VIOLENCE IN TODAY’S AMERICA

…The battle in the streets of Ferguson

 

Will the issues from Ferguson, Missouri, become the beginning of the next decade of American Civil Rights conflicts?

I guess it was inevitable that what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri, was eventually going to happen somewhere in the US. 

Many news followers might have expected it to occur in an area as it did in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1965, or at the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999.  You know, these followers have expected this kind of violence in a major city like a New York City.  Or any big city with a past history of issues with a large, mostly white police force.

The reality is, that the circumstances of what is happening in these suburbs of St. Louis is what is going all over the US.  That being, wherever there was once an abundance of reasonably good paying manufacturing jobs near or within a major US city.

Oakland, California, is another area that has been having these issues of local violence in their African American communities, as are many cities in that area previously known as the nation’s “Rust Belt”.  This is an area that begins in central New York and traverses to the west through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, ending in northern Illinois and eastern Wisconsin.  This area was for decades an major economic region of the United States concentrated in these dominant industrial manufacturing states.

Over the years, more and more manufacturing jobs have either exited the nation for low-wage countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, China and So. Korea, or many of those jobs have been replaced by automation and industrial robots.  This situation has since left a number of those citizens, those holding only a high school diploma or less, with fewer places to work and/or live.

During the past decades, as major US cities were declining in prestige and manufacturing importance, those minorities that did still have jobs, they were working to remove themselves from the crime ridden inner cities.  Their obvious goals became the finding of new homes in the outer suburbs.  This is where these many families of very mixed races and heritages, were all striving to find homes with good schools for raising their kids.

In small suburb towns, such as Ferguson, back in the 1960’s, Ferguson’s population was 87% white.  But as these diverse families began migrating out to the “burbs”, the white families were also starting to migrating even further away from the big cities.  These white families were starting new communities in areas that were previously grasslands, orchards and farm lands. 

The end result is that we now have the St Louis suburb town of Ferguson, a community, that is today, 67% African Americans, but with only 6% of the police force being non-white.  There are no blacks on the local school board, a white mayor, and only one black individual recently elected to the town council.  In addition, of those in Ferguson that are stopped or questioned on the street by the Ferguson police, over 87% are African American.

As has been shown so many times, when those running or policing a community does not resemble those that actually live in the community, something will eventually have to give. 

In this case, the shooting of an un-armed teenager, 6 or more times, by a white police officer, this was obviously not going to go down without some serious response from the local African American population.

But, what is causing so much of a national issue of the shooting of an African American teenager, is not just that a black teenager was shot and killed.  It was how that shooting was and is being handled and all the mistakes that have been made by the local officials.

Here is a short chronology of what has occurred that shows just how poorly the Ferguson Police, the St. Louis County Police and the Governor of Missouri have handled the teenager's shooting and its subsequent follow-on issues:

·       After the actual shooting, none of the three individuals that had witnessed the shooting in broad daylight were interviewed on that same day.  Only the statements of what had occurred, that were made by the officer involved, which were referenced by the local police captain.

·       The unarmed victim, Michael Brown, was left lying in the street for hours after being shot dead.  In the Summer heat, this would obviously have very negative effects for the subsequent autopsies.

·       After the local police initially went totally overboard with their heavy military police force in dealing with the peaceful protestors with tear gas and smoke bombs, the Missouri Governor brought in a black captain of the Missouri Highway Patrol to take control.  (The Capt. had also been raised in the town of Ferguson.)

 

…The protestors in Ferguson, MO.

·       The Highway Patrol Capt.  then got rid of the police military attire and equipment and he succeeded in getting the local crowds settled down for one night.

·       In subsequent nights, after dark, outsiders started showing up looting, shooting, throwing Molotov Cocktails and generally raising hell, (That activity continues to occur now, 10 days after the shooting.) It also forced the Highway Patrol Captain to go back to using tear gas, smoke bombs and crowd control tactics after dark.
 

·       The governor had called for a 12:00AM curfew.  But the trouble was starting well before the curfew and mainly after the peaceful protestors had headed for home.  The Governor later removed the curfew.

·       The shooting officer, Darren Wilson, his name was withheld and not announced for days.

·       The prosecutor for St. Louis County has refused to release any information regarding the  1st autopsy of the victim, including how many shot were fired.

·       When the Ferguson police captain finally released the name of the officer involved, he also released a video that apparently showed Michael Brown shop-lifting a package of small cigars from a local convenience store.  The implication was that Mr. Brown had been pursued due to his shop lifting.  But it turned out to just be a smear against the dead teenager’s reputation.  The truth was that the shooting officer involved did not know about the shop lifted cigars.

·       There is still no explanation why an unarmed black teenager, wearing shorts, tee-shirt and flip-flops, had to die from six shots from a white police officer as he was apparently in the process of giving up.

·       President Obama has since gotten the US Attorney General and the FBI involved and has called for a separate investigation and a 3^rd autopsy by the US Justice Department.

·       In addition, the three witnesses that were finally interviewed, they have all stated that the teenage had his hands up and was surrendering when he was shot multiple times.

·       According to the independent autopsy report which had been ordered by Michael Brown’s parents, their 6’4” son was shot in the top of his head as his hands were up and he was going down.  One could only be shot in the top of his head if he were bending over or going down.  This also coincides with the  statements from the three independent eye witness accounts.

·       As of today, the shooting officer has not been arrested or charged, even though the officials already know that the victim was unarmed and was shot multiple times.  The officer did not wrestle with the victim and the victim was some feet away from the officer when he was shot.



 

…The militarization of Ferguson’s Police Dept.

·       The governor has now called in the Missouri National Guard to patrol the Ferguson police command center, and he is not insisting that the investigation become more transparent to the public.

·       President Obama is being updated regularly by the US Attorney General, and the president has commented multiple times on the issues going on in Ferguson.

This is an on-going case and it seems to have the general attention of the American public.  It is obvious that many in the black community are looking at Ferguson and they are saying to themselves, “So what’s new?  Versions of this are what goes down in my town all the time.”

This could easily become the beginning of another decade of Civil Rights issues that could engulf this nation as they did in the 1960’s and 70’s.

Copyright G.Ater  2014