First - It was, and is, the gangs that are rioting. The protesters (I was one of them) were White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Christians, Jews, Atheists, and every other goddamned ethnic, cultural, and social group. We left when the gangs came in and started to trash businesses, attack people who weren't black, and generally fuck things up. They weren't at all a part of the protests. 

Second - The fact that the Sun is endorsing the claim that it was actual protesters that were the source of the rioting and not the thugs and gangs in Baltimore is despicable. 

Third - This is a tactic used by the media to conflate and misdirect discussion on the core issues at the heart of both the legal protests and the illegal but predictable, and explainable, riots. The real discussion here needs to be why this even happened at all... especially under a black administration. You should see now that the exploitation of social classes and diverse demographics is not dependent on the color of the administration. Gangs exist due to the lack of choices and social and economic constraints on children and the pressure of parents who often raise multiple children on their own without any help. The very real and engineered nature of the poverty in West and East Baltimore is a direct result of both gentrification and gerrymandering. The overarching similarity that transcends the generations of social and economic neglect is the political system that offers platitudes for the people of Baltimore while only seeing the structure itself as a steppingstone for higher political aspirations. This is most readily observed by the re-invigoration of money into the inner harbor and downtown Baltimore without any redress of the thousands of derelict and burnt down buildings of the slums and ghettos; a remnant of the 1968 Baltimore riots. 

Fourth - For those of you who have seen the videos for middle school and high school children (ages 14-18) pushing back armed riot police with bricks and rocks you have to ask yourselves, why, in today's world do these children feel it justifiable to throw rocks and brick at police? What about their environment enables this kind of thinking that doesn't exist in well-to-do environments? Keep in mind the Baltimore police are 46% black so these kids can't think the police are racists in the traditional sense. Could it be the police, to them, represent the enforcement arm of the system that oppresses them? 

Fifth - I struggle with this point, but it encompasses all the others before it. At what point do the rioters in Baltimore, whose situation is understandable but inexcusable, cease to be victims of their own economic system, and become perpetrators within the system? Can we, and should we, separate the origins of political and social unrest with the present realities of our own social situations? 

So, before you are a few points spurred by a excellent example of terrible journalism, and a few questions I think that need to be discussed rather then the divisive us-versus-them narrative that's being compounded in the media.