Things are starting to calm down in Baltimore as residents ban together to clean up and bring peace back into their community.
There were a number of peaceful protesters who formed human barricades between hot-tempered demonstrators and police throughout the day, easing the tension between the two groups. “We show that we can police ourselves,” said a man who stood for hours in what protesters called a “unity line.”
“We’re about positivity here in Baltimore. It starts with us. This long line of people came out here because what we seen on TV (Monday night), we didn’t like it,” the man said.
However, the same can’t be said for other cities like New York City. More than 100 people were arrested during Wednesday night’s “NYC Rise Up & Shut It Down With Baltimore” rally/march. They have since been released without charges, according to the state public defender’s office. The authorities were faced with two choices: either charge them or release them within 48 hours of their arrests.
“We’ve come up on a time line,” said Police Commissioner Anthony Batts. But, he added: “We’re not giving up on them. We’re just going to follow up.”
In Denver, police arrested 11 people–some allegedly even assaulted police officers!
From city to city, each of these protestors have one common goal: to get answers around the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police. It doesn’t stop there. We’re still marching for Walter Scott, Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Oscar Grant, Kajieme Powell…unfortunately, the list goes on.
Reportedly, there are more protests around the U.S. that are planned for Thursday, April 30. Cities like Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Portland, and Oakland are planning an uprising in support of Baltimore. If your city has one, do yourself a favor and be a part of the movement. The energy of the crowd is enough to ignite the activist in you. We went out to the march on Wednesday night in New York City and the streets were alive as people yelled out, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Up Next: A Prisoner In The Van Claims Freddie Gray Tried To Injure Himself?
*UPDATE* Freddie Gray received his spinal injury in the back of the police van. Sources quoted by WJLA said the medical examiner had determined Gray’s death was caused by catastrophic injury after he slammed into the back of the police transport van, “apparently breaking his neck; a head injury he sustained matches a bolt in the back of the van.”
It seems that we now have some insight on what happened inside of the van that Freddie Gray was put into for transport. Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at the police station on April 12. He suffered a major spinal injury and died a week later, sparking a passionate uprising in Baltimore. Police claim they don’t know how Gray was injured in the ride.
But in today’s “this-can’t-be-real-life news,” a prisoner who was allegedly in the same van with Gray has spoken out, claiming that Gray injured himself. The prisoner was separated from Gray by a metal partition and couldn’t see him, so his claims are based on what he heard.
This fellow passenger said that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he was “intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to the police document obtained by Washington Post.
Here’s the thing, when was the last time we were able to believe police and their reports?
The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.
Jason Downs, one of the attorneys for the Gray family, said the family had not been told of the prisoner’s comments to investigators. “We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord,” Downs said. “We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident.”
The man who was in the van is currently in jail. We wonder if he was coerced into admitting that he heard Gray hurting himself. It seems this admission shouldn’t be permissible because it’s not something he saw. Also, what man who was just arrested would actually try to harm themselves to the point of breaking their spine? We’ll wait.
Up Next: Before Baltimore’s Uprising, A Man Hung Black Dolls To Protest Black Killings
Artist Loring Cornish closed his art gallery and starting working on an outside exhibition in Baltimore after the fatal shooting of Walter Scott at the hands of White police officer Michael Slager. The stunning exhibit featured dolls that he painted Black, hanging from trees–an obvious racial disturbance meant to cause a gut reaction.
“I wanted to make a statement. I wanted to show people exactly what’s going on with a figure of something that I’ve been feeling. It’s pretty much death. We’re being killed like innocent babies,” he said. “Who should get shot eight times?”
“I am in mourning for all of the black men that are dying needlessly, and the United States of America is doing nothing about it. And it seems like we can do nothing about police brutality,” he told Baltimore NBC affiliateWBAL.
This bold display certainly got the message across, but of course many residents found it absolutely horrifying, which is how Black people feel about police officers killing us everyday.
Cornish said he hung the dolls as a visual representation of what some Black Americans are currently feeling, given the number of Black men who have died because of alleged police violence.
“We’re feeling this. This is not something we should just gloss over. We’re actually feeling death in our community,” he said. “We are being lynched, killed and murdered legally in the United States.”
What do you think about this display? It’s rather uncanny that it debuted in Baltimore two weeks before these protests around Freddie Gray’s death erupted.
