That Baltimore riot: Black people are America's canary in the coal mine and more tales of global unrest

As I said on Rita Arens's post at BlogHer.com, I'm ready to say more about police brutality and the Baltimore riot, but it's probably the more of what's already been said. When will it all stop? 

Of course, I'm "against the violence," which is why I agree that police officers need to be held accountable for being so violent and aggressive with black people, our youth included.

We have grown men and women officers who repeatedly get shoulders to cry on when they overuse force--people who are sworn to protect and serve the people--but many of us have no compassion for young people rioting in the streets of a Ferguson or a Baltimore. We lose all patients even when those young people have good reason to be angry, and science tell us their brains have not reached maturity yet. 

Yes, some of the people rioting are violent-loving opportunists who saw a chance to be destructive or loot and they took it. But make no mistake here--a lot of those people are also angry and lashing out because they believe there is no justice in America for people who look, sound, and live like them and no chance for a productive future. People without hope have little to lose.

But to put this last week in a global perspective, white European youth (Spain and Greece) have been rioting for at least the last five years. First it was for lack of economic opportunity and against austerity measures (reduction of government help), but some in Greece have rioted this year because of the increase in police violence against them and the crackdowns on young activists that have happened in the wake of these riots.

Really, I've been surprised that we haven't seen more black and brown youth rioting across America. They have higher rates of unemployment and are hassled more by the police. 

Hassled is such a weak word when I recall that Trayvon Martin was presumed to be guilty although he was the one dead in the grass; Mike Brown was shot at least five times and described as a beast; Tamir Rice was gunned down like a rabid dog at age 12; and Freddie Gray was stopped for essentially being afraid of the police yet died with broken ribs, a lacerated spleen, a crushed vocal box, and his spine severed at the neck. (As you can see I haven't even addressed the Latinos, Native Americans, and older black people who've been killed recently such as Walter Scott nor the myriad instances of increasing police overreach or negligence that did not result in death.)

There's a saying that "when America's white community catches a cold, its black community gets pneumonia." I submit that a similar thought works: In America, black people are the caged canary in the coal mine. 

If America doesn't pay closer attention to the real issues stifling the lives of poor black people -- if America keeps isolating issues in the black community as "the black problem," it won't be long before the whole nation needs gas masks.

Related: Baltimore Fox station stokes racial tensions with fake story, December 2014

That kid in the black jacket is not Antonio Martin

This clip posted on ImGur.com is going around on Twitter, and a lot of people think the kid in the black jacket with the cell phone is Antonio Martin. I thought so, too, at first. But then I noticed the third figure in the clip.

Yes, the kid in the black jacket is holding a cellphone and not a gun, but that kid in the black jacket is also not Antonio Martin.

Unfortunately, Antonio is the kid with the backpack at the edge of the frame, lower left corner. As you may be able to see, he lifts up his arms, and the officer backs up. The friend then jumps back.

Whether the gun was loaded or not, whether Martin fired or not, we know that if you point a gun at an officer right in front of him, he's most likely going to draw his weapon and shoot, especially if you're a black person. I could write more about the evils of guns here, but been there, done that.

As most sane people are, I am anti-police-brutality and overreach. Furthermore, I firmly believe that people of color are often mistreated and prejudged by police officers in general. I'm not one of the people who automatically believes the official versions of events when I hear them, including Officer Wilson's story for the Mike Brown shooting, which is why I marched in protest here in New Orleans.

But I believe as well that when you fight the good fight, you must be fair and have your facts straight. In the Antonio Martin case, some of us are so anxious to find police at fault that we are buying any story that contradicts the police narrative and then not bothering to check facts. That's a good way to sound unreasonable.

Yes, police officers kill black men at a disproportionate rate compared to white men, and that crisis is worthy of our righteous anger, but is it wise to blow up even when police officers do their jobs and face situations in which they must defend themselves from people with guns?

We can't expect police officers to not draw and shoot when a gun is pointed at them, and the person pointing the gun is that close. They're human, so I'm sure they're not fear-free when someone waves a gun in their faces. So, while I can't say for a fact Antonio Martin had a gun, based on what I see when I look at the Antonio Martin surveillance footage the teen assumed a stance and moved as though he had a gun. So, I think this is not a case for second-guessing the officer.

My heart goes out to Toni Martin-Green, Antonio Martin's mother. Everything she's said about her son is probably true as far as she knows or wants to know. So, I'm low on patience with people making fun of her for saying that her son was trying to turn his life around. Wouldn't we all hope that was the case if we had a child in trouble? So, I hope his mother gets the help she needs to get through this.

As for Antonio actions, he may have been trying to get his life on a better track, but late Tuesday night, December 23, his life skipped that track. He made a bad decision, and it cost him his life.

I know some of us are so infuriated by the way police treat members of the black community that we will still doubt the Berkeley police department's version of events even in the face of evidence that support it, and that skepticism is understandable. Police departments around the country have been caught in lies before. The Ferguson police were not honest, efficient, or respectful after the Mike Brown's shooting, and more recently in the Tamir Rice homicide, the Cleveland police had already released a false report and stood firmly behind it until video showed the report was a lie. But in the tragic case of Antonio Martin, the police officer appears to be telling the factual truth about what happened that night.

Does that mean we should only stand up when the dead child is a "perfect victim"? No, it does not. Does that mean we should no longer demand investigations when police shoot black people with "criminal" histories? No, it does not. Does that mean Antonio Martin's life and death can be deemed less significant than the deaths of others? No, it does not.

Does that mean that our community, education system, and American society failed Antonio Martin? Probably. He was only 18 years old, and according to cognitive scientists, the teen brain is not mature. Human brain development goes on longer than we've been led to believe.

Sadly for us all, there probably were adults in Antonio's neighborhood and leaders in the Berkeley community who saw the Martin household was in peril, in particular the oldest boy, Antonio, but no one wanted to get involved or no one felt inadequate for the task.

More than likely there was some program proposed that would have helped families like Antonio Martin's family, but the bill and funding for that program never passed in Congress or Missouri's state legislature because it was labeled "more welfare." Most likely there's some program that's been proven successful that could have assigned someone to intervene on Antonio's behalf when he first showed signs of frustration with his life circumstance or got into trouble, but in the name of individual accountability and fiscal responsibility, for the love of tall tales about bootstraps, that program was cut.

Does the American population as a whole really want to help people like Antonio, or does it just want to sit on its ass and demonize people who have the deck stacked against them? It's a difficult question and the answer, I'm sure, is complex. And maybe taking time to throw tantrums about the killing of Antonio Martin is part of our journey toward finding an answer. I don't know. But I do know that we should be fair in our allegations when the police kill a member of the black community. I know we have to weigh evidence and choose our battles.

When we don't get our facts straight, it gives our opponents an opening to overwhelm and distract us with minutia. It gives them a way to do what they would prefer to do, ignore the real problems, dismiss the truth. Knowing this is how the world works, can we pause, reflect, and focus again on the central points of our protest? Can we shake off distractions and move on?

Unity of purpose is a beautiful thing, but a mob mentality smothers wisdom.

Fox News Baltimore Fakes Story, Stokes Tensions (Video) -- Now Featuring Fox 45's 'Sorry'!

UPDATE:  On its evening broadcast, Fox 45 apologized to Tawanda Jones, the woman leading the chant in the video and interviewed her. They repeated multiple times that they were "mistaken" in how they represented the protesters' video and Jones.

David Zurawik at the Baltimore Sun wrote an opinion about the apology and said:

"The Sun is seeking an explanation as to how such an egregious and potentially inflammatory change in the meaning of the protest chant was made without anyone raising questions in the editorial process.

“Honest misunderstanding” would seem to warrant such an explanation rather than asking viewers to accept it [the apology] on faith." 

I agree. If you look at the original C-SPAN video you see how long that chant went on and how clearly Jones enunciated her Ts through most of it. So, I still believe that while it may have been an error in judgment to produced the segment, the false reporting was not an error.

Previous Report

FOX News corporation affiliate WBFF TV, FOX 45 of Baltimore, has falsely reported that protesters at the "Justice for All" march on December 13 in DC called for people to "KILL A COP." I do not believe this was an honest error on the station's part, but an intentionally callous piece of yellow journalism. According to Mediaite.com, the Baltimore station has run the phony story three times already.

C-SPAN filmed protesters chanting a call for police who've killed unarmed people to go to jail. However, Fox 45 misrepresented the chant. Wait, no, they lied about the chant.

The protesters were really saying the following:

"We won’t stop.
We can’t stop.
Till   KILLER cops.
Are in cell blocks."

You can watch the original clip right on C-SPAN, but I've also embedded a video capture of it right after this paragraph.

In its broadcast, FOX 45 cuts the video before the fourth line of the chant, and then the the anchor tells the audience that the protesters are saying the following:

"We won't stop.
We can't stop,
SO KILL A cop"

Here is the story from the Baltimore station's broadcast:

After misrepresenting what the protesters say, FOX 45 footage switches to scenes from New York about the murder of the two police officers, attempting to tie peaceful protesters to the recent "execution-style" murders of NYPD officers Liu and Ramos by a mentally disturbed man from Baltimore.

When a movement grows organically: Why #CrimingWhileWhite complaints waste time

A friend of mine on Facebook asked me what I thought of this article by Kara Brown at Jezebel, "The Problem With #CrimingWhileWhite." And here is what I said with some additional information added to the post today:

I saw arguments like Brown's the same night I posted on this #CrimingWhileWhite after I saw it on Twitter. I think she's wrong.

Sometimes black people sound like they live in bubbles as much as some white people do. I'm not saying Brown's in a bubble, but she does seem to assume a lot, such as everybody sees what she sees when she says people in general don't need it "spelled out" that black people are treated differently from white people by the police. She says this is so because we're "literally watching it happen in real time."

Oh, yeah? Tell that to the Grand Jury in Staten Island. It's not like there weren't examples of disparity in treatment before the Eric Garner decision. Unfortunately, I don't have time to list in this post all other incidents that have been caught on tape and reported that did not result in death but remains evidence of different treatment. I'm including these three, though: one from 2009, "Choked for Challenging," another from last year, "NOPD officers shoot man to death in bed," and another, "CHP officer beats black homeless woman on side of road."

Following these incidents police and their apologists used everything from declaring the person "was a threat" over to "the particular officer involved is a bad apple" in order to get people to look the other way.

A pivotal talking points for people who agree with the decision of the Grand Jury in Eric Garner's case is, "This wasn't about race." The family of Eric Garner is also saying his treatment and killing had nothing to do with race. People declare it's not about race because they either don't want to see race as an issue ever or because they do not understand what people mean when they say "systemic racism." They look at individual cases. No forest because eyes on trees.