If you happen to be a person who has felt it necessary this week to enter conversations about police brutality or pervasive racial inequality or riots in order to insert your concern for Baltimore residents and business owners affected by the small faction of otherwise peaceful, nonviolent protesters rallying after the recent death of Freddie Gray, stand down. Can it be a given that empathy is not zero sum? We can acknowledge that the system is fucked up and broken, or that we’re in dire need of an infrastructural overhaul, or that people who are routinely terrorized and fear for their lives are perhaps logically justified in feeling angry or even daring to express that anger publicly — none of this also implies an automatic condoning of burning Baltimore to the ground.

You don’t have to condone violence to understand the overwhelming anger and frustration from which it is born