The Baltimore riots are raging, which means that the parade of talking heads, activists, and local flacks has begun in force. Last night, Sean Hannity spoke to Adam J. Jackson, a Maryland activist and CEO of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, about whether or not what’s happening in Baltimore is a movement anyone with a brain should be involved in.
Jackson quickly got to his talking points, and made a valiant attempt at ignoring the issue at hand:
“Is this the type of protest you want to be a part of?” Hannity asked Jackson, as footage of burning looting debris played in the background.“First and foremost, I’m not going to talk about the violence that people are talking about,” Jackson replied. “This is a response to the violence of the Baltimore City Police Department. People talking about the fires burning in Baltimore, there’s been fires burning of mass incarceration, racist police practices, so this is an outgrowth of that.”In response, Hannity noted that a majority of the city’s police are minority race, suggesting that therefore there cannot be institutionalized racism.
In fact, that’s not what Hannity was doing. He did question Jackson’s assertion that these protests are the organic reaction to systemic oppression of blacks in Baltimore, but he did it because Jackson himself refused to address the the violence currently tearing apart the lives of innocent people in west Baltimore.
For Jackson, though, that juxtaposition of various oppressions is meaningless. He quickly pivoted, laying the blame on “elite politicians” (both republican and democrat) and decades of public policy.
Jackson talks an awful lot during this train wreck of an appearance, but never once does he condemn human-on-human violence, or even recognize the difference between protests—even desperate protests—and all-out riots. Although he finally admits that violence is not an effective means of securing justice, he proclaims, “but I will not moralize on black people.”
That, of course, makes no sense. Jackson wants to use metaphors to highlight incarceration rates, but incarceration rates are not the same as fires that burn down corner stores and senior centers. Dragging a man out of a store and beating him isn’t a flash awareness-raising campaign; it’s an act of vengeance.
Jackson knows this. He’s willing to sacrifice sanity on the altar of politically correct vigilantism, which makes him just as dangerous as the next person to throw a match at a building.
As of this writing, Baltimore is still burning. We’ll keep you updated as the situation progresses—or devolves.
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