Bob Franken

Our country is unraveling, right before our eyes. No longer can we treat the eruptions of violence in places like Baltimore as isolated incendiary incidents. If, as a nation, we don’t take immediate remedial action, which means a complete overhaul of a brutally unfair system, the grudges that have simmered for so many generations will explode wherever there are people who are oppressed by those who benefit from a grossly inequitable economic system.

It’s too easy to dismiss the rioting in Baltimore as the actions of some punks who went on a rampage in some sort of mindless delinquency. The inn...