People
are moved by a line of police as authorities disperse a protest in
Ferguson, Missouri, early Wednesday, August 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Charlie
Riedel)
The
people of Ferguson, Missouri, have rallied and marched and protested
for eleven straight days and nights. They want justice for Michael
Brown, the 18-year-old unarmed black boy killed by Ferguson police
officer Darren Wilson on August 9. They’ve been met with tear gas,
assault rifles, rubber bullets, armored police cars, dogs and the
National Guard. And they show no signs of letting up.
But why?
I’ve been trying to figure out why so many people have had such a strong
reaction to Brown’s killing. Because this isn’t new. His death is
tragic, but fairly ordinary in the course of black people’s interactions
with the police. We deal with this all the time.
On her MSNBC show this past Saturday, Melissa Harris-Perry demonstrated
just how ordinary it is. She read a list of names of unarmed black men
killed by police in the last decade alone, and it was chilling, to say
the least. “Timothy Stansbury, unarmed. Sean Bell, unarmed. Oscar Grant,
unarmed. Aaron Campbell, unarmed. Alonzo Ashley, unarmed. Wendell
Allen, unarmed. Jonathan Ferrell, unarmed. Eric Garner, unarmed,” she
said, before adding, “From 2006 to 2012, a white police officer killed a
black person at least twice a week in this country.”
Twice a week. It’s business as usual for police to kill black people.
And those are only a few names—many more black men and women have been
killed by police. Many of them were also unarmed. Many were around the
same age as Michael Brown. So what makes him special? Why did his death
elicit such a strong reaction?
Of course, there are several factors to consider. That he was a young
black man and not a young black woman is part of it. Black women/girls
are often forgotten as victims in the discussion of police violence.
That he was regarded as a “gentle giant” (Brown was 6'4" tall and close
to 300 pounds) and a prospective college student are relevant. His image
as “harmless” and “respectable” makes him more sympathetic to some
people. That a mostly white police force routinely harasses black
residents of Ferguson matters. And the fact witnesses say at the time of
his shooting Brown had his hands up in the air, surrendering, also
matters. It makes the six bullet wounds he suffered appear even more
callous.
But for me, the detail that sticks is that Brown’s body was left in the
street for at least four hours. Not only did people in the community
witness the shooting, they were forced to look at the aftermath. For
hours, they had to see Michael Brown’s bullet-ridden, bloody body lie
rotting in the street.
It’s not unlike Henry Simmons’s bullet-filled body being hung from in
tree in Palm Beach, Florida, in June of 1923. Or that of William Turner,
whose body was hung, then cut down, then hung again before being burned
in a bonfire in Helena, Arkansas, in November 1921. There was also Jim
Roland, shot and killed by a mob in Camillia, Georgia, after having
refused to dance for a white man who was pointing a gun at him in
February 1921. And also Frank Dodd, shot and hung from a tree “in a
negro settlement on the outskirts of DeWitt, Arkansas, in October 1916.”
And so many more.*
They were lynched. They were killed and displayed publicly for the
amusement of the lynch mobs and other white folks, and for the further
terrorization of black people.
The police didn’t hang Michael Brown, but they made a public display of
his killing. They left his body lying there for all to see. The psychic
toll that exerts on a community calls to mind the eerie words once sung
by Billie Holiday: “Southern trees bear strange fruit/ blood on the
leaves and blood at the root…/ here is a fruit for the crows to pluck/
for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.” But for Brown and
Ferguson, the “poplar trees” were replaced with a city street.
It is an injustice that Michael Brown was killed. But injustice alone
doesn’t move people to action. His killing is one of many. But the sight
of Michael Brown’s body being left in the middle of the street is the
closest this generation has come to seeing, in real life, the strange
fruit of which Holiday sang. That’s an image you just can’t shake.
What Would Real Economic Justice Look Like in Ferguson?
Michelle Chen
August 20, 2014
The Nation
Protestors in Ferguson, Missouri (AP photo/Charlie Reidel)
The
rage rippling through Ferguson, Missouri, was sparked when a police
officer killed an unarmed young black man. But the media coverage of the
unrest has highlighted other "crimes:" the "seizure" of a local
McDonald's, the "looting" of a convenience store. These contrasting
images—property damage and petty theft versus the theft of black lives
and systematic social disinvestment—reveal how America's color line
skews the societal valuation of life and property. Ferguson's resistance
represents both an uprising against the injustice and a reclamation of
community space.
While the Ferguson protests revolve around racial strife, the class
dynamics of the unrest are unmistakable on the besieged streets;
structural racism has been imposed over the years through housing
discrimination, massive impoverishment and white-dominated government.
A sense of economic disenfranchisement pulses through the protests, and
the militarized police crackdown has only served to highlight the
vicious divides of wealth and power that bind Ferguson. Labor activists
are now deepening the conversation about what "justice for Mike Brown"
should mean for the impoverished community that now grieves for him.
Bringing an economic justice message to the forefront of the
demonstrations, activists with the Future Fighters, a
millennials-focused offshoot of Service Employees International Union
(SEIU), have been marching every day, in solidarity with rights
organizations like the NAACP and Organization for Black Struggle. The
group is devising programs to clean up the streets after protests,
conduct know-your-rights trainings for protesters, and assist with
coordinating crowds. They also seek to provide basic material support by
distributing water, steering people toward safe spaces if they need a
break from the protests, or just reaching out and talking to locals, to
help them cope with surrounding trauma.
Local Future Fighters Chair Jerry Hart, a hospital tech in St. Louis,
says organized labor has a key role to play on the ground, particularly
with many SEIU members living and working in Ferguson: "If you're SEIU,
the people that you represent live here. They have to go to work to and
from here every day. If you want to call yourself a labor union, you
have to be involved in something like this, because it is a labor issue
as well."
The Fighters are striving to keep the climate of the nonviolent
demonstrations relatively calm. But while they do not endorse the more
severe tactics that damaged local property, they understand the impulse.
Te'Aun Bell, a hospital cook from Kansas City and Future Fighters
activist, tells The Nation, "They want peace… The people of the
community aren't okay with the looting, but at the same time, they
realize that this is the lash out from anger, from frustration. I'm not
saying it all is, but some of it is."
Drawing from his experience as a native St. Louisan, Hart has a grasp of
the frustrations driving some protesters to lash out. He has family
members who are "out looking for a job and can't find one, because in
some cases, they may have a [criminal] record, or just minimal
education. So those two things play [into each other]: you have nowhere
to go, no education, no job. Because your back is against the wall,
you're willing to do anything to survive."
When he's on the streets with the other demonstrators, he adds, "There's
so much emotions going on out there. As soon as you step out there, you
feel it. You can feel the tension. Not just Ferguson, but the city is
hurting [over] this."
Future Fighters also wants to launch a grassroots media project to
document and record stories from Ferguson for broadcast outlets, with
the aim of shifting the media lens toward the everyday struggles of
local residents, rather than just images of conflict in the streets.
Hospital tech and Future Fighters member Loreal Cornell hopes the
Ferguson protests galvanize political action that could lead to a more
accountable government and police force.
"We have a lot of youth who don't know who their alderman is, or what a
mayor does, or what a governor assists us with," she says, because young
people are not learning in school about how the political process
relates to their lives. For long-term political change, "we want to most
definitely educate people on their rights, but also on how…we can elect
officials who can [address] the things that we complain about… who are
going to do the right thing and get our community to where they're
uplifted and they're growing."
Labor and racial struggle have always braided together in St. Louis's
history. The East St. Louis race riots of 1917 erupted when white
workers attacked black migrants from the south who were seen as scabs.
In the following decades, black workers consolidated their organized
labor power in the St. Louis region and brought it into the foreground
of civil rights struggles.
Today in Ferguson, the struggles of the working poor take a different
tone. Segregation has shifted from Jim Crow to the structural exclusion
of the racial wealth gap. Poverty has soared in Ferguson while jobs and
public services have eroded. Since 1983, Missouri's union membership
rate has dropped by half to under 9 percent, below the national rate.
The economic violence enveloping Ferguson will continue to challenge
activists after the street clashes and tear gas have dissipated. Bradley
Harmon, local head of the Communications Workers of America, tells The
Nation via e-mail, "Once the immediate issues of justice for Mike Brown
are off the table and his killer is convicted, we still have a community
divided by race, still deindustrializing, with a public infrastructure
falling apart. We still have a decline in the standard of living for the
vast majority of working people."
Noting that labor is "probably the most racially integrated social force
in St Louis," Harmon says Ferguson could catalyze entwined struggles
for economic and racial justice: "I think if we're going to reverse the
decline of organized labor, we're going to [have to] take on the
systemic poverty and exclusion and withdrawal of public services that
made Ferguson happen."
As part of a broader community resistance movement, Cornell says, Future
Fighters are using union organizing tactics to help empower working
people, by "getting the message to people in a different type of way and
asking them, what would this situation look like if we actually won
this movement? How would our community look? How would Ferguson be built
up? And that I think is the question that gets minds rolling… This
could be exactly what this community needs."
Missouri labor groups have many fights ahead of them—organizing
workplaces, pushing the "Fight for 15" to raise fast-food worker wages,
and demanding equitable funding for public services. But a first step
would be to reclaim Ferguson's streets: from there, the community could
demand justice and reparations, for the dignity that the state, the
corporations and history have stolen from them.
Why All Communities of Color Must Demand an End to Police Brutality
by Deepa Iyer
August 20, 2014
The Nation
A man holds up a piece of police tape during a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, August 11, 2014 (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
The
images out of Ferguson, Missouri, these past two weeks have been
shocking: tear gas blanketing suburban streets, law enforcement creating
a war zone and defiant protesters braving it all. But it is important
to remember that what started Ferguson's fight is far too common: the
police killing of an unarmed black teen.
African-Americans
are the primary targets of law-enforcement profiling and violence, as
the killings of Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Jonathan Ferrell and Eric Garner
all attest. But during this past week, Latino, Asian-American,
Arab-American and Muslim organizations have all released statements of
solidarity informed by similar experiences with discriminatory law
enforcement practices, as well as an urgency to collectively identify
and implement solutions.
In
fact, Latinos and Asian- and Arab-Americans have a critical stake in
reforming discriminatory police practices. While African-Americans in
Ferguson must remain the primary voices and decision-makers calling for
action to address the murder of Michael Brown, other communities of
color can and must join Ferguson's fight by linking the impact of
racially motivated policing with the structural racial inequities that
exacerbate it.
Latinos
and Asian and Arab-Americans are no strangers to police violence and
profiling based on skin color, accent, language, immigration status and
faith. For example, Fong Lee, the 19-year-old son of Laotian refugees,
was shot and killed by a police officer as he was riding his bike home
from school in Minneapolis in 2006. For years, Latinos, along with
African-Americans, have been the disproportionate targets of the New
York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" tactic. And Muslim, South
Asian and Arab-American communities have experienced ongoing
surveillance in mosques and student associations, all in the name of
national security.
In
their ongoing war on undocumented immigration, federal and state law
enforcement agencies have been accused of engaging in rampant profiling
of Latino and Asian-American communities. Federal programs such as
Secure Communities and "Show Me Your Papers" laws enacted in Arizona,
Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah have led to stops and
detentions of people based on their accents or skin color, and deepened
both documented and undocumented immigrants' fears of engaging with law
enforcement.
When
law enforcement trample on the rights of any group, we must all resist:
the oppressive, militarized tactics on display in Ferguson have
undermined people's basic rights to peaceful assembly and movement, and
it's not the first time. For Asian-Americans, the curfew that caused so
much unnecessary violence in Ferguson over the weekend was reminiscent
of the "enemy alien curfews" that restricted the movements of
Japanese-Americans, as well as German, Italian and Japanese noncitizens,
during World War II—also imposed for reasons ostensibly related to
public safety. The military-grade hardware we've seen on the streets of
Ferguson has also been deployed by law enforcement in border cities in
California, Texas and Arizona, where reports of racial profiling,
harassment and deaths of Latinos seeking refuge in the United States
have been occurring for decades now.
How
can we fight back against police brutality and profiling? To start
with, we can push for concrete solutions already proposed by communities
of color, such as requiring police to wear cameras, ensuring police
accountability through the legal system, documenting police stops,
ending racial and religious profiling, providing culturally and
linguistically appropriate trainings for law enforcement that reflect
the communities they serve, instituting diverse recruitment and hiring
practices, and abiding by the concepts of community policing based on
mutual trust and respect. Coalitions such as Communities United for
Police Reform in New York City provide hopeful examples of how
organizing black, brown and interfaith communities can lead to
legislative victories that maintain public safety, civil rights and
police accountability.
But
police brutality is just one symptom of this country's larger
structural racism, which segregates our schools and cities, increases
the poverty and unemployment rates for people of color, has
psychological consequences for families and young people, and decreases
our life expectancy. African-Americans disproportionately bear the brunt
of this structural racism, but it affects many immigrants and other
minorities as well. In order to transform our communities, all people of
color must find common cause in each other's movements. We can only end
racial injustice through strategic multiracial alliances at the local
and national levels that are informed by an understanding of our
connected histories, and through working within our constituencies to
address anti-black racism and stereotypes about one another.
We can and must start with Ferguson.
Read Next: Zoë Carpenter on why protesters in Ferguson can't stay home at night
As Police Continue Ferguson Crackdown, Protesters Vow to Keep Taking the Streets
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report
Dee
Nixon and other protesters out on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri in
protest over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
(Photo: Mike Ludwig)
Dee
Nixon said he goes out to protest in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri
before work, and then comes back out again after work.
"I'm
going to keep coming out, all day, everyday," said Nixon, a 22-year-old
resident of Ferguson who attended another demonstration Monday night.
Nixon
said he learned from his mother that he was related to Michael Brown,
the unarmed 18-year-old shot and killed by local police officer Darren
Wilson on August 9, only after Brown died. His daily participation in
the protests against the killing, Nixon said, is "all about family."
"Because it could have happened to any of us," Nixon told me.
As
we spoke, a scuffle broke out across the street as a group of riot
police grabbed and arrested a protester. Hundreds of people had just
finished marching in protest of Brown's killing and the general
treatment of black people in the St. Louis area by law enforcement.
Many
of the marchers had already gone home, but dozens of activists,
journalists, community leaders and youth - visibly angry about the
murder of their peer - had stayed at an intersection, where a row of
riot cops and National Guardsman stood with weapons drawn. Behind them
was a line of armored vehicles and squad cars leading back toward a
command center established in a strip mall by state police.
Local
businesses on the street had boarded up their windows after several
nights of clashes on West Florissant Avenue, where the city's most
confrontational protests have occurred over the past week.
People
in Ferguson have been protesting for 10 days now and are showing no
sign of stopping. Police have blamed "criminals" and outside agitators
for stirring up violence during nighttime demonstrations, but on Monday
night, it was clear that the police - along with their military-grade
weapons - were a provocation in and of themselves. It was a cop that
fatally shot Michael Brown, after all.
"We're just trying to have the same rights as you," one angry demonstrator told a group of mostly white journalists.
"I
think it's the fact that everybody is upset. This has happened too many
times," said a local man who told me his name was Gerard. "First I
thought they were going to continue with [the protests] until they
released the officer's name, you know, but now I think they are going to
keep going until the officer is convicted."
A
few skirmishes broke out in the intersection where police had drawn
their line in front of the command center and constructed a media pen
for journalists in a parking lot, but after a few arrests were made, the
crowd thinned and it seemed like the protest was over. Then, down the
street, the familiar sounds of flash bang grenades were heard as sparks
and tear gas filled the air.
Protesters
had dragged traffic cones and portable toilets into the street, and a
few small fires could be seen burning through the tear gas. Gunshots
rang out from a side street. Some protesters grabbed the gas grenades
and threw them back.
As
the smoke cleared and activists treated people blinded by tear gas,
police could be seen casing a restaurant with automatic weapons drawn.
Protesters told reporters that the police starting filling the street
with tear gas after a few plastic bottles were thrown.
"My
anger is seeing my people, black or white, brown or blue, getting
hurt," said Travis Sowell, a 19-year-old black man who gave an emotional
testimony to reporters after the clash. "What I'm going to do is stand
here every night . . . no pillow, no covers."
A
group of young protesters, unfazed by the clash and the tear gas, soon
began chanting "Mike Brown" in front of the news cameras.
In
an early morning press conference, Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron
Johnson, who has taken over security in Ferguson, blamed "criminals" and
outside agitators for inciting the violence that sparked aggressive
police responses in Ferguson, and asked that the community no longer
protest at night.
Gerard's
friend Mike, who had a T-shirt wrapped around his face, told me that
violence broke out during a protest on the night of August 17 only after
the police tried to contain demonstrators.
"Everybody
from Ferguson is from around here, this is their neighborhood," Gerard
said. "Even outside people, it hits home. St. Louis is not a big city;
we're a big little city . . . if this guy doesn't get convicted, man,
for shooting an unarmed 18-year-old, then it's going to be chaos."
Police
had cleared the streets by 2 am, but the late-night protesters in
Ferguson had once again made their point. If there is no justice for
Michael Brown, there will be no peace.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
MIKE LUDWIG
Mike Ludwig is a Truthout reporter. Follow Mike on Twitter @ludwig_mike.
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Protesters
holding signs outside the Greater Grace Church during a rally for
Michael Brown, the 18-year-old unarmed black man who was fatally shot by
white police officer Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 17, 2014.
(Photo: Whitney Curtis / The New York Times)
When
will it stop? The police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager
in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, coming on the heals of the killing
of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man by a policeman’s choke hold in
Staten Island, New York, is yet another painful, traumatic reminder of
the long history of occupation, torture, abuse and killing of Black
people in America, particularly Black men. Indeed, within hours of the
killing of Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, an unarmed Black man with a
history of mental problems, was killed in Los Angeles under suspicious
circumstances. It doesn’t matter that there is an African American
President of the United States or that Blacks are mayors of major
American cities, run Fortune 500 companies or are pace setters as high
paid and adored hip hop moguls, entertainers and athletes; the killing
of Black men continues.
Once again legions of Black people and people of conscience and goodwill
are in the streets in Ferguson, Missouri and in solidarity rallies
across the country. But, to add insult to injury, in scenes reminiscent
of the brutalizing of civil rights protesters in Birmingham and Selma in
the 60’s, St. Louis County Police units with sharpshooters, sniper
squads, mine-resistant trucks and a “Bearcat armored truck” unleashed a
ferocious assault on peaceful marchers, firing tear gas, stun bombs and
rubber bullets into the ranks of terrorized protesters. The whole nation
and the world witnessed this vicious onslaught against the First
Amendment by highly militarized police that looked more like soldiers on
the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan than the suburb of a major
American city. There was “shock and awe” throughout the land.
The question of the hour is, and has been for far too long, when will
the killing of Black men and the occupation of Black communities stop?
For the past several years, I have been repetitively crying out that
there is a State of Emergency in Black America, mostly in poor urban,
inner-city areas – the “dark ghettos.” The police occupation of Black
communities, the abuse and killing of Black men and, yes, mass
incarceration are the manifestations of this crisis. But, lest we only
get caught up in the tragic particulars of the moment, we must be clear
that the root cause of this crisis is the utter failure of this nation
to finish the unfinished civil rights/human rights agenda for equitable
inclusion of people of African descent, Black people, into the
socio-economic fabric of this society. Black people continue to suffer
the consequences of the “bounced check,” the promissory note,” that
keeps coming back marked “insufficient funds” that Dr. King poignantly
pointed out on the National Mall more than a half century ago.
In a book edited by Jill Nelson in 2000 entitled Police Brutality: An
Anthology I wrote, “The policy of more police and prisons has been used
as a substitute for policies that promote social, economic, and racial
justice for people of color. This formula of ill-conceived public policy
and policing practices has produced a highly combustible situation in
communities of color throughout the nation.” These words were penned in
the wake of the police torture of Abner Louima, the police slaughter of
Amadou Diallo and the killing of a number of Black and Latino young men
in the greater New York area under suspicious circumstances. Nearly
fifteen years since the publication of Jill Nelson’s book, much has
changed, but the killing of Black men continues.
As Michelle Alexander brilliantly discusses in her milestone book The
New Jim Crow, rather than finish the unfinished civil rights/human
rights agenda, this nation, including the Mayors and Police Chiefs of
cities across the country, embraced the “War on Drugs” and adopted crime
containment and community “pacification” tactics clearly targeting
America’s “dark ghettos.” The media was complicit in this strategy by
helping to create and popularize images of dangerous, crime-infested
Black communities and the “dangerous Black man.” Under Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani New York led the way in instituting so called “zero tolerance”
policing, based on harassing and arresting people for petty offenses,
and the militarization of the police by the creation of specialized
paramilitary units that conducted sweeps of Black and Brown communities.
Racial profiling through the wide-spread use of Stop-and-Frisk was an
integral component of a racially biased and inflammatory policing
strategy. The Giuliani method of policing became the model for the
nation.
It is useful to provide this background and analysis because the police
occupation of Black communities and the killing of Black men will not
end until the ill-conceived policies and strategies contributing to the
State of Emergency in America’s” dark ghettos” are eliminated and
replaced by just and humane alternatives. Black people and people of
good will must move beyond essential but episodic protest of police
occupation, abuse and killings to more sustained strategies and
campaigns to end racially-biased drug, criminal justice and policing
policies and practices once and for all. And, these strategies and
campaigns must begin at the local/county level and reach all the way to
the federal government.
Black people must exercise political and economic muscle to demand
greater civilian control and oversight of the police. In Ferguson,
Missouri Blacks are 67% of the population but all the political
structures are dominated by Whites. This must change. Blacks and their
allies must march on ballot boxes to seize the reins of power as a major
step towards changing policing policies and practices in Ferguson.
However, replacing White faces with Black faces in the corridors of
power is not sufficient. Ultimately there must be a change in the
policies and practices of the police. In local communities across the
country we must demand an end to the militarization of the police, the
utilization of military tactics as control mechanisms and the
profiling/targeting of Black communities. We must also demand an end to
the “broken windows” and “zero tolerance” strategies that insult the
intelligence and infuriate Black people. Community-Policing must become
the center-piece of a human-centered, holistic approach to crime
prevention and public safety in Black communities.
SIRIUSXM Radio Talk Show Host Mark Thompson has been advocating for
increased community oversight of the police through the creation of
Civilian Police Review Boards. This is not a new idea, but it is worthy
of consideration as long as Review Boards are well funded and have
independent investigatory and prosecutorial powers. In the past
Fraternal Orders of Police (police unions) have fiercely opposed strong
Review Boards. As a result, many of the Review Boards around the country
have been like toothless tigers, defanged and incapable of effectively
holding police accountable for abuse and misconduct. Rev. Heber Brown,
Pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore, is also suggesting
that Black people lessen their dependence on policing authorities by
instituting more self-policing structures and mechanisms in the Black
community. This idea seems to be gaining resonance around the country.
Black people must also use economic sanctions/boycotts to complement
protests and political action to achieve just and humane alternatives to
police occupation and racially-biased policing practices. Economic
sanctions campaigns should be coupled with demands for private and
public sector investment in Black communities to create jobs and develop
business/economic infrastructure. Ending bad policing is not enough.
Black people must struggle to revitalize Black communities. At all
levels, the approach must be holistic.
To devise and implement local action agendas for change in drug,
criminal justice and policing policies and practices in local
communities, as Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael would say, “Black
people must be organized.” There is an urgent need for permanent
coalitional/collaborative type structures, comprised of organizations
and leaders committed to working cooperatively and collectively to
mobilize/organize for substantive change. The effort of the Institute of
the Black World 21st Century (IBW) to build Drug and Criminal Justice
Policy Collaboratives (Justice Collaboratives) in Pittsburgh,
Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore could serve as a model for
the development of these types of structures across the country.
At the national level we must demand that the federal government stop
providing funding for local police departments to purchase the kind of
military hardware the nation and world witnessed being used in the
assault on peaceful protesters in that night of infamy in Ferguson,
Missouri. At the direction of President Obama, Attorney General Eric
Holder should decline to fund proposals for military equipment and
expand funding for proposals that promote Community-Policing. There must
be a strong signal from the White House and Justice Department that
military policing is taboo and Community Policing is the national
priority.
As IBW strongly advocates in the recently released Report Card On
President Obama’s Drug and Criminal Justice Policies [www.ibw21.org],
the President and the Attorney General must vigorously continue
dismantling the “War on Drugs” and all the damaging policies and
practices related to this longstanding, racially-biased strategy.
President Obama should also seize the moment to convene an Emergency
Summit on Policing Policy and Public Safety to identify and share best
practices for building effective police/community relations. Community
advocates, scholars/experts in the field, public interest legal
organizations, Chiefs of Police and Presidents of Police Unions should
be at the table. Though skepticism about such a Summit is warranted, it
could have the effect of providing the President and the Attorney
General with a high profile platform to articulate principles for a
different kind of policing in this country. Mayor Bill Di Blasio, as a
self-proclaimed new progressive, would do well to convene such a summit
among stakeholders in New York as well – since this city has been the
trendsetter for the kind of racially-biased policing that has been so
destructive of Black communities nationally.
Finally, creating a new paradigm for policing is necessary but not
sufficient to end the State of Emergency in America’s “dark ghettos.”
The damages to Black families and communities must be repaired. Black
America must stridently renew the demand for a “Domestic Marshall Plan,”
(IBW has created a framework entitled The Martin Luther King-Malcolm X
Community Revitalization Initiative) with massive investment in jobs,
economic development, housing, health and education to create safe,
wholesome and just communities. In fact, given the enormity of the State
of Emergency, President Obama should convene another 1968 Kerner
Commission type body to examine the root causes of the persistent crises
afflicting America’s “dark ghettos.”
I conclude with the final passage of my essay in Jill Nelson’s Anthology
Police Brutality. “Unless and until this nation makes a firm and
irreversible commitment to ensure that all people who live in this
society will enjoy access to the same social and economic rights – good
jobs, quality education, housing, health care, clean environment —
instability, violence, and crime will continue to be problems that no
amount or method of policing can contain for long. As community-based
organizations, civil and human rights organizations, and public-interest
advocacy groups struggle against police brutality and misconduct, the
fight to create a new paradigm of policing must necessarily be seen as
part of the broader struggle to create a more just and humane society.
Therefore, the demand for police reform and accountability must
necessarily be coupled with the demand for public policies that promote
social, economic, and racial justice. Our goal must be nothing short of
creating a just, humane, and peaceful society. If there is no justice,
there will be no peace in these United States of America.” “It’s been a
long time coming, but change gone come!”
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the
source.
DR. RON DANIELS
Dr. Ron Daniels is President of the Institute of the Black World 21st
Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of
New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website
www.ibw21.org and www.northstarnews.com. To send a message, arrange
media interviews or speaking engagements, Dr. Daniels can be reached via
email at info@ibw21.org
On
August 18, the Pew Center for the People & the Press released a
poll that reveals "stark racial divisions in reactions to Ferguson
police shooting":
Blacks and whites have sharply different reactions to the police
shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo., and the protests and
violence that followed. Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to
say that the shooting of Michael Brown "raises important issues about
race that need to be discussed." Wide racial differences also are
evident in opinions about of whether local police went too far in the
aftermath of Brown's death, and in confidence in the investigations into
the shooting.
The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Aug. 14-17
among 1,000 adults, finds that the public overall is divided over
whether Brown's shooting raises important issues about race or whether
the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves: 44% think
the case does raise important issues about race that require discussion,
while 40% say the issue of race is getting more attention than it
deserves.
By about four-to-one (80% to 18%), African Americans say the shooting in
Ferguson raises important issues about race that merit discussion. By
contrast, whites, by 47% to 37%, say the issue of race is getting more
attention than it deserves.
In a summary of the poll, Pew recalls that in its survey after Trayvon
Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman, "60% of whites said race
received more attention in that case than it deserved."
Years ago, I heard a speaker discuss how the history of the United
States cannot be viewed through a focused lens unless one considers the
legacy of slavery, the suppressive humiliating period of Reconstruction,
the plantation ghettos of cities in the north and south, and the
criminalization of being a black male. All of these require an open
racism among many whites and a sub-conscious racial bias among many
persons who think of themselves as liberals.
Yes, there are black males who have made it in the world of the white
ruling elite, such as the president of the United States and the
attorney general. However, there are two major caveats to consider in
this regard.
First, it is clear that even though Barack Obama has the academic
pedigree, intellectual capabilities and irrepressible desire to
accommodate whites by not pressing on the pedal of assisting
African-Americans who have - as Eugene Robinson notes in a commentary on
BuzzFlash today - been left behind, he is still vilified by a large
segment of the white population in the United States because he is
black.
Second, the number of black men and women who have made it through the
racial barrier, while significant, is miniscule in relation to the
number of blacks (and other people of color) under siege by police and a
criminal justice system that works on the principle of guilty until
proven innocent for most non-whites. This is why the United States has
the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Yes, there is a class issue in race bias, but the racist backlash to
President Obama's presidency (symbolized most blatantly by the "birther"
accusations that morphed into the war on "Obamacare") indicates that
the white racial prejudice of thinking blacks more violent, more
disinterested in working, more dangerous to society has long been - and
still is - an institutionalized racism that permeates the US economic
and criminal justice system.
It is sadly ironic that President Obama came to national prominence with
a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention that claimed that the United
States was not composed of red and blue states, but that we all
belonged to one blend of red and blue mixed into a unified purple
nation.
As the events in Ferguson - joining a long list of daily acts of
police-sanctioned racial brutality, harassment, arrests and murder -
indicate, the racial gap in the United States about what constitutes
justice and freedom is still as wide as the Grand Canyon.
The Pew Poll does raise a glimmer of hope in the wider recognition among
young people - as compared to the older population - of the racial
implications of the Mike Brown shooting:
By a wide margin (55% to 34%), adults under 30 think the shooting of the
unarmed teen raises important issues about race. Among those 65 and
older, opinion is divided: 40% think the incident raises important
racial issues while about as many (44%) think the issue of race is
getting more attention than it deserves. [These figures represent the
overall polling group not broken down by racial category.]
That is a foundation to build upon in a moment of mourning, police
militarization and racial rancor among those in the US who have been
stigmatized, stalked by police and economically left behind, but only if
ignorance is counteracted by an active uprising of social justice.
The poet Gwendolyn Brooks described in a famous lyric how truth is not
always welcome. It makes demands upon us to change, to encounter the
uncomfortable. Supposing, Brooks ponders, our lack of self-knowledge one
day encounters the enlightenment provided by the shining clarity of the
sun?
Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?
Brooks does not think we would welcome what we had so long sought:
Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?
Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The murder of Mike Brown and the disastrous aftermath of police
oppression in Ferguson, Missouri, reminds us all that we cannot continue
as a union in a state of "snug unawareness" if we are to achieve the
equality that is part of our national narrative, but is still parceled
out with institutionalized racial selectivity.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission
Activist: For a New Generation, Ferguson Marks Historic Nonviolent Resistance to Police Repression
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | Video Report
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/19/activist_for_a_new_generation_ferguson
As protests continue in Ferguson, activists are traveling to Missouri to
join the movement in solidarity. We speak with one activist who has
just arrived to Ferguson from Florida, Phillip Agnew, the executive
director of Dream Defenders, a network of youth of color and their
allies who engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and civic engagement
to bring about social change. "I came here to be part of resistance,"
Agnew says. "We have not seen a reaction of nonviolent civil
disobedience [to] officers of the state like this in my lifetime." Agnew
helped organize protests to the 2012 shooting of unarmed,
African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
TRANSCRIPT:
AMY GOODMAN: A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds the public
reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown is sharply divided along
racial lines. Eighty percent of African Americans say the case raises
important issues about race that need to be discussed. Less than 40
percent of whites agree. In fact, nearly half of whites say race is
getting more attention than it deserves. African Americans are also more
critical of the police response to the protests, with 65 percent saying
police have gone too far, compared to just 33 percent of whites.
That rift has called to mind the racial divisions that split open in the
’60s with a series of uprisings in cities across the country. In 1967,
President Lyndon Johnson established what became known as the Kerner
Commission to investigate the causes of the unrest. In February 1968,
the commission famously concluded, quote, "Our nation is moving toward
two societies—one black, one white—separate and unequal." Well, just
over a month later, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
sparked uprisings in more than a hundred cities across the country,
including Kansas City, Missouri, where the National Guard was deployed
and at least five people were killed.
Our next guest, Jamala Rogers, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and
witnessed the 1968 uprisings. She recently wrote a piece for the St.
Louis Public Radio titled "Kerner Commission Warning Comes True—Two
Societies, Separate and Unequal." Rogers is a founder and past chair of
the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri. She was on a
conference call Monday about the Michael Brown shooting with Attorney
General Eric Holder and senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
We’re also joined by Phillip Agnew, executive director of Dream
Defenders, a network of youth of color and their allies, who engage in
nonviolent civil disobedience and civic engagement to bring about
change. He just came into Ferguson last night, and we’re going to find
out why. But first to—we’re going to start with—we’ll start with Phillip
Agnew.
Why did you come to Ferguson, to the streets of Ferguson, Phillip?
PHILLIP AGNEW: I came here as a young person who knows all too well what
it’s like to live on the second rung of society. I came here to be a
part of resistance. We have not seen a reaction of nonviolent civil
disobedience by officers of the state like this in my lifetime. And I
came here to stand side by side with folks and to learn how we can help.
I came here because just last year we had a young man murdered by an
officer of the Miami Beach Police Department in cold blood, and a year
later he’s still paid and on the force. I came here because this moment,
this town has become the epicenter and a test ground for what American
officers of the state will do and have done around the country to
repress First Amendment rights, the rights to peaceably assemble. And
anybody that does not see it, doesn’t wake up right now, is in for a
rude awakening tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Phillip, to the National Guard being called in?
PHILLIP AGNEW: Listen, the protocol is not working. The police are the
people that caused this problem. The police are the people that
exacerbate the problem. And bringing in the National Guard, I don’t
think, will do anything to quell a community who, as I said before, is
reacting in the only way humanly possible when you see one of your own
children murdered in cold blood by the very people who are supposed to
protect them. And so, the National Guard coming in is going to do
nothing to alleviate the grief and the pain from a community that
continuously has salt poured in the wound by the people who are supposed
to serve and protect them. So, the National Guard, I’ve heard, is the
last attempt to restore peace and order. If there is any peace and order
to be had in this community, the police need to go. There is a war zone
here. I feel like I’m a war correspondent. There’s Army tanks here.
There are Army men here. There are people in fatigues. You’re asked
where you’re going when you want to go anywhere in the city. And this is
not what you would imagine an American city to look like. You would
imagine America would do things like this to people in Gaza, but not
here in Ferguson, in St. Louis, Missouri.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting, Phillip. Yesterday we talked
about the Dred Scott case, Dred Scott buried just down the road, miles
down Florissant at the Calvary Cemetery. His case is known as Dred Scott
v. Sandford, which made me think, just in free association, of Sanford,
Florida. You really rose to national prominence—
PHILLIP AGNEW: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —in dealing with the Trayvon Martin case, the killing of
another young man by a wannabe police officer, a local volunteer
security guy, right, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted. Can you talk
about connections you see, coming here from Florida?
PHILLIP AGNEW: There are plenty of connections. You talked a little bit
earlier about living in two Americas. There have been two Americas since
the founding of this country, and we live in it in Florida, and we live
in it—and they’re living in it here in Ferguson, as we speak. There is
an America where people are able to voice their concerns. There is an
America where people are actually able to live freely, to live happily.
As I drove around, I saw people walking their dogs and going about daily
life. And just down the blocks, there’s another— [no audio]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to a break and just fix the audio. You’ve
been listening to Phillip Agnew, who’s the head of Dream Defenders. He
just came into Ferguson, Missouri, from Florida, as people are gathering
there deeply concerned about racial justice in this country. We’ll also
be joined by Jamala Rogers of the Organization for Black Struggle.
Again, we’re on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. Stay with us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the
source.
On
Wednesday, amid continued protests demanding “Justice for Michael
Brown” prosecutors will bring evidence before a grand jury as they
determine whether to indict Brown’s killer, Officer Darren Wilson. The
power to indict rests with local prosecutors and pliant grand juries,
and as Jonathan Cohn has pointed out, a prosecutor will usually refrain
from indicting altogether if the accused faces a low likelihood of
conviction. In this case, a combination of entrenched racial and
occupational biases, and most importantly the details of Missouri law,
all but ensures that a conviction is off the table.
We may never know what actually happened during the violent encounter
between teenager Michael Brown and policeman Darren Wilson. But legal
judgments rarely happen with perfect knowledge and absolute certainty.
In their place, we rely on presumptions and standards that guide our
thinking and discipline our judgments. In general, we presume innocence.
But when we know that a killing has occurred and can definitively
identify who committed the act, traditional common law demanded that our
presumptions shift. We are supposed to presume guilt, and it is the
shooter who must prove that his actions were justified. Unless the
shooter is a policeman. And unless the victim is a black male. And
unless the shooting happens in a state with self-defense laws like
Missouri.
In any clash of witness testimony, police officers begin at huge
advantage. Although the courts insist that juries give policemen no
extra credence because of their badges as an “essential demand of
fairness,” that’s not how jurors actually think or behave. Large
percentages of potential jurors readily admit to giving police testimony
extra weight, and many more likely act on this implicit bias. And in
this case, the favoring of police testimony is compounded by another
more pernicious bias: racial prejudice. Extensive research shows that
Americans are far more likely to believe that African Americans—and
especially young black men—have committed crimes and display violent
behavior. It therefore won’t take very much to convince a jury that
Officer Wilson was acting out of self-defense.
But these cultural biases are only part of the story of why a conviction
will be near-impossible. The central reason is a recent trend in many
states' criminal laws. Throughout history, claims of self-defense and
compelling police activity have served as justifications for the use of
deadly force. Most people intuitively understand that self-preservation
is a basic right and that police must sometimes use violence to protect
society and apprehend criminals. But generally, we expect situations of
justified violence and legal killing to be the rare exception, and most
people would probably imagine that policemen and citizens raising claims
of justifiable homicide must meet a substantive burden of proof. But
today, in states like Missouri, these justifications barely require any
evidence at all.
In other states, claims of self-defense need to be proven as more likely
than not, or in legal speak, to a “preponderance of the evidence.” It’s
still the state’s obligation to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that
the defendant actually killed the victim. But once that’s established,
the prosecution doesn’t also have to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt”
that the killing wasn’t justified. That’s because justifications—like
self-defense—require the accused to make an active case, called an
“affirmative defense,” that the circumstances were exceptional. The
logic here is simple: As a rule, homicide is a crime and justification
is reserved for extraordinary cases. Once the state has proven that a
defendant did in fact kill someone, it should be the accused’s
obligation to prove his or her actions were justified.
Not in most states today, including Missouri. Instead, as long as there
is a modicum of evidence and reasonable plausibility in support of a
self-defense claim, a court must accept the claim and acquit the
accused. The prosecution must not only prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that the defendant committed the crime, but also disprove a defendant’s
claim of self-defense to the same high standard. Under Missouri law, all
a citizen claiming self-defense or a police officer claiming to have
fired while pursuing a dangerous criminal need do is “inject the issue
of justification.” In other words, he only needs to produce some
evidence (his own testimony counts) supporting the claim. Once he does
so, “any reasonable doubt on the issue requires a finding for the
defendant.” In Missouri, the burden doesn’t budge an inch, even after we
know that the defendant has killed the victim. It doesn’t matter that
there is certainty that Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown. As long as
there is still the slightest possibility that Wilson acted in his own
defense, Missouri law favors Wilson.
Within reason, legal protections for, and presumptions in favor of,
policemen acting in the line of duty make sense. Society has chosen to
give these men and women guns, after all. And if we expect these
officers to put their lives on the line, we owe them some measure of
trust and due deference. But trust cannot become a license to kill. We
have a word for a situation where killing is the default, where violence
is so expected that the burden is no longer on a killer to prove his
actions are justified. That word is war. It has no place in suburban St.
Louis.
Correction and update: A previous version of this article implied that
Missouri's low burden for self-defense claims made it an outlier among
U.S. states. Although historically, many states required defendants to
actively prove a justification defense (and Ohio still does), in the
last few decades most other states have moved away from Ohio’s approach
and resemble Missouri’s. The legal situation is therefore perhaps even
more troubling than originally implied. The language of the story has
been updated to reflect this.
Getty
Images staff photographer Scott Olson is arrested by police as he
covers the demonstration following the shooting death of Michael Brown
on August 18, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
All,
If you really want to know what "it's really like" to live (and die) in these United Hates during what is ominously called the 'Age of Obama' check out these photographs...and pass the word...(SAME AS IT EVER WAS INDEED)...
Kofi
P.S. How many miles is Ferguson, Missouri from the Gaza strip in Palestine any-damn-way...anybody got a MAP?...
POLICY
What a Getty Photographer Captured Before He Was Arrested in Ferguson
Scott Olson, who was arrested Monday, has taken some of the most iconic pictures from the protests in Missouri.
By Reena Flores and Matt Berman
August 18, 2014
National Journal
Getty Images photographer Scott Olson was arrested Monday night during protests in Ferguson.
Reporters on the scene captured photos and videos of his arrest. An
Instagram video appears to show Olson as police tie the photographer's
hands behind his back.
"Media are required to be in a certain area," Olson says in the video.
He goes on to identify himself as a photographer with Getty Images.
Olson was released just before 10 p.m. ET, according to Getty Images VP
Pancho Bernasconi on Twitter. According to Bernasconi, Olson said upon
his release: "I want to be able to do my job as a member of the media
and not be arrested for just doing my job."
Getty confirmed the release in a statement Monday night. "Getty Images
condemns Scott's arrest and is committed to ensuring that he and our
other photographer colleagues are able to report this important story,"
Bernasconi said in the statement.
"We strongly object to his arrest and are committed to ensuring he is
able to resume his important work of capturing some of the most iconic
images of this news story," Bernasconi said in an earlier statement
Monday night.
Getty managed to capture several pictures of Olson being arrested, and
identified him in their captions. Olson has been in Ferguson since early
last week, and has taken some of the most memorable pictures of what
has happened there since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by a police
officer on Aug. 9.
Here are the most striking photos of Olson's coverage from Ferguson.
This
is one of the last photos Scott Olson contributed to Getty Images
before he was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Police
force protestors from the business district into nearby neighborhoods
on August 11, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Lesley
McSpadden, the mother of slain teenager Michael Brown, joins a capacity
crowd of guests at Greater St. Marks Family Church to discuss the
killing of her son and the civil unrest resulting from his death on
August 12, 2014 in St Louis, Missouri.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Demonstrators
gather along West Florissant Avenue to protest the shooting death of
Michael Brown on August 14, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. (Scott
Olson/Getty Images)
Demetrus
Washington joins other demonstrators protesting the shooting death of
teenager Michael Brown on August 14, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.(Scott
Olson/Getty Images)
Demonstrators
protesting Michael Brown's murder walk past tear gas released by police
Aug. 17, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.(Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)
A
child, who was being held by her mother who was protesting the shooting
death of teenager Michael Brown, holds up her hands after police
ordered them off the street by on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.
(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Police
advance on demonstrators protesting the killing of teenager Michael
Brown on August 17, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.(Scott Olson/Getty Images
Demonstrators
raise their arms during a protest against the killing of Michael Brown
on Aug. 17 in Ferguson, Mo.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
A
demonstrator, protesting the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown,
scrambles for cover as police fire tear gas on August 13, 2014 in
Ferguson, Missouri.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Police
surround and detain two people in a car on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson,
Missouri. Ferguson is experiencing its fourth day of unrest after
following the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown on Saturday.
Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer. (Scott
Olson/Getty Images)
The
scene at the first of three press conferences held by Missouri
officials and police on Aug. 15 in Ferguson, Mo.(Scott Olson/Getty
Images)
Demonstrators
protest the killing of teenager Michael Brown on August 12, 2014 in
Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was shot and killed by a police officer on
Saturday in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Ferguson has experienced
two days of violent protests since the killing but, tonight's protest
was peaceful. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Demonstrators
flee as police shoot tear gas into the crowd of several hundred after
someone reportedly threw a bottle at the line of police on Aug. 13 in
Ferguson, Mo.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Police
stand watch as demonstrators protest the shooting death of teenager
Michael Brown on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was shot
and killed by a Ferguson police officer on Saturday. Ferguson, a St.
Louis suburb, is experiencing its fourth day of violent protests since
the killing.(Scott Olson/Getty)
Police
stand watch as demonstrators protest the shooting death of teenager
Michael Brown on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was shot
and killed by a Ferguson police officer on Saturday. Ferguson, a St.
Louis suburb, is experiencing its fourth day of violent protests since
the killing. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
An
Al Jazeera television crew, covering demonstrators protesting the
shooting death of teenager Michael Brown, scramble for cover as police
fire tear gas into their reporting position.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Capt.
Ronald Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who was appointed
by the governor to take control of security operations in the city of
Ferguson, walks among demonstrators gathered along West Florissant
Avenue on August 14, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Violent protests have
erupted along West Florissant in Ferguson each of the last four nights
as demonstrators express outrage over the shooting death of Michael
Brown by a Ferguson police officer on August 9.The governor appointed
Johnson after receiving numerous complaints about the excessive show and
use of force by the police against protestors and the news media
covering the demonstrations. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) today
called for the demilitarization of the police. (Scott Olson/Getty
Images)
Police
stand watch as demonstrators protest the shooting death of teenager
Michael Brown on August 13, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was shot
and killed by a Ferguson police officer on Saturday. Ferguson, a St.
Louis suburb, is experiencing its fourth day of violent protests since
the killing.(Scott Olson/Getty)
Olson
is arrested by police as he covers the demonstration following the
shooting death of Michael Brown on August 18, 2014 in Ferguson,
Missouri.(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
This story was updated with report about Olson's release.
Memorial
for Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager killed by a white police
officer in Ferguson, Missouri. His name will be added to the anonymous
statistics and meaningless deaths of African-Americans at the mercy of a
merciless system. August 19, 2014. (Photo: People's World)
"Ferguson has already waged a good fight.”
There is always context – the larger gestalt of any given time. The
sixties are symbolized by Birmingham, Selma, Little Rock. Both racial
divides and historic photographs are frozen in black and white of
menacing police, German shepherds, water hoses. Whether we add Ferguson,
Missouri, to this lexicon of moments defining African-America—and
America—will depend largely on whether or not the courage on display in
Ferguson is isolated or is conveyed through progressive action to the
wider population.
The persistence of the Ferguson uprising has the signature of something
larger and deeper, with hundreds of citizens giving new meaning to the
universal sign of surrender, by lifting their arms—not in
capitulation—but in refusing surrender. Chanting, "Don't shoot!"
protesters invoke the last words of police-murdered-teenager Michael
Brown, executed by a white police officer who hit him with at least six
shots—Brown's unarmed hands raised in the air.
This time the images come in hi-definition and real time. Sharp against
the police officer's pant legs straddling it we can see the almost green
cast to the German shepherd's fur and muscled, gloved white arms
holding the leash. This time there is little discernible difference
between the occupying military equipment we have seen deployed in Middle
East occupied war zones and the bullet-proof, cammo vests marked
“POLICE” in bold letters on the back, with tanks, personnel carries and
snipers training tripod-steadied, high-powered rifles on the protesters.
The acquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 murder of 17 year-old
Trayvon Martin is as good a place as any to look for the underpinnings
of this uprising. That decision sent an undeniable message that the
Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision remains solidly in
place. Chief Justice Roger Taney issued the court's opinion:
"[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as
beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the
white race, either in social or political relations; and so far
inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to
respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to
slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an
ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be
made by it."
Black people summarized as "it."
"Dred Scott's core values—the very DNA of racism—remain largely the same.”
Not surprisingly, after Dred Scott 3,500 African-Americans were lynched
from 1882 to 1920. The country transitioned through one historic epoch
to another: Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the Civil Rights
movement and now into our so-called current "post-racial" period where
one black man is killed by police or vigilantes every 28 hours. Dred
Scott's core values—the very DNA of racism—remain largely the same.
African-Americans have no rights that white men or white women are bound
to respect.
Predictable outgrowths of the Brown murder are the arrests and injuries
that have occurred as a result of the popular resistance by both the
citizens of Missouri and people who have traveled there to stand in
solidarity with the embattled community. Mya Aaten-White, for example, a
graduate of Howard University, was shot in the head by St. Louis police
while she peacefully protested Brown's murder. The police initially
tried to blame that attempted murder on a drive by shooter.
From Palestine to Nigeria the Brown case has captivated the global
community for two striking reasons: its exposing escalation in police
violence targeting the public; and its revealing African-Americans
communities as occupied territories. The illusion that white supremacy
is dead and African-Americans integrated into US society is only
sustained during periods of détente. Quiet for quiet as the saying goes.
During periods of the citizenry rebelling against violence, repression
and racism, the state exercises the full range of its fine-adjusting
tools, including tanks, armored vehicles and swat/assassination teams
armed with precision weaponry.
Such is the history of previous up-risings. In July 1964 Harlem and
Rochester, New York, erupted a week apart; Watts went up in 1965;
Detroit, in 1967; Washington, DC, in 1968, Los Angeles, in 1992.
Patterns emerged where black overseers in the form of police officials
and political talking heads get dutifully deployed—in hope of quashing
the insurrection while scrambling for the crumbs that may fall from
their master’s table once the tear gas dissipates and the carnage is
hosed away. The usual suspects converge again in Ferguson.
Brown's is the latest in an alarming series of murders and public
humiliations inflicted over a short period of time on the African
American community. On August 5, four days before the police execution
of Michael Brown, John Crawford III, a 22 year-old Ohio man was murdered
by police while shopping in Walmart. He reportedly picked up a toy
rifle within the store while talking on his cell phone. Shoppers in the
store were alarmed by seeing Crawford with the toy gun. Police were
called and opened fired. John Crawford died at a local hospital, his
death ruled a homicide by the coroner’s office. Predictably, Crawford
officials refuse to release the surveillance tape to his family.
"Black overseers in the form of police officials and political talking
heads get dutifully deployed in hope of quashing the insurrection.”
Eric Garner was murdered during an arrest by New York City police on
July 22, 2014. The Staten Island man and father of six was placed in an
illegal chokehold which triggered an asthma attack. Video shows Garner
struggling to tell the police that he could not breathe. Nevertheless,
the police continued to choke him until he was unresponsive. His death
has been ruled a homicide by the New York Medical Examiner’s Office.
Garner’s alleged “crime” was that he was selling untaxed individual
cigarettes. When police approached him he simply asked why he was being
harassed. His life was the answer to that reasonable question.
An Arizona professor, Ersula Ore was walking down the street after
teaching her English class at Arizona State University. In order to
avoid a construction zone, she walked around the site in the street. A
campus police officer stopped her and when she questioned him as to why
she was being charged, the officer threw her on the ground and
handcuffed her. During an interview on CNN's New Day, Ore was asked
about the incident.
"I think I did what I was supposed to do. I was respectful. I asked for
clarification. I asked to be treated with respect, and that was it."
Ore faces charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest,
failing to provide ID and obstructing a public thoroughfare. Arizona
State University has sided with the campus police over its faculty, a
situation that might be considered bazaar were it not a case of a black
woman being attacked by a white man. Michael Brown was executed for the
same “offense” of walking down the street.
Renisha McBride, 19, was murdered on November 2, 2013 outside her
hometown of Detroit, Michigan. The brutality of Renisha’s murder has
shocked even veteran urban dwellers. The accused murderer, Theodore
Wafer, 54, literally shot Renisha’s head off with a 12-gauge shotgun
through his locked screened door.
As in the Brown case, the police department rushed to criminalize the
victim. Instead of investigating what role racism played in this
tragedy, media reporting Renisha’s death have focused on autopsy results
that indicate elevated alcohol levels and a trace of cannabis.
McBride's attorney responded: "I don't think the fact that she was
intoxicated changes anything," he said. "The bottom line is, he
should've called 911 when he heard a disturbance, and we know for a fact
that the police would've been there in two minutes. Instead, he did the
reverse. He took his shotgun, went on the porch, blew her head off and
then called 911."
"The list of crimes against African-Americans goes on and on even as the
arsenals arrayed against them escalates beyond control.”
Wafer was recently convicted of second degree murder and
manslaughter—little consolation for her loved ones. Still, one must
wonder if a zero-tolerance for racism may have spared Renisha's life had
her murderer been ingrained with the belief that in America it is not
okay to kill black people.
And finally, the country witnessed another case of gruesome police
brutality. In broad daylight a California Highway Patrolman without fear
of punishment viciously beat a homeless black woman. Onlookers drove
past in cars and pedestrians watched. In this case, the victim was
pummeled lying face up on the ground on the side of a Los Angeles
freeway. Not surprisingly, the Highway Patrol refused to answer
questions about the incident. It was only after a pedestrian's video of
the incident went viral that the police parroted a statement about
conducting an investigation. The list of crimes against
African-Americans goes on and on even as the arsenals arrayed against
them escalates beyond control.
Ferguson experienced that arsenal in the aftermath of Brown's summary
execution when the police brought SWAT teams and heavy military
equipment into that suburban American neighborhood. When the police
realized the optics of their operation were all wrong they brought in,
predictably, Officer Friendly—Highway Patrol Captain, Ron Johnson—to
mollify the mobs. At first, Capt. Johnson found warm receptivity with
the residents as he walked along Ferguson's streets with them on
Saturday listening to their pain. This came on the heels of calls for
restraint from the Brown family, the president, religious and other
cultural leaders after the heavy-handed military deployment failed.
By Sunday night Officer Friendly had abandoned his conciliatory
overtures in favor of branding the uprising on Sunday night, “shootings,
vandalism and other acts of violence that clearly appear not to have
been spontaneous but premeditated criminal acts...The catalyst was not
civil disobedience, but pre-planned agitation.”
What a difference a day makes. Gone was Officer Friendly, replaced by statements one would sooner expect form Lester Maddox.
There are in Ferguson's symbolism motifs from other epic struggles: the
lone protester who stopped a file of tanks in Tianamen Square. Tahrir
Square's fruit vendor. The people of Gaza standing defiantly in the
rubble from Operation Protective Edge in opposition to vastly superior
force, refusing the demand of “quiet for quiet.” Instead, after a week
of unrest, the people who have taken to the streets remain
determined—even to death—in their pursuit of justice.
Ferguson has already waged a good fight. Without the well-deserved
support of a broad left/right coalition that can see this as a moment
when the powerless outstrip the powerful, Michael Brown's name can be
added to the anonymous statistics and meaningless deaths of
African-Americans at the mercy of a merciless system. Ferguson throws
itself against the iron gate of that system. It is up to the rest of us
to see that gate gets flown wide open.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the
source.
DR. MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A Whistleblower's Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA, which is available through amazon.com.
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle
on a US multinational corporation that endangered vanadium mine workers
in South Africa. Her successful lawsuit led to the introduction and
passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st
century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and
Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is director of transparency
and accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet.
PHOTO:
Relatives of a Palestinian nurse, Razan al-Najjar, 21, mourning in
June after she was shot dead in Gaza by Israeli soldiers.CreditHosam
Salem for The New York Times
