"Thank God That My Son Is a Thug"
Donyell Shank lives in the Park Heights neighborhood of Baltimore. Her daughter was a friend of Freddie Gray. In an interview at her house this week, she talked about rioting and what it means to be a “thug” in a neighborhood where the police are mistrusted:
“It started with people writing reports. That didn’t do anything. People started getting on camera, pointing the police out. That didn’t do no good. Now, we riot, and we got attention.
“What’s the difference between this riot and what Martin Luther King did?...The only thing is we did not have a leader here. That’s the only difference...What is the difference? Just young children leading younger children. I don’t care what kind of name you put on them: thugs, whatever. They opened the door for us.
“If I’m walking down the street getting robbed, and the police come, I get questioned: ‘Ma’am, what did you do?’ All I have to do is tell a thug, and they’re going after that person. They’re going to get that person off of me immediately.
“I put this on Facebook the other day: One day I was walking down the street, and a guy was getting ready to rob me. It took another thug to say, ‘Do you know who’s mother this is? Do you know who her son is?’ Thank God that my son is a thug! Let me tell you something: We need thugs. Everybody needs a thug in their family. I don’t want nobody protecting me, who when I’m getting my ass beaten, you’re writing. What the hell is that supposed to do for me?
“I need somebody who will get somebody off of me immediately. And when I say thug, I don’t mean a thug that has to carry a gun. I don’t mean a thug that’s violent. Thug: you could generalize that all kinds of ways. A thug means you’ve got heart enough to do what you do. It could be in a positive way.
“They’re just narrowing it down to bottle-throwing and all that. She got thugs. The mayor got thugs with guns. Jesus Christ walked with thugs. How can you sit up here and talk about ‘these thugs?’”
