The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Baltimore

Coming Soon to a City Near You

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From aa440 Flickr
The Baltimore Police Department has secretly deployed a privately funded surveillance system using planes and powerful cameras that can continuously record 30-square-mile sections of the city at once. ACLU Attorney David Rocah had this to say.

The surveillance program itself is a privacy nightmare come to life and precisely what we have warned against for years. It’s the equivalent of requiring each of us to wear a GPS tracker whenever we leave our homes, something that would never be tolerated in the physical world.

Read More:

Police Secretly Put Large Part of Baltimore Under Constant Aerial Video Surveillance | American Civil Liberties Union

Baltimore Police Secretly Running Aerial Mass-Surveillance Eye in the Sky | ACLU BLog

Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move From Above | Bloomberg Business Week

Ruth Wilson Gilmore on Baltimore

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Historian and geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore claims that the rebellion in Baltimore is an uprising against austerity. She says that gentrified cities, the fall of manufacturing and the filling of jails with black men all fueled the reaction to the killing of Freddie Gray.

The US is more segregated by race and income now than in 1960.

Read More: The rebellion in Baltimore is an uprising against austerity, claims top US academic | US news | The Guardian

The White Response to Baltimore

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It’s in the defense of that property – those CVS stores owned by faceless individuals and those police cars being bashed in – that we’ve seen the strongest response from the dominant element of society. Social media is a good indication, but certainly not the only one. There, on sites like Facebook and Twitter, folks have spoken up about Freddie Gray for the first time. They’ve not come to the defense of the oppressed. Rather, they’ve spoken up in condemnation of those “animals,” “thugs,” and “criminals” who are “destroying their own city.” It’s some combination of historical illiteracy and racial animus that drives the response.

Read More: The Dominant White Response to Baltimore Shows Why Black Residents are Justified in their Anger

Dispatch from Baltimore

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Stacia L. Brown reports for The Nation that the emotional distance between Freddie Gray’s moving funeral and the chaos that followed isn’t as wide as it may seem.

Billy Murphy had, at one point, asked everyone present to raise their hands if they’d been a victim of police brutality in Baltimore.

Everyone raised a hand.

Read More: Dispatch from Baltimore: Praying for Peace, Living Another Reality | The Nation

Baltimore Uprising

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Here are a few links that seem relevant to the current drama playing out in the streets of Baltimore.

The city has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.

Source: Undue force – Sun Investigates – The Baltimore Sun

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.

Source: As Riots Follow Freddie Gray’s Death in Baltimore, Calls for Calm Ring Hollow – The Atlantic

We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.

Source: Orioles COO John Angelos offers eye-opening perspective on Baltimore protests | For The Win

Most of the media sensationalized the small amount of property damage that took place during demonstrations last weekend–while downplaying all evidence of the systemic racism and police violence that stirred this reaction.

Source: We have a right to be in the streets for Freddie | SocialistWorker.org

Twenty journalists and 40 police, academics, youth and experts came together in Chicago at Columbia College Chicago to discuss how to better cover stories of race, police and community.

Source: #RaceandPolice — Day 1, April 24 the morning discussions: police, race, bias and Ferguson coverage (with images, tweets) · Susys · Storify