Quantcast
Channel: Mark Maynard » recording the police
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

No Indictment in Ferguson… Local protests planned for Tuesday

0
0

As expected, the St. Louis County grand jury that we’ve all been waiting to hear from these past several weeks has decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri this summer, setting in motion weeks of tense protest that would captivate the country and bring the world’s attention to the epidemic of lethal force we’re experiencing at the hands of police in the United States. [WATCH THE ANNOUNCEMENT.]

So, now, like everyone else, I’m just holding my breath, and waiting to see what happens in Ferguson, where people are beginning to take to the streets in protest. One just hopes that no more lives are lost.

For those of you who are interested, there will be a number of events around the country tomorrow, which you can find listed on the Ferguson Response Tumblr page.

In Ypsilanti, people will be gathering at 4:30 PM, at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and South Adams, in front of the downtown library. And, in Ann Arbor, people will be gathering on the University of Michigan Diag at 6:00. In both instances, people are advised to dress warmly and bring signs and banners with them.

AgnPoliceViolence

Regardless of what happened in the case of Michael Brown, or in the case of the Aura Rosser, who was shot and killed by police earlier this fall in Ann Arbor, or in the case of 12 year old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed in Cleveland by police this past weekend who apparently mistook his toy gun for a real one, I think it’s hard to deny at this point that we have a very real problem in this country when it comes to our police, and what we’ve come to expect as normal, acceptable behavior on their part. Even if all three of these cases were justified, which I seriously doubt, what about the hundreds of other killings at the hands of police that have been documented this year alone? Just read through the entries in the Fatal Encounters database, the recently created Gun Violence Archive, or the new database created by Deadspin, and tell me that there’s not a pattern that we should be concerned about.

I’m not sure what the answer is. We live in a violent society in which, for hundreds of years, the gun has been fetishized, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Maybe, however, there are a few tangible things that we can do now to move things in the right direction, like introducing legislation to demilitarize our police and make sure that every cop with a gun also has a body camera, a simple change that has been shown in test cases to dramatically decrease the use of force. And, while we’re at it, maybe we could also address the fundamental inequality in our educational system, and get the money out of politics, which, when you really get right down to it, are probably the two main things keeping us from having the true representative democracy that the people of America so desperately need.

update: Live stream from the streets of Ferguson shows police car on fire.

update: Charlie LeDuff is also live streaming. Here he is interviewing a protestor in front of a burning police car.

Screen shot 2014-11-24 at 11.09.25 PM


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images