By Gloria Browne-Marshall
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
When Baltimore Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake used the word “thugs” to describe those participating in recent riots, I could hear her frustration.
She understood the first minute right to protest, but that first minute right was abused by some people in the group, and that some of the rioters were people from outside of the neighborhood, people frustrated by their lack of opportunity. In this protest, they saw a way to have their voices heard, through acts of violence.
Rawlings-Blake said she couldn’t find the words to describe the sadness she felt with the destruction of her beloved city.
In certain contexts, the word “thugs” could be considered racially charged, but you have white thugs, and Asian thugs, you can have female thugs.
You can have thugs of all stripes. I think her concern was that she wanted to characterize them as people that didn’t have a civil rights consciousness; they weren’t there for the greater good.
They were there to take advantage of the situation, to loot to do harm, to let out their frustration toward the system, wherever that system was in their minds and it could be expressed through violence.
During news conference, city council president jack young said that the Baltimore riots reminded him of the riots of the Civil Rights era.
I think the major word is frustration, and the lack of accountability in the criminal justice system, where people are told time and time again to wait.
Wait for what? We’re watching videos where unarmed black men are being killed in the streets, in broad daylight, no less.
If it hadn’t been for a passerby, we wouldn’t have known that Walter Scott was shot in the back in that way.
I think a lot of people, especially young people, high school students who are watching us, adults, have to ask themselves: where’s the accountability, where does my life matter, anywhere?
As adults, we have to explain to them – or perhaps, our system is not showing them – that justice is something they can wait for.
In addition, I think what I saw was a mixture of rioters and protestors in Baltimore.
These were kids – kids that are frustrated, taking advantage of a situation. There are some adults who may be of thug-like character, still. But these kids are seeing an opportunity, and their going for it, letting go of frustration.
I’ve had students that have been stopped, by the time they’re 18, by police 5, 6, and 7 times. It started off when they were 8-years-old. You might have kids that feel like, “This is my way of getting back at the police, who have been tormenting my life for so many years”. They don’t understand the ramifications.
The mayor has said that she’s going to watch the video, she’s going to hold people accountable, even the young ones. There was a juvenile curfew. These young people were supposed to be home pretty soon.
My concern is this: as adults, what are we telling – what message are we giving these children to give them hope in a criminal justice system, where they haven’t seen accountability in adults, and so they’re saying “We’re children.
Why should we be accountable when the adults aren’t accountable?”
It’s true that some clergymen were marching during the heat of the riots to send message that violence must stop.
However, there’s a generation gap that is very obvious.
In it, you have young people looking to social media. Some young people said that social media told them to show up for riots and protests, or uprisings, you might call them.
I don’t know if they’re going to church, to have the kind of respect that other generations might have had for clergy, or for the time period of civil rights in which the church was very powerful.
Are we teaching young people about their history, about what they can do with nonviolence?
Also, what has nonviolence done for them so far?
We have to understand that they are young human beings, watching a violent society, watching older people like themselves being gunned down in the street.
And they are voicing their frustration in a way that’s going to have longterm ramifications for them, for their communities.
Still, young people don’t think long-term.
This happened during the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about nonviolence, but what happened in Newark, in Harlem, in Compton, across the country?
Communities burned, because the frustration was, “If you’re not going to listen to us when we’re nonviolent, we’re going to give you something else to listen to?”
This country can choose: are we going to go through a violent period like we did in the 60’s because nonviolence is not getting the message across? Are we going to listen to these people before they turn violent?
The public school to prison pipeline is something that we’ve been talking about in our communities.
These are the kids in this pipeline. They’re showing us right now that they feel pretty hopeless about the criminal justice system and adults upholding their rights.
Who can reach these young people, then?
Those of us who can say to ourselves: we failed them in a lot of ways.
We’re going to have to communicate, express what’s wrong with the system.
We won’t pretend the system isn’t working as fairly as it should.
If we’re honest, and say we do want to give people a fair justice system, they will listen to us.
It is possible and probable that progress can be made if we’re honest about the system.
This is the best and worst of times for the Black community.
Some people are doing very well while others are helpless, hopeless, and frustrated.
We must have a bridge within these communities. I was so proud to see Loretta Lynch’s swearing in.
She has her work cut out for her. She’ll have to show young people that the system can be fixed, but also reach them before they become adults in the criminal justice system.
Though I’d like to get to the core of this: the killing of a Black, unarmed male by police officers.
We’re missing that picture.
These events trigger these uprisings. Tamir Rice, killed at 12-years-old, Walter Scott, shot in the back, Trayvon Martin – all of these murders, and those are just the ones we can name. And the fact that no one has been held accountable, not even indictments.
What do we expect after a while? We have these nonviolent protests, to what end? People wait six weeks and then decide, “Oh, you’ve gotten it out of your system? Let’s move on.” It’s not just about what happens in the deep south anymore.
What can African Americans expect from their criminal system, what can these children expect? Until we get to the heart of that issue, I don’t think the protest that is coming from this.
Gray’s family wants violence to stop, but it’s beyond Freddie Gray now. We’re looking at a movement.
The community is saying that we can no longer just sit back and let the criminal justice system work through this issue of the killing of Black people.
You have young people asking themselves, “What is my life worth?”
Black lives matter: that’s more than a slogan. That’s something that people should understand.
As with the 1960’s “I am a man” slogan, “What is my life worth to America, that it can be taken in this way?”
And there is no justice, there is no accountability, yet these young people are supposed to be held accountable.
But they can’t trust the system to hold a police officer accountable.
So, until we look at the accountability when it comes to police officers, then I think this is going to continue.