehead]

 

You really think many businesses, much less any industry leader like Google or Apple, would set up shop here???  Would you?

But let's try to keep in mind that all that happened was a result of "herd" mentality.  Everybody wants to be "leader of the pack" so they do the worse things they can think of doing.  It's the nature of the animal.

[Marblehead]

We need riots - lots of them.

I don't agree with you here but you made some excellent points above.

 

No, I have no answers.

[ralis]

The Prophet Obama is on Fox News now?

And as Obama noted...no employers are going to set up shop in a riot/looting-prone urban warzone with very few qualified or even willing workers...  A competitive business must locate by the best customers and best workers it can afford to...not the worst.

You really think many businesses, much less any industry leader like Google or Apple, would set up shop here???  Would you?

 

The problem with your little narrative is one of not looking at the root of the problem which goes back to Reagan, Bush 1@2 and Clinton. If you drive through Baltimore or any other major city, you will see that the industrial base is gone. Neoliberalism and the shift of massive wealth to the very few. Think for yourself and stop expecting others to do it for you!

[ralis]

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/get-out-of-baltimore-off-air-footage-shows-protester-slamming-geraldo-rivera-and-fox-news/

 

Leave it up to Fox News to propagandize.

 

 

 

 

New footage reveals more context to the confrontation between Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera and a Baltimore demonstrator Rivera dismissed as a “vandal” on the air on Tuesday, Media Matters reported.

“I want you and Fox News to get out of Baltimore City,” the unidentified man tells Rivera. “You are not here reporting about the boarded up homes and the homeless people under MLK [boulevard]. You’re not reporting about the poverty levels up and down North Avenue.”

The man then accused Rivera of ignoring the city when the 300 Men March activist group marched peacefully down the same avenue.

[ralis]

I can't believe there are persons in this country that believe this stuff. I will not even classify his rant as thinking, which it is not.

 

This guy is so wrong in stating that a two parent household keeps children out of poverty. Wrong! A good education and a good paying job with a future is the best way out of poverty. 

 

 

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/texas-gop-lawmaker-what-is-going-on-in-baltimore-is-because-of-too-many-gay-marriages/

 

 

 

 

 

Republican U.S. House Representative Bill Flores of Texas argued this week that violence in Baltimore could be linked to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.

On the Wednesday edition of the Family Research Council’sWashington Watch radio program, Flores told FRC President Tony Perkins that crowds of conservatives were showing up at the U.S. Supreme Court to urge justices to support the “rights of tradition marriage.”

Perkins suggested that the government was just creating more problems for itself as courts throughout the nation continued to rule that LGBT people should have equal marriage rights.

“A lot of these problems are created by the breakdown of the family, which the redefinition of would only accelerate,” Perkins opined.

“You’re exactly right, Tony,” Flores agreed. “Let’s talk about poverty for instance… The single best indicator of whether or not a child is going to be in poverty or not is whether or not they were raised by a two-parent household or a single-parent household. And so the breakdown of the family has contributed to poverty.”

“You look at what’s going on in Baltimore today, you know, you see issues that are raised there,” the congressman continued. “And healthy marriages are the ones between a man and a woman because they can have a healthy family and they can raise children in the way that’s best for their future, not only socially but psychologically, economically, from a health perspective.”

“There’s just nothing like traditional marriage that does that.”

Edited April 30, 2015 by ralis

[Spotless]

Revolution is always ignited by exactly what we have allowed to be created in this country - extreme imbalance. Funding stupid wars to the complete disruption of our national purse. The reduction of the masses to triviality. Religion gone amuck.

 

walkouts, sit-ins, marches, college disruption etc. are responsible means toward change and they can work.

But invariably they also create riots, bombings,kidnappings and that sort of offshoot - no more brutal than the brutality of slowly being strangled to death by a guy in a Bentley - and they create real heroes.

 

The above bring real change and a real voice to real anger over real injustice.

 

However, I see different reasons for this change on the horizon but if riots and looting appear my mouth will not hang open for a second - it hung open for years as we were raped repeatedly and did nothing but support it.

 

If you are going to participate in the buzz and be the buzz, sometimes it is a very good thing to be a buzz saw.

Death among the dead is not such a bad thing.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Spotless

[gendao]

I can't believe there are persons in this country that believe this stuff. I will not even classify his rant as thinking, which it is not.

 

This guy is so wrong in stating that a two parent household keeps children out of poverty. Wrong! A good education and a good paying job with a future is the best way out of poverty. 

 

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/04/texas-gop-lawmaker-what-is-going-on-in-baltimore-is-because-of-too-many-gay-marriages/

So, sounds like a LOT of people, including the President, all agree with this basic observation - dysfunctional families create dysfunctional communities.  And in particular, single motherhood is a primary cause of poverty.

Ninety percent of single-parent families are headed by females. Not surprisingly, single mothers with dependent children have the highest rate of poverty across all demographic groups (Olson & Banyard, 1993). Approximately 60 percent of U.S. children living in mother-only families are impoverished, compared with only 11 percent of two-parent families. The rate of poverty is even higher in African-American single-parent families, in which two out of every three children are poor.

The median annual income for female-headed households with children under six years old is roughly one-fourth that of two-parent families.

Income loss appears to affect the well-being of children indirectly through negative impact on family relations and parenting.

The median income for families led by a single mother in 2013 was about $26,000, one third (⅓) the median for married couple families ($84,000).

Out of more than 10 million low-income working families with children, 39% were headed by single working mothers or about 4.1 million. The proportion is much higher among African Americans (65%), compared with whites (36%).

The poverty rate for single-mother families in 2013 was 39.6%, nearly five times more than the rate (7.6%) for married-couple families.

Poverty rates were about one in two for Black (46.3%), Hispanic (46.5%), White (31.6%), and Asian (24.0%).

Single-parent families are among the poorest in the nation and as such, are extremely vulnerable to homelessness.

one tenth of all single mothers receive TANF. Though a small percentage, they represent more than 90% of all TANF families.

Across all income levels, single parents are the group who are more likely to lack health insurance.

Wow, who knew???  A single mom with 6 kids...is far more likely to be poor!?  And therefore, communities/races/cultures with more single moms - regardless of all other factors...are also more likely to be poor by extension!

Go figure!

Edited April 30, 2015 by gendao

[Aetherous]

Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks that the primary cause of this problem in Baltimore is simply reverse racism...

 

You assume that your race is hated because that's what your elders told you, you see minor evidence of it in terms of people that had nothing to do with you and yours, and you get violent against the other race and the system because of these apparent martyrs.

If you just drop the false victim mentality, and stop identifying with your race in terms of "us versus them" (because that is literally racism...as compared to having pride for your culture and heritage, which is not), then the problem is solved. All of a sudden, you're just an American, with the opportunity to build the life you want, if you do what it takes. Pretending you're a victim keeps you from doing what it takes. It keeps you on your knees, subservient to the hand that you even admit hasn't fed you. It doesn't benefit you, or your community to be this way.

In fact, what's happening is that the media has been baiting a race war for years now, because it does anything for viewership. The black community, by their own volition, is being played as the pawn in this sick game. Because of the reverse racism that's indoctrinated within it. "Your ancestors were slaves kept by white men" "they're white devils don't trust them" etc. If the black community wakes up and looks around, they might have a chance to benefit themselves, by no longer blaming others for their own actions...by no longer playing into the hands of the media, that cares nothing for them or their communities.

#radicalopinion #hopeithelps

[thelerner]

Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks that the primary cause of this problem in Baltimore is simply reverse racism...

 

You assume that your race is hated because that's what your elders told you, you see minor evidence of it in terms of people that had nothing to do with you and yours, and you get violent against the other race and the system because of these apparent martyrs.

 

If you just drop the false victim mentality, and stop identifying with your race in terms of "us versus them" (because that is literally racism...as compared to having pride for your culture and heritage, which is not), then the problem is solved.

While I like some of the sentiment, its not false victim mentality if African Americans are repeatedly and institutionally being profiled and treated differently then whites.   Still the solution isn't the Rush to Outrage or Riot culture we've developed.  Its better handled through strong civil and legal avenues as well as organized assemblies to air grievances. 

 

I lay lame in a lot of places. 

 

Most- I blame the people doing the crimes.  They're number one and deserve punishment.

Single mothers vs Police force profiling and prejudice?  Both have damn hard jobs and could benefit from earlier training. 

 

Maybe mandatory training with any increased welfare check?  This is the 21st century, if you don't have a job, maybe there should be an educational component, at a library or community center (or less preferably online) required (w/ daycare) for those getting government checks.  Some taught by local leaders. 

 

An out of the box solution would be each police force having criminal rights people on hand who'd educate police in keeping away from brutal force as well as making sure those arrested have there rights protected.  Maybe having police work less hours and more facilities to blow off steam would help too.  Reforming drug laws would go a long way too.   

[Chang]

Moderation Message

 

This thread appears to have degenerated into bickering between ralis and gendao.

Should this continue then Moderator action may prove necessary.

[soaring crane]

Moderation Message #2

 

This thread has been split/pitted from the point where it turned into a two-man bickering contest

[ralis]

 

Moderation Message

 

This thread appears to have degenerated into bickering between ralis and gendao.

Should this continue then Moderator action may prove necessary.

 

I guess his remark regarding racism directed at me does not apply?

 

 

[ralis]

[ralis]

 

 

[ralis]