by Chuck Stanley
Baltimore, Maryland. April 26, 2015. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Does that photo remind you of anything? Here is a photo to jog your memory.
Tiananmen Square
4 June 1989
Photo by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press
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Flowers For Socrates 
School children in China today do not know what that picture is. They can’t imagine why the guy was standing in front of tanks. In one generation they have erased the value of the picture from Chinese culture and we wonder how it is that Christians could believe in something that is not true?
Pretty eloquent picture, Chuck! Not only has it happened in China before, it also happened here before too. I saw a picture on twitter of black men marching in 1967 with the same exact placards as today’s denouncing police abuse, and we realize that the more things change, the more they are the same.
Cops in Baltimore responding like the cops in Ferguson. That’s what the picture shows – cops ready for action. And what’s in the news? The riots. From some accounts, the handful of protesting rioters and the police. According to one account, it was a rock that hit a shield. Let’s not ignore that rock, it’s the provocation and justification to riot (cops’ version).
Reminded me of this as well:
Oppressive governments and the oligarchies they represent find even non-violent protests to be frightening. No matter how powerful the government, or how entrenched in power they are, they rely on a passive citizenry accepting the party line. It is amusing that China it is still being run by the “Communist Party”, even though it has become a Fascist oligarchy of the capitalist variety.
Another photo to consider: http://www.alternet.org/longtime-enemies-bloods-and-crips-join-together-fight-police-brutality-baltimore
When Duke won the NCAA championship in basketball, and when Ohio State won the football championship, there were overturned and burned police cars, looted stores, etc. Why no outcry? Maybe because the rioters were mostly white? Why is it news when blacks riot but not whites?
Caterbo,
11 Stunning Images Highlight the Double Standard of Reactions to Riots Like Baltimore
http://mic.com/articles/116680/11-stunning-images-highlight-the-double-standard-of-reactions-to-riots-like-baltimore
Excerpt;
The city of Baltimore, Maryland, has been besieged by riots Monday night — and police are on the scene ready to serve, protect and subdue.
This has become an evergreen narrative in the aftermath of reactions to state-sanctioned violence against black people. But that it persists sends a troubling message about how officials and, by extension, many of the people they serve regard rioting: specifically, when there’s white people involved versus mostly black people.
Usually, if a riot involves black people, it’s connected to intense episodes of where systemic racism is undoubtedly at work. These episodes include the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King beating verdict, the riots in Oakland after the 2009 BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant, and the national outcry immediately following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. That outcry included the city of Baltimore, where blacks now represent roughly 2 out of 3 residents.
But when a mob of mostly white people take to the streets, vandalizing cars, storefronts and street signs in the process it usually means someone either won or lost a game.
As Mic’s Zak Cheney-Rice noted in January, these rioters are usually called “revelers,” “celebrants” and “fans.” They’re not even called “rioters” in many cases. They’re not derided as “criminals,” “thugs,” “pigs” or even “violent.” Those descriptors, as events in Baltimore Monday night reveals yet again, are only reserved for black people. They’re the ones who need to be quelled by militarized police forces. They’re the ones who need to be off the streets, immediately. They’re diminishing the validity of their cause. Yet somehow, reckless behavior over a sports team, not a systemic matter of life and death, is viewed as a costly nuisance.