The President on Baltimore

For John, BLUF:  I thought the President did well.  Now we need the follow-through.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Someone I know, an 80+ year old Caucasian, originally from Kansas City, wrote the following to another individual:

Please tell me why I don’t understand the problem, so that I might help in some small way.  Otherwise, a slew of U.S. citizens lose rights that our Declaration of Independence promises:  “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”

In response the person he addressed sent the following item from yesterday's Daily Beast, by Mr Michael Daly.  "The Most Honest 15 Minutes Of Obama’s Presidency".  The intro is "Addressing Baltimore’s systemic poverty and lack of opportunity, Obama suddenly was the president we’ve needed all along."

Here are a couple of paragraphs extracted from the article:

“In those environments, if we think that we’re just gonna send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there, without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not gonna solve this problem,” he said as he stood in the sunshine in the Rose Garden 43 miles from the epicenter of the previous night’s riot.

He went on, “And we’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets.  And everybody will feign concern until it goes away and then we go about our business as usual.”

He made clear that there is no excuse for such violence.

“When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting, they’re not making a statement, they’re stealing,” he said.  “That is not a protest, that is not a statement, it’s people—a handful of people taking advantage of the situation for their own purposes, and they need to be treated as criminals.”

But he made equally clear that the police cannot be the long-term solution any more than they were the immediate cause of the unrest.

“We can’t just leave this to the police,” he said.  “I think there are police departments that have to do some soul searching. I think there are some communities that have to do some soul searching.  But I think we, as a country have to do some soul searching.”

Here is the White House blog on the issue, from yesterday.

Regards  —  Cliff