Tuesday on “Democracy Now!” activist Jesse Jackson discussed the rioting in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. He said the conditions of poverty caused by “bankers who engaged in subprime and predatory lending and took people’s homes and drove them out of the middle class,” are the real thugs.
After host Amy Goodman played a clip of rioters being called “lawless gangs of thugs” Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD), Jackson said, “Such language does not aid the situation. For example those bankers who engaged in subprime and predatory lending and took people’s homes and drove them out of the middle class into poverty—what is their name? A hundred and eleven killings in three years in one area. What do you call those who did the killing when there was no camera?”
Jackson said many law enforcement officers in the city of Baltimore live in the suburbs so, “They [the police] come in as an occupying force, not as neighbors. So, often people are afraid of them because they’re not taxpaying neighbors whose children go to school with their children. So there is this gap between police and people. And you really ought to have residential requirements for policemen and firemen. Those who get nectar from the flower should sow pollen where they pick up nectar.”
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