CNN Commentator: ‘We Should Be Strategic in How We Riot’
Baltimore burning because of ‘state violence and extrajudicial killing.’
“I’m not saying we should see the destruction of black communities as positive. I’m saying that we can’t have too narrow a conception of what the destruction of black communities mean,” said Hill. “I think we should strategic in how we riot.”
Elsewhere in the program, the commenter blamed “state violence and extrajudicial killing” for the violence.
There shouldn’t be calm tonight. Black people are dying in the streets. We’ve been dying in the streets for months, years, decades, centuries. I think there can be resistance to oppression. And when resistance occurs, you can’t circumscribe resistance, you can’t schedule a planned resistance. You can’t tell me where to die in, where to resist, how to resist, and how to protest.
“Now I do think that there should be an ethics attached to this. But we have to watch out own ethics and be careful not to get more upset about the destruction of property than the destruction of black bodies and that seems to me what’s happening over the last few hours. And that’s very troublesome to me.
“We also, I think, have to be very careful about the language that we use to talk about this. I’m not calling these people rioters. I’m calling these uprisings. And I think it’s an important distinction to make.
This is not a riot. There have been uprisings in major cities and smaller cities around this country for the last year because of the state violence that’s been waged against black female and male bodies forever. And I think that’s what’s important here. I agree with you, Don, we can’t ignore the fact that the city is burning, but we need to be talking about why it’s burning and not romanticize peace and not romanticize marching as the only way to function. I’m not saying we should be hurting, I’m not saying we should be killing people, but we do have to understand that resistance looks different ways to different people. and part of what it means to say black lives matter, is to assert our right to have rage and righteous rage and righteous indignation in the face of state violence and extrajudicial killing. Freddie Gray is dead. That’s why the city is burning. And let’s make that clear: The city is not burning because of protesters. the city is burning because the police killed Freddie Gray.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cnn-we-should-be-strategic-how-we-riot_933201.html