“If you can’t seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore,” David Simon wrote.
The Wire creator David Simon wrote a blog post denouncing the violence that followed the Monday funeral of Freddie Gray, who died in police custody.
Simon worked for years as a Baltimore Sun reporter before creating the acclaimed HBO crime drama, which takes place in Baltimore.
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"The anger and the selfishness and the brutality of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray’s name needs to cease," he wrote, calling it an "an affront" to Gray's memory.
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"If you can’t seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore," he continued. "Turn around. Go home. Please."
Patrick Semansky / Associated Press
First things first.
Yes, there is a lot to be argued, debated, addressed. And this moment, as inevitable as it has sometimes seemed, can still, in the end, prove transformational, if not redemptive for our city. Changes are necessary and voices need to be heard. All of that is true and all of that is still possible, despite what is now loose in the streets.
But now — in this moment — the anger and the selfishness and the brutality of those claiming the right to violence in Freddie Gray's name needs to cease. There was real power and potential in the peaceful protests that spoke in Mr. Gray's name initially, and there was real unity at his homegoing today. But this, now, in the streets, is an affront to that man's memory and a dimunition (sic) of the absolute moral lesson that underlies his unnecessary death.
If you can't seek redress and demand reform without a brick in your hand, you risk losing this moment for all of us in Baltimore. Turn around. Go home. Please.
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