Reading About Ferguson is Eyewatering

Via Daily Mail coverage of the MTV VMA's

I think it's necessary to take a look at what the DOJ has to say about Ferguson. They let Darren Wilson go, but he was just a cog in a wheel that ground down people of color. There are people who want to slough off claims about racism as being about a "few bad apples" as if racism was just a one on one problem where some handful of people get a "mad-on" about this other group. This isn't how Ferguson seems to have been. POC's were targeted, singled out, and subjected to the worst biases. It damaged lives, finances, careers. The systematic racism of the people who rose to be in charge of that area made what happened to the people who called Ferguson "home" a daily grind of evasion and punishment for stupid things. Some of them made-up.

There is no good reason a police department like this needed to exist by continuously punishing people for practically just being to collect the kind of "revenues" you never can otherwise off of the poor. All I can say is, the math of the bias on display is pretty convincing to me that that city had a huge problem. And if you can't call that problem racism, I don't know what you would call it.

The St Louis Rams Displayed Community Spirit

Several of the St. Louis Rams football team players expressed solidarity with the protesters against police brutality and unlawful slaying of black youth triggered by the August 2014 death of Mike Brown by multiple shots from the weapon of police officer Darren Wilson.  They made the "hands up" gesture that should signify that a person has no weapon in hand, and is no threat. They also linked arms during the national anthem.

As messages go, this is gentle, but resonant. There was nothing violent in their display--what they were saying was that the surrendered body needs to be treated by law enforcement as just another citizen, maybe to be taken into custody, but not to be killed. They were saying, with bodies of color and bodies of no small athleticism or size, that this gesture is all people of color and size have to signal their acquiescence to the force of law. And maybe they were implying Big Mike made that very gesture when he was shot down.

I think the St Louis Police Officers Association is "out of bounds" in suggesting that this silent protest was a kind of disorderly conduct or incitement by the players. It will, at this point, always be open to argument whether there was any aggression on the part of the slain teen, or whether Officer Darren Wilson slew him with little to no provocation. There won't be a real trial, I fear. I'm not sure of the grounds a federal civil rights violation case would have, and a civil case may not even be truly in the offing. Darren Wilson, who recently decided to quit the force for the sake of the community (and with nearly a million dollars in donations and payola for his ABC interview) may breathe something like easy.

But people who look like Mike Brown, John Crawford, Ezell Ford,  Sean Bell, Tamir  Rice, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, and on and on, still can't exhale. Why shouldn't someone speak for them?

I'm sorry, but skeptical as I am about some parts of the Ferguson extended protests--this part was legitimate, and felt right. It delivered a peaceful message to lots of people about the vulnerability of even strong bodies. And if criticizing the use of police force on anybody that was not found guilty in a court of law  (yes, even Mike Brown needs to be presumed innocent) is somehow a crime--let's put the constitution on trial. No. They didn't tell anyone to do anything with their demonstration--they just did their own thing. And it didn't even interrupt the game. I call "no foul".

Darren Wilson Would Do It Again

One of the things that bothers me about a vigorous defense in cases like the shooting of Michael Brown is that there is a line. Call it a "thin, white line", where a slight amount of untruth might be tolerated because everyone is entitled to a defense and facts can be slippery in fast-moving judgment calls, but there is an area beyond that line.  And I think this is where we've been taken with Mr. Wilson's defense. Because when we got to see his supposedly battered puss in photos released shortly after the non-verdict, the only thing I could think was:

"Shit. Even George Zimmerman looked more jacked up than this guy."

I don't know what to make of it, except to think he visited a hospital to have a bruise looked at and a prescription for the OTC pain remedy Naprosyn ordered to create a very-needed paper trail.

Then there's this little bit of testimony:

Wilson told Brown to “get the f— back,” but Brown allegedly hit Wilson in the side of his face “with a fist…. There was a significant amount of contact that was made to my face,” Wilson testified.

Wilson, who weighs more than 200 pounds, said he grabbed the 6-foot-4-inch Brown. “When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old* holding onto Hulk Hogan.” Thoughts raced through Wilson’s head, he said. “What do I do not to get beaten inside my car?” he said he thought.

Under the Cover of Night, Mr. McCulloch?

We can criticize Gov. Jay Nixon's decision to declare a state of emergency in advance of any unrest that was to come as a result of the grand jury decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson with any wrongdoing, but surely, when he didn't call for a special prosecutor and take this particular case out of the very biased hands of prosecutor Robert McCulloch, he'd already made his bed. I don't know how he's going to lie in it tonight. This was set up for failure from the start.

I will say Robert McCulloch didn't mind making people wait until nightfall, even though he knew very well what he was going to announce, and did not mind lying in front of people. He cast blame on the traditional and social media for making the death of a young man into a big deal he had to half-assedly pretend to prosecute. As if unaware that a young man being killed needs no media furor to be a serious thing. It's said one can indict a ham sandwich, but apparently you can't indict a cop. If anything, he demonstrated that he could make a fine defense attorney, and I hope he gets an opportunity to make a career reassessment in the near future. The only reason for making people wait was knowing full well that this announcement would tear through that community looking for justice and then, shit would fly.

And it is flying. And fingers will be pointed at "those people". Because this is how the supremacists win. The cops can use teargas and call it "smoke bombs", and people will be arrested, even if they flash their press credentials, and even if all they were doing is protesting, like the First Amendment gives them every right to. With a system so apparently broken, this is how the people in power want it--and they get it. In the end, even if 99% of the people protesting were doing it right, the cameras focus on fires and broken glass.

You can criticize President Obama for urging peaceful protest on people who already know they are going to get their esophagases burned and their heads broken--but on some level, what he's trying to say is "Don't give them shit to use against you, because you know they will." Because they do. And it looks fucked as hell seeing him talk about how we've advanced as a nation while teargas canisters fume down the street in split screen. It is. But he's right when he says this is America's problem.

It's just a really hard problem to see clearly in the dark. As the person who announced this acquittal at night surely must know.

Former Mayor Giuliani Changes the Subject

Consider an eyebrow very raised:

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani faced immediate Web backlash Sunday morning after he asked why people protest the killing of unarmed Ferguson, Mo., teenager Michael Brown but not black-on-black crime.

“Ninety-three percent of blacks are killed by other blacks,” Giuliani said, triggering a heated argument on NBC's "Meet the Press." “I would like to see the attention paid to that that you are paying to this.”

Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, a frequent MSNBC pundit, said Giuliani was applying a "false equivalency" to the situation in Ferguson, where a grand jury will soon decide whether to charge Officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting death.

“Black people who kill black people go to jail,” Dyson said. “White people who are policemen who kill black people do not go to jail.”

Mayor Giuliani is impressed with the statistic the 93% of blacks are killed by other blacks. (83% of whites are killed by other whites.)  There is some research that suggests that income inequality has a higher correlation with homicide rates than race. But the discussion, before Giuliani changed the subject, was what can be done to address police brutality and the problems stemming from cultural attitudes that come into play when white police officers dominate in a community of color.  A statistic that might be more relevant, then, is that black people are 21 times more likely to be shot by the cops than whites.

But Giuliani's weird direction change concludes that "White police officers wouldn’t be there,” Giuliani said, “if you weren’t killing each other."

By "you", Giuliani sounded like he was including, I guess, Michael Eric Dyson--two quick things: I'm pretty sure Mr. Dyson is not out there killing anybody, and I'm also pretty sure he's not a big fan of it, either. And yet it sounds an awful lot like "Why don't all you black people get your shit together?" as if there were a pathology about blackness that excuses police wrongdoing.  Also, if white cops were actually fixing the problem, that might almost not be changing the subject--but if they aren't...well let's address that, then!

Furthermore, one can be critical of the police state without being pro-crime. The exchange was pretty short to have so very much wrong jammed in it, but I am not sure we had any reason to believe that former-Mayor Giuliani would be much more sensitive to the issue than we saw here.

Which Side Are You On?/Requiem for Mike Brown

There are some people who might argue that it's a fool's game to interrupt a concert that people paid to see, the same way that people argue against snarling traffic and making noise in public spaces. But there's a more valid argument, I think, to making a statement in a place where it will be heard. There's a logic in in tying a Requiem for Mike Brown with Brahms' Requiem, and there's a logic in using the old labor melody to get the point across. Is there justice for some or justice for all--what side are you on?

Some people will hear, some won't.  But I'll admit it teared me up a little.