By looking at the video, there were far more than “dozens of young people” on the street. The station may have been coy about identifying the race of the mob. The videotape is not.
No one went to the hospital. No arrests were made. It’s almost like it never happened.
Two days later, news stories on the holiday celebrations in the Philadelphia Inquirer made no mention of the riots, other than to pronounce, “All in all, Philadelphia’s Fourth festivities ‘a resounding success.’”
In places like Quincy, Florida, riots with firework are a holiday tradition. In Quincy one black man was arrested and others were being sought after crowds of black people attacked police and others with explosives in 2012. WCTV news in Quincy reported:
Upon arrival and to their surprise police officers were ambushed by several suspects who threw explosive fireworks at them and their vehicles. Some of the explosives detonated underneath the vehicles with enough force to shake the vehicle.
Several hours later police were again called to the location but this time made contact with a witness who stated that four suspects had thrown a “bomb” at her. The witness also advised police that these same suspects were responsible for throwing explosive fireworks at police earlier.
Quincy police were the victims of a similar type assault last year on July 4th at this exact apartment complex. One officer was hospitalized last year and suffered minor hearing loss after a large explosive device was thrown at him and detonated next to him.14
That is the way it is in Gafney, South Carolina, too. In 2011 a group of five hundred black people threw fireworks and rocks at police after the July Fourth celebration. At one point, someone threw a cinder block through a Gaffney police cruiser. The officers were overwhelmed. Neighbors in the area have described what’s become an annual event as hell, saying it’s reminiscent of a war zone.15
In 2012, Gaffney police flooded the zone with extra officers and police were able to stop the “holiday tradition” that year. The same was true in Dallas, where in 2011 mobs of black people attacked a television videographer with rockets. Dallas was quieter the next year.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Attack on Photographer
In Greenville, South Carolina, in 2011, black people by the dozens “hurled fireworks at a Greenville officer.” Neighbors called police, and the officer reported they were shooting at his car and he had been hit in the chest. Within twenty minutes, twenty-five officers were on the scene. The local NBC affiliate called it a “holiday tradition that seems to escalate year after year.”16
In Greenville fireworks violence is a holiday tradition like Dickens’s Christmas Carol. All that’s missing is an old dude in a bathrobe hanging out a bedroom window:
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Hurling Fireworks at an Officer
“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.
“To-day?” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”
“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!”
“Hallo!” returned the boy.
“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired.
“I should hope I did,” replied the lad.
“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?”
“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy.
“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck.”
“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.
“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”
“Walk-er!” exclaimed the boy.
“No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown.”
Now that is a holiday tradition. Let’s head on over to Ohio.
Not Akron. Yes, Akron. If you were wondering if you lived in a “black world,” fifty black people in Akron, Ohio, had an answer: Yes.
No, they didn’t answer during a community forum on our Founding Fathers. Or in a letter to the editor. Or even in a rant on a blog. Instead, in the summer of 2011, a group of fifty black people clearly declared that we live in a black world when they kicked and punched and terrorized a mom, dad, and two kids leaving a Fourth of July party.
Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ‘‘This is our world’’ and ‘‘This is a black world’’ as they confronted Marshall and his family.
The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black.
They said it started when one teen, without any words or warning, blindsided and assaulted Marshall’s friend as he stood outside with the others.
Marshall was the most seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and multiple bruises to his head and eye. He said he spent five nights in the critical care unit at Akron General Medical Center.
‘‘I knew I was going to get beat, but not as bad as I did,’’ Marshall said. ‘‘But I did it to protect my family. I didn’t have a choice. There was no need for this. We should be all getting along. But to me, it seems to be racist.’’17
Peoria, Illinois, was no better when in 2011 a crowd of hundreds of black people attacked police with fire, rockets, and explosives as they responded to a burning trash can.18
2012 was under slightly more control, but still violent. The Peoria Journal Star reported:
Police twice dispersed large crowds fighting in the street with pepper balls early Thursday, hours after most Fourth of July revelers had vacated the riverfront area.
The first call came at about 2:40 a.m. in the 600 block of Northeast Adams Street. When officers arrived, hundreds of people were in the streets with some yelling, shoving, and punching each other.19
But this year, police and fire officials report none of the violence was directed against them. Or at least none that anyone would talk about.
Peoria and South Florida are a universe apart, connected only by a fondness for black mob violence. Let’s take a look.
7
LET’S PARTY
Miami Beach, Myrtle Beach, Indianapolis, and Charlotte:
You bring the juice, I’ll bring the guns and the weed.
If you are in the mood for a little partying, mixed with mayhem and shooting, you might want to check out Black Beach Week in Miami Beach, Black Bike Week in Myrtle Beach, International Black Expo in Indianapolis, or even Speed Week in Charlotte. These are annual events that are marketed to the black community. They are advertised on black radio stations and in black newspapers and feature black celebrities.
The biggest problem people have in describing these events is finding the right city to make comparisons: Fallujah seems to be this year’s favorite. Sarajevo is popular with the older crowd. Even Cairo.
MIAMI BEACH
Let’s start with the coral-colored streets of Miami Beach where every year for the last ten years, 350,000 to 400,000 black people gather during a long Memorial Day weekend. For fifty-one weeks out of the year, Miami Beach is a mecca for art deco enthusiasts, retirees, and a grab bag of tourists, gay and straight, from around the world. But for five days around Memorial Day, Miami Beach is the center of the universe for the world’s biggest black beach party. The city does not really host the party. People just show up.
The party does more damage than most hurricanes. With hurricanes you don’t get police exchanging gun fire with gangsters trying to run them over with their cars.
You do get shootings. Assaults on police. Mounta
ins of trash. Violence against people and property on a scale that can only be called anarchistic. And its all on video.
Reporters and sources fall over each other to avoid saying that hundreds of thousands of black people_come to their town every Memorial Day and leave a shattered war zone in their wake. The Miami Herald reported:
For the past 10 years, the Art Deco District on South Beach has turned into a hip-hop street party during Memorial Day weekend, with a bulked up police presence monitoring hundreds of thousands of young revelers.
Monday’s early morning shootings, which resulted in one dead, four bystanders hit by stray bullets, and three police officers injured, has renewed a call to replace the hip-hop themed festival with a less rowdy event — or do away with it altogether.1
Commenter Antonino Lopez in a CBS Miami article expressed his frustration with the mobs of people and how they turn the city into a war zone:
“It shows our city as nothing short of a war zone - Filthy streets, a drive by shooting, multiple cars crashed in the process, and total chaos on the streets. This is unacceptable and must be controlled before we totally lose our city, tourism & residents.2
It is not limited to Ocean Drive or Collins Avenue. The president of Hispanic gay-rights group Unity Coalition, Herb Sosa, wrote an open letter to Miami Beach mayor Matti Herrera Bower about the “Urban Beach Week.” In it he said:
“There isn’t a residential street in South Beach not affected by tons of garbage, crime to our vehicles, excessive noise 24 hours a day, and simply a lack of respect for our community, citizens and property,” activist Herb Sosa wrote in an open letter to the Miami Beach City Commission. “Make the difficult but correct decision to put an end to Urban Weekend in Miami Beach.”3
Doug Giles on Townhall.com describes the effect of the crowds of people on the usually pleasant beach town:
This past weekend the Urban Beach people hit their nadir: They turned South Beach, America’s Riviera, into a war zone.
Collins Avenue on Memorial Day was indeed memorable but in a tawdry, satanic sense as the Urban Beach Weekers made our Cosmopolitan playground look more like Cairo, complete with attempted cop killing.
Yes, during this year’s festivities the Urban Beach Weekers trashed the historic Art Deco streets, screamed, yelled and blasted music 24/7, and then, of course, there’s the attempted murder of our local police. Yep, one of the “tourists” tried to run over several cops with his vehicle and then shot at them, at which point a gunfight ensued between one of these winners and Miami’s cops that made anything John Yoo has produced look lame.4
Local TV says people were enjoying the holiday weekend without once mentioning the history of this event. It began in 1999 with small crowds but as urban clothing companies started to use the event to show off their wares, it began to take off. Soon record labels and entertainers got involved and the event spiraled into a mega fest of close to half a million people, trashing the streets, creating havoc, and even breaking out in violence. By 2011 gunshots, chaos, and cars trying to run over cops were all part of the event.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: South Beach Shootout
It has gotten so bad, one of its original organizers, rapper Luther Campbell, says he does not want anything to do with it. He told the local CBS affiliate:
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Real Life Miami Vice
“Just walk the streets, get drunk, be rowdy, go to jail,” Campbell told CBS4’s Jim DeFede in describing what the event has become. “Me personally I wouldn’t even go over there. I haven’t been there probably in the last two or three years.
Campbell has a long history with the affair. Initially the weekend started in the Nineties as a fashion event for designers geared toward the African-American community. It continued to build over the years, with as many as 250,000 people descending on Miami Beach for the long weekend.
“The people that were originally coming down here were young professionals,” he said. “Then it became this free-for-all for the last five years where it became kids, thugs that type of element.”5
It is almost embarrassing to watch the people of South Florida who feel they have to apologize and stammer when talking about the damage this five-day Black Beach Week inflicts on their town. They are afraid someone will call them racist for noticing large scale black criminality. Meanwhile, the folks responsible for the carnage complain about hurt feelings when people notice they are bad news. Listen to members of the ACLU. They said police caused the riots.
“The unfortunate part of this has been the racial component,” said John de Leon, president of the Greater Miami Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which monitors police during the event. “The police presence historically has seemed to heighten the tension of the event.”6
That is rich. The ACLU does not care for the racial component of “Black Beach Week.” If you saw this on TV, you would turn the channel because it would not seem plausible. A lot of the crime went unreported at the time, both by the police and the media. It wasn’t until a year later, in 2012, that the national paper The New York Times broke the story:
Last year a melee broke out, and employees hustled out the knife-wielding brawlers. The restaurant then shut down for two days. “We had a small riot,” said Jason Starkman, the owner. “I can’t take that risk anymore with my staff.”
A few blocks away at Mango’s Tropical Cafe on Ocean Drive, a popular club and cabaret, David Wallack, the owner, said that after last year’s event his staff voted overwhelmingly to close this weekend. Mango’s decided to remain open but Mr. Wallack has removed the sidewalk cafe to protect customers; a shuttle bus will ferry employees to their cars because last year several were robbed of their tips.
Worse still, Mr. Wallack said, the event chased away other customers and was a financial loss for the cafe.7
By 2012 more than ten years since the first event, police were ready. Miami Beach turned into an “armed camp.” Six hundred police with scanners checked every car coming into the beach town. Some were turned away. Others were arrested. Cops were everywhere. Violence and lawlessness were down. Lots of people complained it was not as much fun. A buzz kill. The Miami Herald maintained its perfect record of turning a blind eye. Here is how they soft-peddled the scene:
Law enforcement calls, through Sunday morning, were along the line of routine, weekend incidents that occur on South Beach all the time — just more of them.
A brawl here. A foot chase there. A drunk, screaming man, choke-holding his girlfriend, wrestled to the ground by officers and stunned with a Taser.
People drinking and lighting up joints on the streets.
“A lot of low-level lawlessness,” said Miami Beach police Lt. Bruce Johnson as he and a squad of bicycle patrol officers darted down Washington Avenue after ticketing a man for his ride’s illegal window tint.8
“Low-level lawlessness”?! What is that? Hundreds were arrested. Dope smoking took place on the streets in front of cops. One guy bit the face off another guy. But all in all, Black Beach Week was a success. Ask anyone, except the residents. Most of the locals loathe Black Beach Week—and say so all over the Internet.
If the “low-level lawlessness” of Miami Beach is not to your liking on Memorial Day, but you still have mayhem and violence on your mind, head your hog up to Myrtle Beach for Black Biker Weekend.
Mayhem ensues up there too.
MYRTLE BEACH
In 2011 the otherwise quiet town of Myrtle Beach had “five armed robberies, a stabbing, a shooting, and an incident involving a shotgun being pointed at a security guard during a nearly eight-hour period early Sunday and Monday” over Memorial Day weekend.9
That’s the violence, but there’s more—more trash on the streets than anyone has seen before. All courtesy of the three hundred thousand folks who attend the largest gathering of black bikers in the world.
Black Biker Week has a long and violent history in Myrtle Beach—which now includes denying anything unusua
l ever happens in their town during Memorial Day weekend. Myrtle Beach is a family beach town surrounded by 123 golf courses. For fifty-one weeks a year, Myrtle Beach is upscale, gentile, and safe. Then comes Memorial Day. Originally called the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day BikeFest, Black Biker Week began in 1980 and was held just at Atlantic Beach with one hundred participants.
Black Bike Week got so violent and abusive from 2000 to 2005 that businesses boarded up for the week. The high crime and hyper-violence associated with the event led city officials to enact a series of laws effectively banning motorcycle rallies in their city. The NAACP cried racial discrimination and sued to reverse the law. They won. The businesses that closed during Black Biker Week were found to be guilty of racial discrimination.
Many folks are absolutely surprised a business cannot close and open whenever it wants.
Today, the NAACP has a hot line where people can phone in complaints of discrimination against anyone who has a problem with Black Bike Week or its participants. No word on if the NAACP has a hotline for the victims of shootings and violence during the week.
Local news media noted high levels of crime and litter during the weekend of Memorial Day 2011, but they never mentioned anything about the world’s largest gathering of black bikers that had the run of their town for the week.10
Maybe the local news media was concerned about the NAACP. Maybe they didn’t like being called racist. News One reported that “the NAACP will be looking at the way businesses and police treat African American motorcycle riders for Black Biker Week to monitor racial discrimination.” Maybe they will monitor the news media too. Isn’t it strange that three hundred thousand black bike enthusiasts can come to a small town and no local media mentions the group or its members even once?11
Good or bad, isn’t that a story?
Once the biking and the beaching are over, you can pick up the partying in Indianapolis. Just don’t forget your guns.
White Girl Bleed A Lot Page 7