"Freddie Gray will never be back. Those windows will,” said DeRay McKesson, during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday.
McKesson, an activist best known for his efforts in Ferguson, Missouri, during protests of the police killing of teenager Michael Brown, refused to condemn Baltimore protesters who turned to violence on Monday -- even after Blitzer noted at least 15 injured police officers, 200 arrests and 44 vehicles set ablaze.
"There's no excuse for that kind of violence right?" Blitzer asked McKesson, who then promptly responded:
"Yeah, and there's no excuse for the seven people the Baltimore City Police Department has killed in the past year either, right?"
Blitzer then invoked the peaceful ways of Martin Luther King Jr. -- who was arrested on multiple occasions for getting rowdy with law enforcement while protesting.
"I don't have to condone it to understand it, right?" McKesson said. "The pain that people feel is real. And you are making a comparison. You are suggesting this idea that broken windows are worse than broken spines, right? And what we know to be true is that the police are killing people everywhere. They're killing people here."
Blitzer continued vainly trying to get McKesson to condemn the violent protesters.
"The violence that the police have been inflicting on communities of color has been sustained and deep ... I think that the unrest, the uprising, whatever you call it is, again, a cry for justice here and a cry for justice across the country because the police continue to terrorize people -- and the terrorizing is actually deadly," McKesson said.
Check out the footage above.
[H/T Mediate]