Savant on Baltimore

To put it bluntly, I was not so much angered by the looting as I was about the long train of abuses which provoked the youth to violence. In fact, I ADMIRE their spirit of rebellion. It is their methods that I do not consent to. A disciplined organized movement, has far greater chance of being effective than sporadic rioting. A popular revolt doesn't need justification, but organization and education. Political and social struggles is far more effective in the long run. Also, I didn't say either that I had nothing to do with the riots--or rebellions as some call them--and I didn't say I had something to do with them either. I said that the youth did what they did, and this was not a part of the main body of the protests. The initial skirmishes with the police happened the Saturday BEFORE Freddie Gray's funeral, when some young folk moved from the main body of the demonstration to Camden Yards. And I doubt that even they expected (and certainly didn't plan) any skirmish with the police. The uprising that began on the Monday of Freddy Gray's funeral, but after the funeral could not have been even indirectly connected with our demonstrations for the simple reasons that we honored the request of Freddie's family to suspend mass protests on the day of the funeral. But the young people let out of school early that day eventually got into an even larger confrontation than the skirmishes the previous Saturday. How exactly it started is unclear. But given the tensions between Black communities and police, especially at this time, the outbreak (though not predicted) was hardly surprising. And so Baltimore had the largest Black uprising since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Still my anger was not at the kids, but at the fascist pig cops, the Negro political administrators (US version of the worthless native elite Fanon talks about), and, of course, white ruling class of corporate pirates who have destroyed my hometown. A plague on all their houses! And as for you, Nikki, Mayor Rawlings, Barack Obama and all other treacherous Negro elitists who are more angry at our insurgent you than at the cops, politicians and corporate pirates, may the devil take you and bad luck to you.

-Savant