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The looting of Baltimore that we never hear about
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When I was a kid I heard various older people talk abut the blizzards of 1979 and 1983. On rare occasions I would hear people mention looting that went on during the 1979 snowstorm in the city. Mass looting is a pretty traumatic event for any major city. One can understand how an event like this might contribute to population loss. I do not think I have ever read about the 1979 looting in any news article (the 30 year anniversary just passed) or any scholarly analysis of Baltimore's social or economic problems. When doing my own research I stumbled upon an incident that could be considered more dangerous than the 1968 riots.
Did you know that in the summer of 1974 the Baltimore police went on strike and that the city erupted in chaos, anarchy, looting, and fires? I had never heard of this strike before. Here is a wikipedia summary of the event and here is a Time Magazine article that does not paint a particularly flattering picture of 1974 Baltimore.
I encourage all of you to research the modern history of Baltimore. There is a whole lot of information out there that the mass media chooses to forget for some reason. The incidents of 1974 and 1979 show us that on some levels Baltimore has been in much worse shape in the past. They also show that anarchy can happen in modern times and that unions need to understand that certain strikes can be very damaging to society in the long run and are not worth it in the grand scheme of things.
