Welcome to Edge of Sports the podcast here on the Panoply Network. I'm Dave Ziren. This week, we are talking to a pro sports owner, which is not normally how we roll.

But I have wanted to speak to this individual on the record for quite a few months. He is Baltimore Orioles front office chief John Angelos. Why John Angelos? Well, for me, it was during the first

days of the Baltimore protests following the police murder of Freddie Gray. The protests reached the

gates of Camden Yards where the Orioles and Red Sox were playing. John Angelos was asked to condemn the

property damage and defend the fans who were at the game and felt their personal safety threatened

by those outside. Instead, Angelo said this. My greater source of personal concern, outrage,

and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night's property damage

nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade

period, during which an American political elite have shipped middle-class and working-class jobs

away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China

and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hardworking Americans into economic devastation,

and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American civil rights protections

in order to control an unfairly impoverished population, living under an ever-declining standard of living,

and suffering at the butt end of an evermore

militarized and aggressive surveillance state.

The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short

by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government

pay the true price and ultimate price, and one that far exceeds the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price and ultimate price and one that

far exceeds the importance of any kids game played tonight or ever at Camden Yards. We need to

keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S. and while we are thankful no one was

injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere

who don't have jobs and are losing economic, civil, and legal rights.

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