Rachel Maddow on the record of racial disparity in Ferguson

“Let’s make the jail cells more colorful.” This shit that’s happening in Ferguson, right now, is by no means new. The problem, if you’re not paying attention or only paying attention to the more odious parts of the so-called news media your country pretends is super serious and not at all partisan, is those blacks rioting. If you ARE paying attention, though, the problem is the systemic brutalization of blacks by white establishment power. The white establishment is absolutely terrified that they may have gone just slightly too far by murdering a young black boy who was unarmed and whom witnesses claim was 35 feet away from the police officer who murdered him. And they’re expressing this terror by creating a paramilitary presence to gas and attack and try to frighten the living bejeezus out of the people who dare say “yeah, murdering that boy WAS a little too far over the line, thanks.”

This ISN’T fifty years ago. This is NOW.

Pic of riot cop line 50 years ago, and today
Pic of riot cop line 50 years ago, and today

Meanwhile, Ryan J Reilly of Huffington Post and Wesley Lowrey of Washington Post were just arrested at a McDonalds for “not packing their bags fast enough”, then let go when someone realized the cops had just arrested two high profile reporters and told the mayor, whose response was “Oh God”.

This situation is spinning very rapidly out of control as a massive armed response has appeared today to pacify the peaceful protests by pointing guns at law-abiding peaceful protesters and throwing reporters into windows and soda machines.

Rachel Maddow on the record of racial disparity in Ferguson
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Police brutality in Ferguson escalates drastically tonight

Another young, unarmed black boy was executed over the weekend — this time by the police. Witnesses claim Mike Brown, a young man returning from a store who was due to leave for university in a week, was shot from 30+ feet away by police while he had his hands up. That he was shot ten times. That he was left to lay in the street for four hours while police “contained” the scene.

The police claimed that he had been shot after a struggle with an officer in which he tried to get the officer’s gun. They claim that he had been arrested on suspicion of shoplifting — despite the store claiming they’d never called the police and didn’t suspect Brown of this alleged crime in the first place.

Protesters chanted things like “No Justice, No Peace” and “Don’t Shoot Me”, and the news media reported this as “Kill The Police”. People are rightly outraged that a young, unarmed boy was murdered by white government officials, and these same officials respond to their grieving by bringing out police dogs and tanks. A cop proclaims, on CNN no less, “bring it on, you fucking animals.”

The town of Ferguson, St. Louis is tonight a warzone as militarized police crack down on protesters. And what do you hear on TV? “Looting” and “rioting”. Nothing about murdering an unarmed boy sparking the protests that are being spun as a race riot. And this in a week that already saw a black man murdered by cops for holding an airsoft gun in the airsoft gun aisle of Wal-Mart.

Antonio French has been recording scenes from the day’s protest and the police action, which now includes firing rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds, shining lights directly at reporters who are trying to take video, and intimidating people who are clearly only armed with cell phones.

This brutality has got to fucking end. What year is this?

Police brutality in Ferguson escalates drastically tonight