You didn't forget about Ferguson did you?

September 10, 2014 Tony Thompsoncivil rights, Michael Brown, police brutality

Because important events are still happening there. In fact, a protest is going on today, September 10, 2014. The protest will shut down part of Highway 70 beginning at 3pm to protest the lack of a special prosecutor on the Michael Brown court case:

Long-time St. Louis activist Anthony Shahid will lead protesters across Interstate 70 today, shutting down the highway to protest the lack of a special prosecutor on the Michael Brown court case.

Protesters plan to meet at 3 p.m. at Hanley Road and then block the highway.

“It is going to cause people some discomfort, it is going to cause inconvenience to people,” says Eric Vickers, one of the organizers of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition, about the highway protest. “That is a small price to pay to change the conditions for African American youth, and it is a very small price to pay to bring justice to Michael Brown. The Wednesday civil-disobedience action will be the start of a direct action campaign that will continue and will escalate until our demands are met.”

St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCullough, who is currently handling the local criminal prosecution of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson Police officer who shot and killed Brown in August, has refused to step down from the case despite repeated calls from Ferguson protesters for his removal. Now that Governor Jay Nixon has called off the state of emergency in Ferguson, he has no authority to name a new prosecutor in the Brown case.

But that hasn’t stopped protesters, especially the newly formed Don’t Shoot Coalition, from demanding a new prosecutor. Many have questioned McCullough’s objectivity since his father, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty by a black man when McCullough was twelve years old.

No End in Sight for Darren Wilson Case as Grand Jury Term Officially Ends Wednesday

A grand jury has been considering evidence for three weeks now in the case of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, and the hearings will likely continue for at least another month despite the official term for the jury ending tomorrow.

Ed Magee, spokesman for the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office, tells Daily RFT that the grand jury will proceed to meet in special session after its four-month term ends Wednesday. Last month, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch estimated that the grand jury would weigh evidence surrounding the August 9 shooting death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown through mid-October. Today Magee suggested that that timeline might be optimistic.”The process won’t be concluded until next month at the earliest,” says Magee.

During its special session, the grand jury will only review the Wilson case. Jurists had been meeting on Wednesdays during its official term on the grand jury but that could change under the special session.

“There are twelve of them, so the meetings will probably be held at different dates and times to accommodate their schedules,” says Magee.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that unlike most criminal cases, prosecutors are not telling the grand jury what charges they think Wilson should face. Instead, the prosecutor’s office is presenting evidence to the jurists as it receives it, allowing the grand jury to consider all the photos, videos, testimonies, ballistics and other details involved in the investigation. Such a process greatly adds to the time the grand jury convenes but is also viewed as a more transparent way of presenting evidence in high-profile crimes. After the hearings conclude, the grand jury will help determine what charges to bring against Wilson — if any.

Magee tells Daily RFT that the only grand jury in recent history to convene as long as the Wilson case was in 2000 when two undercover officers shot and killed two suspects in a drug sting at a north county Jack in the Box. In that case, which carried many of the same racial overtones and public outcry as the Michael Brown shooting, the grand jury declined to indict the officers.

Why did Michael Brown’s body lay on the ground so long following his murder?

After Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer near his grandmother’s apartment complex, his body stayed in the street — sometime covered, sometimes not — for about four hours.

Photos of the body spread rapidly on social media, fueling the anger of a crowd already distraught at the death of an unarmed black teenager. Weeks later, many point to the delay in moving Brown’s body as the first sign of police breaking trust and mishandling the case. Even Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson told reporters he was uncomfortable with the long wait before Brown was transported to a nearby morgue.

So what took so long?

Jackson responded that “gun shots” nearby delayed investigators on scene, and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar pointed to the complexity of the investigation into Brown’s death at the hands of an officer.

“This is a very complicated investigation, as it should be,” Belmar said. “We need to make sure this investigation is done right.”

But to get the whole story, you have to hear from Calvin Whitaker, the man responsible for moving Brown’s body. Whitaker, a funeral director who handles moving bodies for St. Louis County, explained his side of the story to John Pertzborn on Fox2Now.

Police called Whitaker and his wife, who is also a funeral director, to pick up Brown’s body at 2:01 p.m., two hours after Ferguson Police Officer shot Brown. Whitaker arrived at 2:25 p.m. to find a tumultuous, angry crowd.

“It was very hectic, you could cut the tension with a knife,” Whitaker tells Fox2Now. “Police could not control the crowd.”

At one point, Whitaker heard gunshots nearby, just as Jackson told reporters in the days after Brown’s shooting. Whitaker and his wife don’t carry bullet-proof vests, so police told them to “hunker down” in their car to keep safe.

“There were times when we feared for our lives,” Whitaker says. He and his wife stayed in the car for two hours waiting for police to control the crowd. “It took so long because we could not do our job. It was unsafe for us to be there…There was nowhere for us to go.”

The only thing that could calm the crowd down long enough for Whitaker to take Brown’s body away was a plea from Brown’s family. Whitaker says he remembers family members begging the crowd to step back, saying, “”They will not pickup my son, they are not safe.”

Michael Brown’s Family Demands Officer Arrest at Tense Ferguson City Council Meeting

There were several extremely tense moments last night at Greater Grace Church at the first Ferguson City Council meeting since the shooting death of Michael Brown one month ago. Police presence in the lobby of the church was heavy as attendees walked through metal detectors. The first time proceedings screeched to a halt amid shouting came after Mayor James Knowles announced that, per normal procedures, each speaker would be allowed three minutes of public comment, but no one on the council would answer questions.

Knowles did, however, receive tepid approval at the first reading of several bills designed to reform parts of the municipal code that, in the wake of the shooting, have been highlighted as unfair to the city’s minorities and working poor. But as the public comment period began (the “fill out a comment card” system falling apart almost immediately), it was clear many in the audience felt the new bills were just platitudes.

“We’re not going to let you go back to business as usual,” said local activist Ashley Yates. “We’re going to hold you accountable. How many police officers have been let go? We’re gonna make sure they all get let go.”

The bills read last night would repeal an automatic fee for having a vehicle towed, toss out certain fees for municipal court cases, limit to 15 percent the amount of money the city’s general fund can receive from court fines and make a failure to appear in municipal court no longer a separate offense. Knowles also announced a bill for the formation of a citizen review board as well as an outstanding warrant recall program set for September 15 to October 15. Much of what Knowles said on these items was read from the same statement announcing the changes from the day prior — read more about that here.

If the changes to the city law were meant as an apology, it was clearly too late for Terri Franks, the mother of twin seventeen-year-old boys who she says have been constantly pulled over since they got their licenses a year ago, swamping her with court fees.

“You make your money off of our backs,” she said. “I’m constantly coming to court for something as frivolous as a blinker not being on.”

Michael-John Voss, an attorney with the ArchCity Defenders, told Daily RFT that the changes the city is making are “great,” though they stopped far short of what he and his colleagues are asking the city to do: Grant total amnesty to Ferguson residents with nonviolent warrants and fines sitting on their records, these being mainly for traffic offenses.

“You can see the anger and resentment here,” said Voss. “[The city] has to divide the administration of justice from the desire to raise revenue…there has to be a real commitment to show it’s not about the money.”

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You didn’t forget about Ferguson did you?

September 10, 2014 Tony Thompsoncivil rights, Michael Brown, police brutality

Long-time St. Louis activist Anthony Shahid will lead protesters across Interstate 70 today, shutting down the highway to protest the lack of a special prosecutor on the Michael Brown court case.

Protesters plan to meet at 3 p.m. at Hanley Road and then block the highway.

“It is going to cause people some discomfort, it is going to cause inconvenience to people,” says Eric Vickers, one of the organizers of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition, about the highway protest. “That is a small price to pay to change the conditions for African American youth, and it is a very small price to pay to bring justice to Michael Brown. The Wednesday civil-disobedience action will be the start of a direct action campaign that will continue and will escalate until our demands are met.”

St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCullough, who is currently handling the local criminal prosecution of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson Police officer who shot and killed Brown in August, has refused to step down from the case despite repeated calls from Ferguson protesters for his removal. Now that Governor Jay Nixon has called off the state of emergency in Ferguson, he has no authority to name a new prosecutor in the Brown case.

But that hasn’t stopped protesters, especially the newly formed Don’t Shoot Coalition, from demanding a new prosecutor. Many have questioned McCullough’s objectivity since his father, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty by a black man when McCullough was twelve years old.

No End in Sight for Darren Wilson Case as Grand Jury Term Officially Ends Wednesday

A grand jury has been considering evidence for three weeks now in the case of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, and the hearings will likely continue for at least another month despite the official term for the jury ending tomorrow.

Ed Magee, spokesman for the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office, tells Daily RFT that the grand jury will proceed to meet in special session after its four-month term ends Wednesday. Last month, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch estimated that the grand jury would weigh evidence surrounding the August 9 shooting death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown through mid-October. Today Magee suggested that that timeline might be optimistic.”The process won’t be concluded until next month at the earliest,” says Magee.

During its special session, the grand jury will only review the Wilson case. Jurists had been meeting on Wednesdays during its official term on the grand jury but that could change under the special session.

“There are twelve of them, so the meetings will probably be held at different dates and times to accommodate their schedules,” says Magee.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that unlike most criminal cases, prosecutors are not telling the grand jury what charges they think Wilson should face. Instead, the prosecutor’s office is presenting evidence to the jurists as it receives it, allowing the grand jury to consider all the photos, videos, testimonies, ballistics and other details involved in the investigation. Such a process greatly adds to the time the grand jury convenes but is also viewed as a more transparent way of presenting evidence in high-profile crimes. After the hearings conclude, the grand jury will help determine what charges to bring against Wilson — if any.

Magee tells Daily RFT that the only grand jury in recent history to convene as long as the Wilson case was in 2000 when two undercover officers shot and killed two suspects in a drug sting at a north county Jack in the Box. In that case, which carried many of the same racial overtones and public outcry as the Michael Brown shooting, the grand jury declined to indict the officers.

Why did Michael Brown’s body lay on the ground so long following his murder?

After Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer near his grandmother’s apartment complex, his body stayed in the street — sometime covered, sometimes not — for about four hours.

Photos of the body spread rapidly on social media, fueling the anger of a crowd already distraught at the death of an unarmed black teenager. Weeks later, many point to the delay in moving Brown’s body as the first sign of police breaking trust and mishandling the case. Even Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson told reporters he was uncomfortable with the long wait before Brown was transported to a nearby morgue.

So what took so long?

Jackson responded that “gun shots” nearby delayed investigators on scene, and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar pointed to the complexity of the investigation into Brown’s death at the hands of an officer.

“This is a very complicated investigation, as it should be,” Belmar said. “We need to make sure this investigation is done right.”

But to get the whole story, you have to hear from Calvin Whitaker, the man responsible for moving Brown’s body. Whitaker, a funeral director who handles moving bodies for St. Louis County, explained his side of the story to John Pertzborn on Fox2Now.

Police called Whitaker and his wife, who is also a funeral director, to pick up Brown’s body at 2:01 p.m., two hours after Ferguson Police Officer shot Brown. Whitaker arrived at 2:25 p.m. to find a tumultuous, angry crowd.

“It was very hectic, you could cut the tension with a knife,” Whitaker tells Fox2Now. “Police could not control the crowd.”

At one point, Whitaker heard gunshots nearby, just as Jackson told reporters in the days after Brown’s shooting. Whitaker and his wife don’t carry bullet-proof vests, so police told them to “hunker down” in their car to keep safe.

“There were times when we feared for our lives,” Whitaker says. He and his wife stayed in the car for two hours waiting for police to control the crowd. “It took so long because we could not do our job. It was unsafe for us to be there…There was nowhere for us to go.”

The only thing that could calm the crowd down long enough for Whitaker to take Brown’s body away was a plea from Brown’s family. Whitaker says he remembers family members begging the crowd to step back, saying, “”They will not pickup my son, they are not safe.”

Michael Brown’s Family Demands Officer Arrest at Tense Ferguson City Council Meeting

There were several extremely tense moments last night at Greater Grace Church at the first Ferguson City Council meeting since the shooting death of Michael Brown one month ago. Police presence in the lobby of the church was heavy as attendees walked through metal detectors. The first time proceedings screeched to a halt amid shouting came after Mayor James Knowles announced that, per normal procedures, each speaker would be allowed three minutes of public comment, but no one on the council would answer questions.

Knowles did, however, receive tepid approval at the first reading of several bills designed to reform parts of the municipal code that, in the wake of the shooting, have been highlighted as unfair to the city’s minorities and working poor. But as the public comment period began (the “fill out a comment card” system falling apart almost immediately), it was clear many in the audience felt the new bills were just platitudes.

“We’re not going to let you go back to business as usual,” said local activist Ashley Yates. “We’re going to hold you accountable. How many police officers have been let go? We’re gonna make sure they all get let go.”

The bills read last night would repeal an automatic fee for having a vehicle towed, toss out certain fees for municipal court cases, limit to 15 percent the amount of money the city’s general fund can receive from court fines and make a failure to appear in municipal court no longer a separate offense. Knowles also announced a bill for the formation of a citizen review board as well as an outstanding warrant recall program set for September 15 to October 15. Much of what Knowles said on these items was read from the same statement announcing the changes from the day prior — read more about that here.

If the changes to the city law were meant as an apology, it was clearly too late for Terri Franks, the mother of twin seventeen-year-old boys who she says have been constantly pulled over since they got their licenses a year ago, swamping her with court fees.

“You make your money off of our backs,” she said. “I’m constantly coming to court for something as frivolous as a blinker not being on.”

Michael-John Voss, an attorney with the ArchCity Defenders, told Daily RFT that the changes the city is making are “great,” though they stopped far short of what he and his colleagues are asking the city to do: Grant total amnesty to Ferguson residents with nonviolent warrants and fines sitting on their records, these being mainly for traffic offenses.

“You can see the anger and resentment here,” said Voss. “[The city] has to divide the administration of justice from the desire to raise revenue…there has to be a real commitment to show it’s not about the money.”

Ferguson’s black community must not be given the same ‘justice’ as Trayvon Martin

The real looting of Ferguson: its black citizens never had a chance to get by

‘We need to communicate. That’s key. But we need justice for Michael Brown’

Ardester Williams is writing to Barack Obama the old-fashioned way, with paper and a postage stamp, to tell the president about the day in June when he shot a man.

“He was swinging at me, and he was much bigger than I was,” said the 73-year-old security guard at a Ferguson clothing store. “I had to draw my gun and shoot him. But I shot him in the foot. I’m writing to the president to tell him that the whole concept of police training is backwards. They should train them to shoot people dead as a last resort, not the first.”

All law enforcement should be trained how to defuse a situation, and lethal force should be a last resort. Also, if police aren’t skilled enough to shoot to injure, they ought to receive better training.

A little further down West Florissant Avenue, Shiron Hagens is staffing a tent on a part of the street that just a few nights ago was clouded by tear gas and smoke from a burning convenience store, as protesters and the police clashed over the killing of Michael Brown. She is registering local residents to vote, in part to raise support for a petition to recall Ferguson mayor James Knowles, a white Republican, after he said that the upheaval of the past two weeks was not about race.

“There’s a mistrust right now,” she said. “The way to overcome mistrust is to talk. But there’s no way to have a conversation when you have a mayor who says there’s no race issue here. Michael Brown died because he was black.”

This is why it is important for the citizens of Ferguson to exercise their constitutional right to vote. They need a mayor who represents them, not one that dismisses their concerns.

(read the rest here)

‘Would Michael Brown still be here if we voted for the right people?’

The group of Ferguson residents clumped around the makeshift memorial at the spot where a police officer shot Michael Brown readily admitted that two weeks ago they had little idea who ran their city.

They paid no attention to the fact that, while two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are African American, all but one of the members of the city council is white. Or that the mayor is a Republican. Or who the police chief is.

Brown’s death has changed all that. People who are frequently alienated, largely devoid of leadership and have not bothered to vote, often because they did not believe elections would change anything, are suddenly paying attention to who controls the levers of power in Ferguson.

“I didn’t know the council was white until Mike happened,” said Major Terrell, 29. “There’s a lot of people talking about it now.”

Police Departments Shouldn’t Become Dumping Grounds for Weapons Makers

In a brilliant August 17 segment of Last Week Tonight, HBO host John Oliver ripped into small towns that have equipped their police with war-like military equipment. One town was Keene, New Hampshire, where their military-grade armored personnel truck was acquired to protect critical targets –– like the annual Pumpkin Festival. Another was Doraville, Georgia. Oliver showed a wild video clip from the Doraville Police Department’s website, with a Ninja-dressed SWAT team going for a joyride in a souped-up armored personnel carrier, all set to a heavy metal song called “Die MotherF***er Die.”

In a visit to Doraville last week, I asked Officer Gene Callaway why his sleepy town of 8,000, which hasn’t had a murder since 2009, needed an armored personnel carrier (APC). “The vehicle provides Doraville with a scalable response and ensures the safety of police officers,” he answered. Scalable response? Safety of police officers? Doraville has never been a crime-ridden town. “We at Doraville are proud to be ranked 39th in safest cities in Georgia,” Callaway himself bragged. It seems the most useful task the APC performed was pulling 18-wheelers back onto the salted lanes of Route 285 during snowstorms. Oh, and let’s not forget that “the kids love playing on it” when it rolls up to the county fair, Callaway told me.

Doraville’s armored vehicle is a gift from Uncle Sam, as part of the billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment now flowing from the federal government to state and local police departments. Not only is it an incredible waste of taxpayer money, but it gets people–including children–accustomed to seeing military vehicles on their streets. Worst of all, it is causing police to act like soldiers, especially since one of the stipulations of getting this equipment is that it must be used within one year of receipt.

The Doraville Police, embarrassed by the negative publicity from their video, took it down (they insist that the theme music was unauthorized). Now on their website you can see much more benevolent images, such as three smiling police officers, one dressed as Santa Claus, with two young girls who are the recipients of the “Santa Pop Program” that pairs police with “less-fortunate children.”

But let’s face it. Military toys, constantly dangled before the police at law enforcement exhibits and fairs, are hard to resist. And with the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security giving out this stuff for free, why not get some hand-me-downs? Doraville and Keene are just two of thousands of cities and towns throughout the nation that have successfully applied for surplus equipment from a federal government agency.

What Military Gear Your Local Police Department Bought

Since President Obama took office, the Pentagon has transferred to police departments tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

In May, The New York Times requested and received from the Pentagon its database of transfers since 2006. The data underpinned anarticle in June and helped inform coverage of the police response this month in Ferguson, Mo., after an officer shot Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager.

The Times is now posting the raw data to GitHub here. With this data, which is being posted as it was received, people can see what gear is being used in their communities. The equipment is as varied as guns, computers and socks.

The Pentagon-to-police transfer program is not new. Congress created it during the drug war, as a way to increase police firepower in the fight against drug gangs. But since 9/11, as the Pentagon geared up to fight two wars, then drew down as those wars ended, the amount of available military surplus has ballooned.

Now, after a week of confrontation between protesters in Ferguson and heavily armed police, members of Congress are criticizing the trickle down of military gear.

The New Authoritarianism in an Age of Manufactured Crises

What is missing in the recurring debates that dominate Washington politics is the recognition that the real issue at stake is neither the debt ceiling nor the state of the economy, but a powerful form of authoritarianism that poses a threat to the very idea of democracy and the institutions, public values, formative cultures, and public spheres that nourish it. The United States nears a critical juncture in its history, one in which the rising forces of market extremism – left unchecked – will recalibrate modes of governance, ideology, and policy to provide fantastic wealth and legal immunity to an untouchable elite. The politics of disconnection is just one of a series of strategies designed to conceal this deeper order of authoritarian politics. In a society that revels in bouts of historical and social amnesia, it has become much easier for the language of politics and community to be appropriated and distorted so as to deplete words such as “democracy,” “freedom,” “justice,” and the “social state” of any viable meaning.

What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings

A few days ago, Deadspin’s Kyle Wagner began to compile a list of all police-involved shootings in the U.S. He’s not the only one to undertake such a project: D. Brian Burghart, editor of the Reno News & Review, has been attempting a crowdsourced national database of deadly police violence. We asked Brian to write about what he’s learned from his project.

It began simply enough. Commuting home from my work at Reno’s alt-weekly newspaper, theNews & Review, on May 18, 2012, I drove past the aftermath of a police shooting—in this case,that of a man named Jace Herndon. It was a chaotic scene, and I couldn’t help but wonder how often it happened.

I went home and grabbed my laptop and a glass of wine and tried to find out. I found nothing—a failure I simply chalked up to incompetent local media.

A few months later I read about the Dec. 6, 2012, killing of a naked and unarmed 18-year-old college student, Gil Collar, by University of South Alabama police. The killing had attracted national coverage—The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN—but there was still no context being provided—no figures examining how many people are killed by police.

I started to search in earnest. Nowhere could I find out how many people died during interactions with police in the United States. Try as I might, I just couldn’t wrap my head around that idea. How was it that, in the 21st century, this data wasn’t being tracked, compiled, and made available to the public? How could journalists know if police were killing too many people in their town if they didn’t have a way to compare to other cities? Hell, how could citizens or police? How could cops possibly know “best practices” for dealing with any fluid situation? They couldn’t.

The bottom line was that I found the absence of such a library of police killings offensive. And so I decided to build it. I’m still building it. But I could use some help. You can find my growing database of deadly police violence here, at Fatal Encounters, and I invite you to go here, research one of the listed shootings, fill out the row, and change its background color. It’ll take you about 25 minutes. There are thousands to choose from, and another 2,000 or so on my cloud drive that I haven’t even added yet. After I fact-check and fill in the cracks, your contribution will be added to largest database about police violence in the country. Feel free to check out what has been collected about your locale’s information here.

Why the People of Ferguson Can’t Trust the Cops

Several African-American men share with Truthout their stories of abuse at the hands of police, and after 12 days of continuous demonstrations against the shooting of an unarmed teen, Michael Brown, it appears that the community is in it for the long haul.

Four Things You Probably Don’t Know About the Ferguson Protests

WATCH: TX police draw guns on mother and young children they mistook for gun-waving males

Police were responding to a 911 call about a tan-colored Toyota carrying four black males, one of whom was waving a handgun out the window — which is why Kametra Barbour is confused as to why she and her four young children in a burgundy red Nissan Maxima were pulled over.

Fox host kicks off two black lawyers after they accuse her of ‘distracting’ from Brown’s death

I’m surprised they were brought on in the first place. This is FOX News we’re talking about. They’re not exactly friendly to black people.

Voting in Ferguson, a televangelist lies, and more

August 23, 2014 Tony ThompsonFerguson

GOP Calls Ferguson Voter Registration Drive ‘Disgusting’; Terrified Community Will Start Voting

The executive director of Missouri’s Republican party could barely contain his rage when he learned that one of the facets of recent protests in Ferguson has been a voter registration drive. His reaction betrays a sense of entitlement that comes from living in an age of political apathy: citizens shouldn’t be allowed to vote for change when they see injustice in the world, that isn’t “fair.” Have we gone mad? That’s exactly what voters are supposed to do.

Like many economically distressed communities around the country, Ferguson’s voter turnout for the last few elections has been dismal. Just 12% of residents bothered to vote one way or the other in the last election. It may explain why Ferguson’s politicians are mostly white and mostly out-of-touch with the residents.

Right-Wing Media Continue To Decry Ferguson Residents Registering To Vote

Breitbart: “Liberal Activists” Are Promoting Voter Registration Drives That Local GOP Calls “Disgusting.” On August 18, Breitbart quoted the Missouri Republican National Committee executive director who attacked the registration effort as “completely inappropriate” and characterized voting rights advocates’ calls for Ferguson residents to “get on the juries, choose your leaders” as “liberal activism”

[…]

Fox News: Voter Registration Booths In Ferguson Show That “Protestors Aren’t Out There For Free Speech.” On the August 21 edition of Fox & Friends, host Anna Kooiman complained that Ferguson residents protesting the fatal shooting “aren’t out there for freedom of speech. They’re out there to push their side.” Co-host Clayton Morris responded, “Setting up a voter registration booth? Yeah, you think?”

[…]

Rush Limbaugh: Registering Voters In The Wake Of Michael Brown’s Death “Encompasses Everything That The Democratic Party Is.” On his August 19 radio show, Limbaugh also criticized the Ferguson voter registration drive, and condemned Democrats for “try[ing] to ramp up black turnout” by exploiting Brown’s death

Hey Look! Pat Robertson told a lie!

Televangelist Pat Robertson on his “700 Club” show today decided that repeating many right-wing lies about what happened in Ferguson during the shooting death of 18-year old Michael Brown would be a good idea.

Robertson called the unarmed college-bound teen a “giant” and surmised that he must have been on a “hallucegenic” [sic] or “PCP” because he “acted like someone who was crazy” who “beats the daylights out of” officer Darren Wilson. The octogenarian also wondered aloud why the police didn’t “do a blood test on that guy, on the dead man,” whom Robertson couldn’t bother to mention by name.

Robertson also repeated the lie that officer Darren Wilson’s “occipital bone was crushed.”

And he chastised Attorney General Eric Holder for standing up for the oppressed — which is in part his job.

“It just looks bad,” Robertson lamented — not once ever offering one word of sympathy for the death of Michael Brown.

I’m shocked, I tell you! SHOCKED that Pat Robertson displays not compassion for the death of a young unarmed black man.

Missouri Councilman Excuses His Racism As Being ‘A Very Active Republican’

Says it’s a feature not a bug.

okay but when you have holocaust survivors and people who were activists during the civil rights movement supporting mike brown and then KKK members and neo nazis supporting the officer you should be able to figure out which side is the right one.

(via blastortortoise)

(source: sand&glass, via angrynativefeminists)

Houston Gay, a 103 year old who marched with MLK 50 years ago, at a peaceful demonstration in Ferguson.

(source: zubat; via angrynativefeminists)

The notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg strikes once more!

August 22, 2014 Tony Thompson

‘America has a real racial problem’.

Those are the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sits upon the highest court in the United States-the Supreme Court. Those words are almost an understatement. As of this writing, 23 days after the murder/homicide of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the latter still has not been detained or arrested. The protests are still ongoing in and around the city of Ferguson, MO. The country is having a discussion not just about the devaluing of black lives and racism, but also police accountability, the responsibility of the police, the militarization of the police, and gun violence. Justice Ginsburg’s comment shows that she’s paying attention to the state of race relations in the US. It’s a shame some of her fellow Justices are not:

The Supreme Court was “once a leader in the world” in combating racial discrimination, according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “What’s amazing,” she added, “is how things have changed.”

Ginsburg, who was one of America’s top civil rights attorneysbefore President Carter appointed her to the federal bench in 1980, spoke at length with the National Law Journal‘s Marcia Coyle in an interview that was published Friday. In that interview, she lays out just how much the Court’s outlook on race has changed since she was arguing women’s equality cases before it in the 1970s.

In 1971, for example, President Nixon had begun to reshape the Supreme Court. As a presidential candidate and, later, as president, Nixon complained that the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decisions had intruded too far on local control of public schools. Yet, as Justice Ginsburg points out, Nixon’s hand-picked Chief Justice, Warren Burger, authored aunanimous Supreme Court decision recognizing what are known as “disparate impact” suits, which root out discrimination in employers with policies that disproportionately impact minorities.

Burger’s resolution of this case “was a very influential decision and it was picked up in England,” according to Ginsburg.

The Court’s present majority, by contrast, seems much more interested in using its power to thwart racial justice. In 2013, for example, the Supreme Court struck down a key prong of the Voting Rights Act, effectively ending a regime that required states with a history of racial voter discrimination to “preclear” new voting laws with officials in Washington before those laws went into effect. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts justified this decision because he claimed that racism is no longer a big enough problem in the states covered by the Act, and thus the Voting Rights Act’s longstanding framework was outdated. Permitting the federal government to apply such a check against racially discriminatory voting laws was an “extraordinary departure from the traditional course of relations between the States and the Federal Government,” and it could no longer be allowed, according to Roberts, because “things have changed dramatically” in states with a long history of racism.

Two hours after Roberts claimed that racism was too minor a problem to justify leaving America’s most important voting rights law intact, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced that Roberts’ decision would allow a gerrymandered map and a recently enacted voter ID to go into effect. Federal courts had previously blocked both the map and the voting restriction because of their negative impact on minority voters. Alabama made a similar announcement about its voter ID law the same day Roberts handed down his decision. Less than two months later, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) signed a comprehensive voter suppression law adopting many provisions that reduced minority turnout in other states.

It boggles my mind that Justice Ginsburg was able to anticipate the effects of gutting the Voting Rights Act, yet Justice Roberts couldn’t see that (nor could the other Justices that voted to gut the act). Or perhaps he is willfully delusional. Either way, his actions have widened the gulf of inequality between white Americans and African-Americans (not to mention Hispanic Americans and Indians), as evidenced in the decisions of the TX Attorney General and the Governor of NC. SCOTUS is out of touch with one of the biggest sources of divisiveness in the United States: racism. Many people in the United States still hold negative biases and prejudices of people who are not white. These biases and prejudices manifest everywhere: in the workplace, on our streets, in government, even in interpersonal relationships. One of the biggest problems is that many people-especially and most importantly, white people-associate racism with the use of the word ‘nigger’, mobs, lynchings, separate but equal spaces, and the lack of African-Americans in politics. Now that people don’t use the word ‘nigger’ as much (but don’t believe for one second that the word isn’t used a lot-it still is), lynchings have all but vanished, and spaces are-for the most part-integrated (unless it’s a Sundown Town), the perception by many white people is that racism is over. These people don’t realize that the entire system is stacked against African Americans. Ending the use of racial slurs or mob lynchings doesn’t change the institutionalized racism in this country. It doesn’t ensure that black people are paid the same amounts as white people (with the same qualifications in the same job). It doesn’t ensure that black people are treated the same by police. It doesn’t ensure that black people are treated fairly by the justice system. All of that (and so much more) is built into the system, and is a more subtle and insidious form of racism-because white people don’t see it. They don’t experience it firsthand. It’s hard to argue that racism is non-existent when you see images of black men and women strung up by a crowd of cheering white people. It’s hard to argue there’s no racism when you go to the beach and see a ‘whites only’ sign. But when it’s about a paycheck? Or how many more black people are ‘stopped and frisked’? It becomes more distant, more difficult for people to visualize how this is an example of racism. Somewhere along the way, the discourse on race in the US shifted. White people are blinded by their privilege to the racism in this country (as an example: according to Pew Research, only 37% of white Americans think the events in Ferguson raise important issues about race). White people need to listen to black Americans. They need to listen and empathize. They also need to stand up and speak out. Black people are often ignored. Our concerns are not always listened to. In fact, they’re often dismissed. White people have the unique ability to talk to other white people and reach them in ways that Black people cannot. Given the history of rac
ism in the United States, and the role of white people in perpetuating racism, it is imperative that White people lead the way in fighting against racism. It may result in a loss of privilege, but it would make this country a better place for millions of Americans struggling just to live. There are enough obstacles to encounter in life. Having to deal with racism shouldn’t be one of them.

On a separate note, Justice Ginsburg also said this:

In what may become the most controversial part of her interview with Coyle, Ginsburg also suggests that public acceptance of gay Americans is eclipsing our ability to relate to each other across racial lines. “Once [gay] people began to say who they were,” Ginsburg noted, “you found that it was your next-door neighbor or it could be your child, and we found people we admired.” By contrast, according to Ginsburg, “[t]hat understanding still doesn’t exist with race; you still have separation of neighborhoods, where the races are not mixed. It’s the familiarity with people who are gay that still doesn’t exist for race and will remain that way for a long time as long as where we live remains divided.”

I might quibble with her wording, but I don’t disagree with her statement. Obviously I’m glad that civil rights for gays and lesbians has advanced, and I’m happy to see that we’re more accepted by society at large. She’s right though. The discourse on race isn’t happening anywhere near to the same degree as the discourse on lesbian and gay rights. In some ways it seems like this country can only talk about one thing at a time, rather than have an ongoing discussion of multiple, important issues. This is one reason I don’t just talk about gay rights on this blog. Or civil rights for African Americans. Or civil rights for atheists. Or women’s rights. They’re all vitally important. They *all* need to be discussed. In addition, these issues are intersecting. As a gay person of color who is an atheist, that’s three axes of discrimination and oppression that affect me. I can’t separate one as more important than the others (well I guess I could, but I’m not a fan of ranking oppression): they all affect me. Millions of other people deal with multiple axes of oppression in their everyday lives as well. That’s why an understanding of intersectionality is important.

Intersectionality is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. The concept first came from legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 and is largely used in critical theories, especially Feminist theory, when discussing systematic oppression. When possible, credit Kimberlé Crenshaw for coining the term “intersectionality” and bringing the concept to wider attention.

I learned about intersectionality around the same time my interest in feminism developed (which makes sense, bc feminists talk about the intersectional nature of various forms of oppression). Coming to understand how various forms of oppression intersect and affect people helped me come to understand how peoples’ lives were affected in ways I couldn’t immediately relate to. It’s helped me become more empathetic and understanding. Due to my privilege, I’ll never know what it’s like for a woman to struggle to get people to believe her when she’s been raped. As a result of my privilege, I’ll never know the anguish a trans man goes through when denied the right to use the men’s restroom. Empathy however, and an understanding of the ways oppression affects the ability of people to just live their lives–that is enough for me to see that advocating for equal rights for all is a fight well worth engaging. I don’t just want life to be easier for me to navigate. I want that for everyone. We’re all equal and we all deserve it.

LGBT news

August 22, 2014 Tony Thompson2 Comments

From Empathize This comes a reminder that bisexual people are often treated poorly or even erased in LGBT spaces.

This is not acceptable. I admit, with a great deal of shame, that in years past, I engaged in similar behavior. I treated bisexual people poorly. I felt they were trying to “have their cake and eat it too”. Sometimes I thought they just couldn’t make up their mind. In the last 4-5 years, I’ve come to examine many of my biases and prejudices. It hasn’t been easy, but I think I’ve become a better person for it. This doesn’t mean I’ve rid myself of every bias that I have, but I do try to engage in self-reflection and reexamine my opinions and views when challenged. So when I came to rethink my beliefs about people who are bisexual-which came when I actually listened to people who were bisexual and stopped talking over them/down to them-I realized that their lives and their experiences are valid and valuable. I realized that I can’t expect others to respect my dignity and right to exist as I choose if I don’t extend the same respect and courtesy to others. Once I realized that, I felt…well I felt pretty shitty. There is no excuse for my behavior. I can’t make up for what I’ve done in the past, but I can damn sure not repeat those actions in the future. Moreover, I can speak out about how such behavior is shitty. Bisexual people are not trying to have it both ways. They are not trying to have their cake and eat it too. They are not “undecided”. Their experiences are their own, and they are every bit as valid as mine or anyone else’s. I refuse to engage in the behavior I once did, and I ask everyone to check themselves…to examine their beliefs and biases and give thought to the harm those beliefs could bring to others.

(via Feminist Batwoman)

Russian gay couple marries in the most fierce way possible through loophole:

Two brides have become two of the most kickass women in the world by marrying to protest against homophobia in Russia.

Alina Davis, a 23-year-old trans woman, and Allison Brooks, her 19-year-old partner, donned matching white floor-length bridal gowns and married at a civil registry office earlier this month.

As Davis is still legally regarded as male, the office had no choice but to hand them a marriage certificate.

It is unfortunate that the government of Russia will not allow all consenting adults to marry regardless of gender or sexuality. I hope the day comes where this will be the case. Everyone deserves the opportunity to marry without the state dictating the terms (obviously this applies to consenting adults only). I wish the couple a long and happy life together.

Iranian Muslim lesbians marry in religious ceremony in Sweden:

Iranian Muslim women Sahar Mosleh and Maryam Iranfar married in Stockholm on 2 August during the city’s annual LGBTI pride festival – perhaps the first Iranian women to marry each other in a religious ceremony in the world, and the first in Sweden.

The couple married in a ceremony performed by Algerian born South African based Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed who was in Stockholm as the festival’s nominated Imam.

Oh noes! It’s ‘ArmaGAYddon’!!!! Run for the hills! It’s the end of civilization as we know it. Not really. Unless you’re a bigot who thinks marriage equality is going to somehow be the downfall of society. Which makes me wonder what the time table is on that. Massachusetts has had same sex marriage for how long now-runs off to check…over 10 years now-and somehow their state hasn’t fallen into chaos and disarray. Maybe The Gay takes a little time to set in. Perhaps it creeps up on you little by little and before you know it BAM! You’re just like the couple in this hilarious horror movie parody:

I just realized that the commentary above could apply to the video or the story about the lesbian couple above it. That wasn’t intentional, but it was neat.

Comic books as a reflection of the world today

August 19, 2014 Tony Thompson

Andrew Wheeler is a writer for Comics Alliance, and he also has his own Tumblr. I came across his answer to a question posed by one of his followers:

gpack3 said: What do you think would be the best way to introduce a trans superhero? Introduce them first and then reveal they’re trans after the audience is used to them? Introduce them as trans from the beginning? Have them transition on panel? Take a preexisting character whose past is something of a blank slate (eg. Eye-Boy) and make them trans?
I’d love to hear from trans people about what they’d like to see in a trans superhero, because I’m sure they have sensitivities that I don’t have, and I’m sure they’re aware of cliches and pitfalls that I’m not aware of.

To answer from my perspective as a gay man who does not identify as trans, I would tentatively draw a parallel to what I always want to see in gay heroes. Namely; I don’t want to always have to see gay people struggling and suffering with their identities. I want to see gay heroes who are at peace with their identities, and who face the same problems as other heroes, because that’s a much more hopeful and inclusive message.

So I’d most like to see a trans superhero who is totally at peace with their identity, and whose identity is very quickly and unambiguously established to the audience. That seems like the most positive way to represent trans people in superhero fiction.

That said, coming out stories and self-acceptance stories are hugely important – especially if they come from people who can make those stories personal. I’d love to read a story about a superhero transitioning, but I’d like to read it from a trans writer.

Either way, I think establishing or reintroducing an established character as trans would be most useful given how difficult it is to establish new characters in superhero comics. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my personal choice would be to reintroduce Christian Frost as a trans woman whose transition allows her to access her mutant powers for the first time – and whose transition is celebrated by her sister Emma.

Christian was previously written as a gay man with severe depression. I don’t think it would be implausible to re-imagine the character as a trans woman. But I may be stepping into cliches that I’m not aware of.

(As a final note, I should acknowledge that when I say I don’t want to always have to see gay people struggling and suffering with their identities in fiction, my own Sacha Valentin in Valentin & The Widow is exactly that sort of character. But I am at least a gay man writing from personal experience, and Sacha also gets to travel the world punching evildoers.)

I worry that a non trans writer would wind up doing some stupid or offensive shit, so perhaps, as Wheeler says, it would be better for a trans writer to create such a story.
But then I’m reminded that Gail Simone created a trans character as Barbara Gordon’s roommate in Batgirl and that character has been, IIRC, well received. Her name is Alysia Yeoh:

States like Arizona are currently spending taxpayer’s money trying to legalize trans discrimination, and others like Idaho are arresting and citing trans patrons from using public restrooms that don’t match their birth sex.

As this kind of discrimination continues to reach bizarre new heights, there’s one place where trans acceptance seems ready to take hold—in the hallowed halls of geekdom known as DC Comics. This week, the comic book giant published Batgirl #19, featuring a storyline involving the first ongoing, trans-identifying character in a mainstream superhero book.
Wired reports that in the latest Batgirl edition, the character Alysia Yeoh reveals to her roommate, Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl), that she is a trans woman. In addition, Alysia is also bisexual.

Author Gail Simone tells Wired that the impetus to include a trans character came from a pretty obvious source of inspiration—her fans. And building out a world as diverse as they are is her ultimate goal.

“It’s the issue for superhero comics. Look, we have a problem most media don’t have, which is that almost all the tentpoles we build our industry upon were created over a half century ago…at a time where the characters were almost without exception white, cis-gendered, straight, on and on,” she said.

“It’s fine—it’s great that people love those characters. But if we only build around them, then we look like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show for all eternity.”

I really like that last line from Simone. She wants to help build fictional worlds that reflect the world we live in today, rather than the world of 75 years ago.

Ferguson around the Net

August 18, 2014 Tony Thompson3 Comments

Malkia Cyril argues that Net Neutrality is important in the civil rights struggles of African-Americans:

As hundreds of Black residents in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson march into another day of protests against the murder of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown; a threatened, but still open, Internet thrust the story into widespread, necessary visibility. It’s one of the reasons that keeping the Internet open is not an abstract issue for me as a Black person living in America, but a life or death one.

From digital activism that echoes local demands for police accountability, to the humbling bravery of Black bloggers that have traveled to Ferguson to speak truth to power–the open Internet is a critical battleground where Black communities can connect across geographic lines, fight media misrepresentation, and oppose the police violence we find in every city, in our own voices.

#Ferguson, and moments like this one that lay this nation’s greatest contradictions at our feet, is the reason a new generation of African American change-makers are demanding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reclassify the Internet as a common carrier service. Too often, our lives depend on our ability to tell stories of the abuse of power, without interference from corporate gatekeepers.

As the people of Ferguson join the ranks of cities across the country raising their hands in civil disobedience against the systemic abuse of Black bodies by law enforcement agencies, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is considering network neutrality rules that would force Black Twitter and Black blogs to enter the conversation on police brutality through a digital “poor door”; their content tracked into a digital slow lane by expedient, piecemeal regulation that lets the largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) discriminate through a pay-to-play scheme called paid prioritization.

I would ask you to imagine the impact of an Internet with the legal right to discriminate; if you’re Black, though, I think you already know. Black cable isn’t bringing the story of police brutality in Ferguson to your kitchen table, the Black Internet is.

The media treats black victims differently than white victims:

On the afternoon of Aug. 9, a police officer fatally shot an unarmed, black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. Details remain in dispute. Eyewitnesses have said that Brown was compliant with police and was shot while he had his hands up. Police maintain that the 18-year-old had assaulted an officer and was reaching for the officer’s gun. One thing clear, however, is that Brown’s death follows a disturbingly common trend of black men being killed, often while unarmed and at the hands of police officers, security guards and vigilantes.

After news of Brown’s death broke, media-watchers carefully followed the narratives that news outlets began crafting about the teenager and the incident that claimed his life. Wary of the controversy surrounding the media’s depiction of Trayvon Martin — the Florida teen killed in a high-profile case that led to the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman — people on Twitter wondered, “If they gunned me down, which picture would they use?” Using the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, users posted side-by-side photos, demonstrating the power that news outlets wield in portraying victims based on images they select.

On Monday, Twitter user LordSWVP tweeted out a photo driving home another point: Media treatment of black victims is often harsher than it is of whites suspected of crimes, including murder.

Local store owner is aided by Ferguson community in the aftermath of his store being looted:

I had to immediately come over here, and I tried to get into the area. I couldn’t get into the area because the whole area was blocked. And I was like, ‘People are robbing my store, can I just go and put some boards on it?’ They did try, but then in the middle they changed their mind and said no, it’s too risky or something, please wait. They took my information and told me they’re going to call me as soon as the area is clean. That was about 1:45, 3:45 a.m., I’m just waiting.

Nobody calls me, so I just decide to come over. So I get here around 5, 5:30 a.m. There are a few people outside, some reporters were outside too, but the whole store was open, people could come in and out and take what they want at their leisure.

So that’s on the sad part. The good part is the people who were out here were waiting outside, they wanted to help me. So as soon as I got here, they said ‘Can I help you? Can I do this, can I do that?’ I wanted to take my time and clean as part of my therapy, as part of dealing with the situation. But some of them would not leave unless they did something to help, unless they got a hug or something. So that was very overwhelming, I didn’t think I’d come in there to be so overwhelmed by the community. So that’s very sweet.

Palestinian solidarity with protesters in Ferguson:

We the undersigned Palestinian individuals and groups express our solidarity with the family of Michael Brown, a young unarmed black man gunned down by police on August 9th in Ferguson, Missouri. We wish to express our support and solidarity with the people of Ferguson who have taken their struggle to the street, facing a militarized police occupation.

From all factions and sectors of our dislocated society, we send you our commitment to stand with you in your hour of pain and time of struggle against the oppression that continues to target our black brothers and sisters in nearly every aspect of their lives.

We understand your moral outrage. We empathize with your hurt and anger. We understand the impulse to rebel against the infrastructure of a racist capitalist system that systematically pushes you to the margins of humanity.

And we stand with you.

We recognize the disregard and disrespect for black bodies and black life endemic to the supremacist system that rules the land with wanton brutality. Your struggles through the ages have been an inspiration to us as we fight our own battles for basic human dignities. We continue to find inspiration and strength from your struggles through the ages and your revolutionary leaders, like Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Kwame Ture, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale and others.

We honor the life of Michael Brown, cut short less than a week before he was due to begin university. And we honor the far too many more killed in similar circumstances, motivated by racism and contempt for black life: Ezell Ford, John Crawford, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Tarika Wilson, Malcolm Ferguson, Renisha McBride, Amadou Diallo, Yvette Smith, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Kathryn Johnston, Rekia Boyd and too many others to count.

With a Black Power fist in the air, we salute the people of Ferguson and join in your demands for justice.

Michael Brown: Facts and dog whistles

Actor Jesse Williams chastises the media over the narrative presented in Ferguson:

“We also have to talk about the narrative and making sure that we’re starting at the beginning. You’ll find that the people doing the oppressing always want to start the narrative at a convenient part, or always want to start the story in the middle. This started with a kid getting shot and killed and left in the street for four hours. I’ve never seen a white body left in the street for four hours in the sweltering heat. The cop doesn’t call in the shooting, the body isn’t put in an ambulance, it’s shuttled away in some shady unmarked SUV.

There’s a lot of bizarre behavior going on and that is the story, that’s where we need journalism. That’s where we need that element of society to kick into gear and not just keep playing a loop of what the kid may have done in a convenience store. That’s unfortunate, if that happened, that’s going to be factored in, like it or not. But we need journalism to kick in and start telling the story from the beginning, this is about finding justice for a kid that was shot, an 18-year-old that was shot, period.

This idea that because he stole a handful of cheap cigars, what’s that $5? I’ve lived in white suburbs of this country for a long time, I know plenty of white kids who steal stuff from a convenience store. [There’s] this idea that every time a black person does something, they automatically become a thug worthy of death when we don’t own drug crimes. We’re not the only ones who sell and do drugs all the time. We’re not the only ones that steal and talk crazy to cops.

There’s a complete double standard and a complete different experience that a certain element of this country has the privilege of being treated like human beings, and the rest of us are not treated like human beings, period. That needs to be discussed, that’s the story. That’s what gets frustrating for people — because you don’t know five black folks, five black men in particular, that have not been harassed and felt threatened by police officers. You can’t throw a rock and find five of them. We’re not making this up.”

Do you want to show support for Michael Brown and Ferguson? Some helpful advice.

Janee Woods lists 12 things white people can do in the wake of Ferguson. If you’re like, interested in fighting racism. If you’re not, and you’d rather things just remain the same, then do nothing. If you choose option #2, just know this: you’re a grade A asshole.

The reactions to the shooting of Michael Brown show stark racial divisions:

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.

An artist makes a statement about the situation in Ferguson:

There was some caution tape draped around the Love sign in Philadelphia two days ago. Yellow ribbon hung loosely beneath the iconic statue, the one with the “O” tilted just so, in Love Park, northwest of City Hall. In front of the sign, Keith Wallace wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans, a baseball hat in his left hand. An all-American uniform. His t-shirt was stained with what appeared to be blood. His right hand was palm-down on the pavement. His right ear was pressed up against the ground, his face looking back at the statue. Nearby, two individuals took turns holding a poster that read: Call Us By Our Names.
Wallace, 27, is a Philadelphia native. He went to Morehouse College and is pursuing an MFA in acting at the University of California, San Diego. He staged this hour-long silent performance on his last day home for the summer as a protest against the killing of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was shot multiple times and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.
“It was something that’s been brewing for a while in my mind,” Wallace told me by phone. He was sick of seeing so many news reports about the murders of young black men. “You realize, in these cases, there’s a disproportionate amount of black men on the receiving end of this police brutality. And as a young black men, it strikes a different chord for me – it hits a little closer to home.”
“I just tried to think about a way I could use my spirit of activism coupled with my artistic passion to make a statement about what’s going on. So I just decided that for me, I’m a very image-driven artist. I think images speak louder than words can, most times. And so there’s some value in forcing a society to look at the most ugly parts of itself and just putting it out there for them to examine and discussed, and to be disgusted by, in the hopes of provoking some sort of dialogue or provoking some social change in an effort to eradicate some social ill, whatever that is.”
He settled on the rallying cry of “Call Us By Our Names” because “We hear about Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown. But there’s a slew of other faces and names who go unrecognized and unnamed,” he said. “And the media is slanted in cases where the victim is of color, passing them off as thugs, or gang- and drug-related. When it’s someone who is white, they’re ‘troubled’ or ‘disturbed.’”
{…}

Wallace also wanted to ensure he reached the biggest cross-section of people in the short span of time that he had. “I chose a place that has a very diverse community. All types of people come through Love Park. There was a Ukrainian protest the same day. There were Hebrew Israelites with a megaphone on the corner… I wanted to bring this to a group of people who I feel like might not experience this through the same lens that I do.”
He was expecting the police to make him leave within five or ten minutes. In a kind of inverse-Ferguson situation, the police instead respected Wallace’s right to peacefully protest; they stayed on the periphery “to make sure I was safe,” said Wallace, and shook hands when the protest was over.
Wallace enlisted two of his friends, Felicia Roche and Lee Colston II, to join him; they took turns holding up the poster and takin
g photographs. He couldn’t hear everything that passersby said and, as he spent the entire hour “motionless: I didn’t speak to anyone, I didn’t look at anyone.”
“Honestly, some of the things that were said were so ugly. And I’ve dealt with these kinds of issues before, and you hear about it all the time, but when it’s right in front of your face, it takes on a whole new reality. In trying to open other people’s eyes, my eyes were open, I had this complete revelation about this world we live in.”

{…}

Wallace had a sheet of paper handed out during his protest. As Philly in Focus reported, some of his statement read:
“I am racially charged not because I want to be, but because I have to be. I am racially charged because in certain instances, that hyper awareness may ensure that I make it home to my family at the end of the day. I am racially charged because I am not afforded the luxury to wander through life with my head in the (nonexistent) ‘post-racial America’ clouds. I see color because my color is seen, dismissed, devalued, and implicated as a threat everywhere I go. I am racially charged and if I make you uncomfortable by speaking out about it and calling attention to it, then I implore you to eradicate the ugliness I see every day in the world.”

Ferguson store owner: Neither I, nor any of my employees dialled 9-1-1.

St. Louis local news is reporting that the Attorney for the Ferguson store, Jake Kanzler said the the Ferguson store owner, nor any store employee called the police to report any shoplifting of cigars, but, rather, a customer called the police.

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My thanks to Twitter Users plus more on Ferguson

August 18, 2014 Tony Thompson

I’m not on Twitter, but I have a lot of people to thank who are.

Thank you, Twitter users! You’re too numerous for me to try naming, and I would not want to forget anyone, but suffice to say, if you were Tweeting the events of Ferguson, you have my thanks. Also, the people who were retweeting deserve a round of thanks as well.

Twitter users were on the ground, reporting what was going on in Ferguson before the Mainstream Media was. They were giving accurate reporting (despite the vast majority of people not being reporters) from the start. Much of the information we have about what has happened in Ferguson has been the result of Tweets, both from reporters and civilians. These Tweets are evidence and should not be dismissed. In the court of public opinion-which is not the same as a court of law, where higher standards exist for determining guilt-Tweets very much qualify as valid evidence in coming to a reasonable conclusion about a given situation.

Please pay attention to the 5 facts that we know that are not in dispute in the following collection of Tweets (note that all these facts can be verified if one takes the time to verify them. The mainstream media should, by now have compiled a timeline of events to further verify.)
My point with all this is that this shitty “Let’s wait till we know all the facts” is preventing people from reaching *any* conclusion about the events in Ferguson and in fact is used by racist assholes who wish to support Officer Wilson’s murder of Mike Brown.

https://storify.com/miniver/mike-brown-facts-and-dog-whistles-from-shaunking
I have some 5 essential FACTS about the Mike Brown case. These are not in dispute & agreed upon by all sides.

1. According to the Police Chief Officer Darren Wilson DID NOT know about the stolen cigars & all agree the stop was just about jaywalking.

2. A struggle ensued at the window of the car. Dorian Johnson & 4 eyewitnesses saw it ONE way. We can assume Officer Johnson sees it another

3. Mike Brown fled on foot and got about 35 feet away from the truck. His body was found 35 feet away from the truck. So key.

4. Mike Brown was unarmed from start to finish. This is never in dispute.

5. Officer did not file a report and almost no witnesses were interviewed the day of the murder. This was well before DOJ intervention.

(thanks to Shaun King for compiling this list)

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