By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner
Blake explains her authorization for violence
At the outset of the riots that are now sweeping Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a press conference, telling reporters that the city was allowing violence in an effort to make sure rioters were able to “exercise their right to free speech” and to defuse the situation. “It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure that they [meaning the rioters, not the victims] were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy, space to do that as well…” she said. She thought that would put the city in “the best position to deescalate.”
Under orders, police held back and did nothing while rioters engaged in repeated acts of violence, including smashing car windows, destroying police cars and attacking individuals and private businesses. More than a dozen police have been injured, some seriously. This was the mayor’s idea of respecting the rioters’ First Amendment rights.
How is it possible that anyone could be so delusional, so mind-numbingly stupid, so utterly incompetent, that they would believe allowing rioters to go nuts would somehow pacify them? Predictably, they took her encouragement as opportunity for even more violence and widespread looting. The city is burning and the governor has declared a state of emergency. Now she is calling those very same people, thugs.
Now she is saying she never told anyone to destroy the city. Well perhaps she didn’t specifically say destroy “our whole city”. How nice of her. But the fact that she is denying her earlier statement with the video there for anyone to see, reveals just how utterly unfit she is for leadership. It borders on the delusional.
Last night she announced a curfew from 10 pm to 5 am starting, oddly, tonight. Why did the curfew not start last night, when people were still rioting and looting everywhere? Was she talking out of both sides of her mouth – letting them wreak havoc while pretending to become sensible? Was she continuing to let them exercise their “free speech rights” by destroying the city?
This is worse than incompetence. It is gross malfeasance in office. Martin Luther King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, called Mayor Blake’s statement, “unbelievable,” and asks, “Who ma’am, will incur the moral and economic costs of picking up the pieces? The innocent taxpayers?” A good question. Thank you, Dr. King.
Dr. King has asked for Blake’s resignation, but don’t look for that happening anytime soon. For her to do so would imply some level of personal ethics. Perish the thought.
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake personifies the entitlement mentality that has ruined inner cities throughout the U.S. The wild, defiant and often violent behavior of criminals in this city is enabled and encouraged by an attitude always looking to blame someone else. We don’t know how or why Freddie Gray was injured, or what killed him, though it doesn’t look good for the police. We do know he was a career criminal with a record of violent crime and drug arrests.
Perhaps the mayor should consider why, despite astronomical taxes and every social welfare program known to man, Baltimore remains a cesspool of unemployment, crime and drugs. It is at least in part because the city continues to elect idiots like Blake. This is the same mayor who, while encouraging blacks to express their frustration through violence, has welcomed illegal aliens with open arms, stealing away black jobs and black businesses.
The residents of these places will not get “justice” until they figure out that their problems are their problems, and until they face them nothing will change. Continually re-electing clowns who publicly justify errant behavior while screwing the residents every which way from Sunday will only encourage more.