Baltimore Riots

[eynon81]

[Dylan]

[eynon81]

[Dylan]

[fstarcstar]

Non and Dylan, I think both of you are correct honestly. The difference is perception and time.

Right now, they need this.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/24/us/march- ... index.html

Not this.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/us/baltim ... index.html

Non, as you and others have mentioned history shows up when people take up armed resistances, particularly in our country. It works, and myself being a history teacher certainly puts me in a position to agree with you. Now, when comparing my first link celebrating MLK, there were also massive riots taking place at the time. But, to the average person right now they remember MLK himself and his words, instead of the riots. Only people who enjoy and study history remember those kinds of things. I bet your average young African American kid doesn't even know who Rodney King was, the LA riots or anything that happened much later in the 90s either. We have to understand the social change and the digital age we are a part of.

So lets place ourselves in todays situation, where we aren't fighting for drinking out of the same water fountain, or equal rights, or discrimination against blacks. (While it still does happen, it certainly isn't the way it used to be). So, they are fighting against police brutality and major shootings that have gripped the nation. At this point, violence seems to be the most realistic notion here to those without options. But lets take a look at the motions going on this nation that are looking to achieve similar results. If we applied this to the gay rights movements, equal rights for women and transgender movements etc etc. This topic is obviously much higher in hierarchy, history, and other things than what I just mentioned. If we looked at it from a different side of the coin, suicide rates amongst gay kids is rising very fast. That's partially why things are getting noticed and I bet in the next 10 years we will see an even bigger change towards the gay community. They are making huge gains as we speak due to their publicity and perception. A gay child killing himself for being gay is horrible, just as an African American male being gunned down while running is horrible.

But there is a huge way we can go about this without having to destroy our towns. As Dylan mentioned, as I mentioned pages ago, these protests now are focused entirely on the violence, with the burned CVS in peoples minds. They don't care that the guy was killed by police anymore, they are seeing animals destroying a city on all news channels. Its entirely on perception, and there has to be some methods to their madness. Unfortunately, there are huge segments of our society that aren't smart enough to understand that, and generally violence is their only answer. There has to be a change in the perception of the people. If you look at my first link, you can also see how the MLK rally's went, how they dressed and acted. Today, its not even close to that (although there are some good rally's with finely dressed people that Al Sharpton has ran before) but still, its about perception.

At this point, perception has killed the entire movements. Fortunately, time will change things. Like I said in the beginning, perception and time are crucial to this movement and a change won't be found in the rubble of the local stores.

[eynon81]

[Saz]

[jimmyz]

[eynon81]

[jimmyz]