A Wider Lesson From Ferguson

That, once again, will go absolutely unnoticed by the mainstream press:

As my readers may know, I have devoted a large part of my blog to following the malicious antics of the right in this country.  In the course of this probably useless exercise, I have detailed over the years the various secessionist, seditious lunacies that are a perpetual stock of the right wing trade, threatening some sort of fantasy revolution against the Federal government.  Well, as I have continuously reported, these promised revolutions have have all ended in ludicrous failure.  The best they could do was turn out twelve hundred or so overarmed loons to defend one of their own's God-given right to not pay his bills.  Much has been made of the fact that the Feds backed down in this case, but no one seems to want to mention that the right wingers backed down too- they had the government authorities outmanned and outgunned, and had them in the sights of their snipers, hidden behind concrete barriers.  Still, after whooping about what big, tough men they were, they ran from a real confrontation too.

Well, now we come to the town of Ferguson, population 21,000.  Let the police murder one of them in cold blood, and then show up stocked with the weapons of war to direct toward American civilians, and the people turned out and faced down these belligerent, violence hungry maniacs.  In one town.  Now, multiply this by all of the towns and cities across this country, and you will begin to realized something:  simmering just beneath the surface in this country is the human means to carry out a mass revolt- not from the right, but from the left.  The country is filled with people who have had just about all the abuse they can take, but they are not teabaggers or militia members, they are the masses of black people, latinos, and whites too that see their lives being crushed by the rich and their tools in the Republican party.  What has happened in Ferguson is just about ready to be set off all around this country, and if those stupid Bundy ranch guys, and Republican idiots like Rick Perry and Ted Cruz think they are leading the charge, they are going to be very surprised when they find themselves under its boot.

Comments

Frank said…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3LVgeOTjqg
Magpie said…
I wish I could share the confidence.
But Occupy came and went and even quite sensible people I know didn’t grasp what that was.

I have yet to see anyone in the public eye articulate the deeper injustices we see through the tragedy that sparked this thing in Ferguson.

Unrelated:
Julian Assange appears about to walk out of the Ecuadorian embassy, in need of medical treatment. The British government has spent 12.6 million dollars on the police presence monitoring that building over the last two years…
for an alleged sex assault charge in Sweden? They could have built whole rape clinics with that. For real victims of real assaults.
*shakes head*

Most of us are not powerful enough for the thugs to bother with, not rich enough to stand up for, not venal enough to use.
Blacks, and Latinos are not blind to what is going on here. We have white guys in Starbucks and Wallmarts with pseudo machine guns, on street corners with rifles and shotguns and signs daring cops to take their guns. And they are not confronted. But when reports of someone with a weapon within Ferguson the reaction is mass force, gas, truck mounted snipers, arrests.
Now I say they (some black kids) are going to far, but if this was a drunk looting riot of white kids after a football victory at one of the big colleges would the police response be as heavy handed, maybe, but my money is on it being lighter.
Shelly said…
Magpie said,
"I have yet to see anyone in the public eye articulate the deeper injustices we see through the tragedy that sparked this thing in Ferguson."

Not sure what you are looking for? The press has been enlightening us all about the racist past of this crooked police department. The Gov. replaced the chief with an outside authority. The president spoke about it. I think the problem is clear. What's not clear is what to do about it.
Since we are a nation of laws the next step is to charge the police and get them in court. Not just what appears to be a murder, but the discrimination against blacks by the whole department.
The anger is obvious. There were more clashes between cops and citizens last night. The protesters want justice and that takes time in our system.
The AG had a separate autopsy, but he hasn't called for an investigation of the police department and its racist policies.
It's time for the fire bombing and looting to stop and get the guilty in court. I wonder why the crowd fire bombs privately owned busineses, why don't they fire bomb the police station if that's where their anger is aimed at?
Green Eagle said…
Another pack of racist crap from Anonymous has now vanished into the aether, and not a moment too soon.
Magpie said…
“The president spoke about it.”

He commented with carefully neutral empathy and then said something about the over-militarisation of the police post 9/11. That’s a worthwhile issue but it doesn’t address fundamental issues such as military-level force apparently being the first option to deal with citizenry in a paradigm that looks less like a police operation than a para-military occupation.
Forget the equipment itself – what attitudes caused it to be first recourse? What exactly was the fear? That a whole community might dare to think it was deserving of self-respect?

Whichever way it is looked at, a cop felt he had the right to shoot an unarmed black youth 6 times. That is an incredible thing of itself. Assuming that the cop isn’t a psycho, that speaks of powerful social forces at work that are explosive in their potential. A group of cops then felt they had to intimidate a community being upset into shutting up, including shutting up the media I might add.

I have an acid memory of an argument with a Right winger over the Trayvon Martin shooting: In the very next post on her blog after the one that said that Zimmerman had absolutely no case to answer she had a video of police shooting an angry dog, and asking whether they really needed to do that to the poor poochie poo... utterly oblivious to the juxtaposition of attitude.

What I am looking for is the discussion about how to stop the next case of a teenager being shot for walking while black, because there WILL be one, and then another, and another.

“Since we are a nation of laws the next step is to charge the police and get them in court. Not just what appears to be a murder, but the discrimination against blacks by the whole department.”

I may be proven wrong but I do not think that you will see a court case against the whole department for racial discrimination. I would guess this will be dealt with via deflective specification. The shooting itself will be examined, a verdict will be found and people will do everything they can to move past this and go on business as usual, because that is how systems of entrenched power operate.

Not being argumentative, just explaining myself.
Shelly said…
"I may be proven wrong but I do not think that you will see a court case against the whole department for racial discrimination."
You may be right which means we never faced the problem and thus will not have a solution.
I made the comment because all I see is media and elected political office holders addressing the problem. That never means any problem will be fixed.
Passing laws only secures a path to justice, laws will never stop things like racism, or end law breaking of any kind. But the community (and our nation) has an obligation the record and punish wrong doing, especially by police.
Certainly fire bombing and looting of private property only creates more victims and solves nothing. If the crowd is angry at the police (with good cause) why don't they fire bomb the police station instead of a liquor store?
Racism is a learned trait, usually learned at home. So even after all the race problems this country has had for centuries, it is still with us and will always be, sad.
I believe the whole police dept. of Fergeson should be investigated and the reports show good cause to do so.
Green Eagle said…
I must mention that I have deleted several tendentious comments from Anonymous here. No matter that occasionally his remarks seem vaguely reasonable, he is nothing but a troll, and I am through giving him a chance to act decently.

May I please request that the other people that occasionally leave remarks here under the name "anonymous" do so under a different name, so I will at least read them before I delete them? I can usually tell the difference pretty quickly. If I do delete one of your remarks, and you are not this anonymous, please let me know.
Green Eagle said…
"Whichever way it is looked at, a cop felt he had the right to shoot an unarmed black youth 6 times"

That is the real, and only, issue. Cigars, broken windows, curfew violations, mean nothing until that is dealt with appropriately.

And by that, I mean a murder conviction. It is a sick country where so many people are so much more enraged over a broken store window than they are over a murder.
Anonymous said…
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