From the Green Party website:
The Baltimore Green Party stands in solidarity with those protesting the police killing of Freddie Gray. The party hopes that protests will remain peaceful and achieve their goal of shining a national spotlight on the need for police conduct reforms and justice for the family of Mr. Gray.
While members of the Baltimore Green Party are participating in local protests, the party continues its strategy for long-term electoral reform by working to challenge city and state officials who fail to protect the citizens of the City of Baltimore.
According to an investigation by The Baltimore Sun, nearly $6 million in city funds have been paid in the last five years to settle over 100 lawsuits alleging police brutality and other misconduct by Baltimore police officers. The Green Party’s electoral strategy seeks to elect city officials who will prevent – not hide – police brutality.
The city of Richmond, CA – led by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a Green Party member – established a series of reforms that has nearly eliminated police violence toward citizens while dramatically decreasing the city’s violent crime rate.
The Green Party is also working statewide to challenge members of the Maryland General Assembly who are unwilling to commit to the transparency required to establish trust between citizens and police.
The Baltimore Green Party calls for reforms to the Law Enforcement Officer’s Bill of Rights, which currently shields violent and law-breaking police officers from transparent public oversight and discipline from their commanding officers.
The Baltimore Green Party urges citizens who share the party’s vision for long-term criminal justice reform through electoral strategy to seek the party’s nomination for city elections in 2016.
Hopefully will be posted as a separate article here later, but there it is in the meantime.
https://www.lp.org/blogs/staff/statement-on-baltimore-riots
I agree with Paulie and JK. The authorities aren’t interested in justice; they are interested in establishing a pretext for imposing more tyrannical police state measures.
http://mic.com/articles/116680/11-stunning-images-highlight-the-double-standard-of-reactions-to-riots-like-baltimore
It’s a very familiar pattern. Institutionalized violence goes unnoticed, whereas more open and graphic violence gets attention. Those with the power get to conduct their violence while wearing suits and using educated language to describe it – or simply ensure that the media coverage glosses over the details of a shackled person bouncing around, unsecured, in a van, breaking their back and larynx.
They could just arrest the looters, instead of attacking peaceful protesters, but that would hurt their interests. The more people riot the more it allows them to divert attention from peaceful protests as well as their own misdeeds. So, it’s no wonder where they concentrate their response.
They could just shoot the looters but that would only make things worse!
That does happen too, but not as much. Looting is the least of it, though. And they do purposely let it happen.
This entire situation is just so awful on so many levels. That said, I do not see the police looting.
I think it’s more accurate to call what the police are doing rioting. People rioting in retaliation is what they want and expect, and justifies their own rioting to a lot of people, so they allow it to spiral out of control – or actually instigate it – to take the attention away from their own crimes and away from peaceful protests against them.
Freddie Gray’s death is so shocking and completely unacceptable that I don’t blame the people for rioting. We simply must get police departments under control. Rioting seems counterproductive, but we certainly can’t count on the courts to help.
This is becoming an enormous problem for our country. What else can we do about the problem of police violence, besides civil unrest which can get out of control so easily?
Same here! Hope to hear from the LP about it as well.
I would note that one place not seeing such demonstrations is South Carolina, despite having had perhaps the most obvious case of unacceptable police behavior (of those that have been reported.) Even Hannity labeled that shooting ‘entirely unacceptable.’ Why are there no protests there? Because the justice system actually did its job. Instead of a public ‘rush to judgment’ the opportunity was given for a judgment from a judge and jury, as opposed to refusing to charge, allowing an internal investigation, paid leave, or convening a grand jury under entirely different conditions than usual (allowing the accused to speak at length, presenting incorrect laws, presentation of exculpatory evidence but not all incriminating evidence, etc.) One way or the other, society looks for justice. Do we prefer to do it through systems developed over centuries to function, or to bypass those and therefore leave people to seek justice in the streets?
I hope these protest, and similar ones everywhere, continue indefinitely. The cause it a great one.
I am among the minority of IPR readers who is old enough to remember 1965-1968 and the riots at that time. Those riots started over issues often similar to the issues seen in Baltimore and Ferguson and a host of other cities. With modern electronics, news of these events spreads coast to coast much faster. People who think #blacklivesmatter including myself see not an isolated incident that reaches their newspaper but a fabric of events repeating time after time from coast to coast.
The situation is incendiary and will likely be set off this summer on a regular basis.
The incidents of last year, in which there were retaliatory attacks with firearms against police forces, did not have an analog in 1968. However, in 1968 there were few African American veterans with combat experience. That count has changed a great deal.
I am interested to note that conservatives on some of the blogs I read point at the Second Amendment, point at the totally unwarranted deaths of American citizens going about their business, and nod sadly, indicating that we are looking into the abyss of the sort of tyranny that the Second Amendment was meant to stop dead in its tracks.
This above is a very sad state of affairs for which I do not see an easy escape.