Grand jury announce decision on Darren Wilson on TV 8PM tonight

Steinhauer said:

Just to be clear, I was not attacking Reba's post. She asked what kind of parents would allow their children to participate in mob violence, and my reply was "racist parents'.

I didn't mean for my reply to be read as an attack on Reba's post - it was never my intention.

However, I do see the looters and rioters as racist.

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When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What we’ve actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless.

Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or seek to slash the government payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesn’t have to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations.

White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and took on its latest incarnation with Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House. For every action of African American advancement, there’s a reaction, a backlash.

The North’s victory in the Civil War did not bring peace. Instead, emancipation brought white resentment that the good ol’ days of black subjugation were over. Legislatures throughout the South scrambled to reinscribe white supremacy and restore the aura of legitimacy that the anti-slavery campaign had tarnished. Lawmakers in several states created the Black Codes, which effectively criminalized blackness, sanctioned forced labor and undermined every tenet of democracy. Even the federal authorities’ promise of 40 acres — land seized from traitors who had tried to destroy the United States of America — crumbled like dust.

Influential white legislators such as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-Pa.) and Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.)tried to make this nation live its creed, but they were no match for the swelling resentment that neutralized the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and welcomed the Supreme Court’s 1876 United States vs. Cruikshank decision, which undercut a law aimed at stopping the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nearly 80years later, Brown v. Board of Education seemed like another moment of triumph — with the ruling on the unconstitutionality of separate public schools for black and white students affirming African Americans’ rights as citizens. But black children, hungry for quality education, ran headlong into more white rage. Bricks and mobs at school doors were only the most obvious signs. In March 1956, 101members of Congress issued the Southern Manifesto, declaring war on the Brown decision. Governors in Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and elsewhere then launched “massive resistance.” They created a legal doctrine, interposition, that supposedly nullified any federal law or court decision with which a state disagreed. They passed legislation to withhold public funding from any school that abided by Brown. They shut down public school systems and used tax dollars to ensure that whites could continue their education at racially exclusive private academies. Black children were left to rot with no viable option.

A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama’s election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger.

It’s more subtle — less overtly racist — than in 1865 or even 1954. It’s a remake of the Southern Strategy, crafted in the wake of the civil rights movement to exploit white resentment against African Americans, and deployed with precision by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. As Reagan’s key political strategist, Lee Atwater, explained in a 1981 interview: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N-----, n-----, n-----.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n-----’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that.” (The interview was originally published anonymously, and only years later did it emerge that Atwater was the subject.)

Now, under the guise of protecting the sanctity of the ballot box, conservatives have devised measures — such as photo ID requirements — to block African Americans’ access to the polls. A joint report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the NAACP emphasized that the ID requirements would adversely affect more than 6 million African American voters. (Twenty-five percent of black Americans lack a government-issued photo ID, the report noted, compared with only 8 percent of white Americans.) The Supreme Court sanctioned this discrimination in Shelby County v. Holder , which gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to 21st-century versions of 19th-century literacy tests and poll taxes.

The economic devastation of the Great Recession also shows African Americans under siege. The foreclosure crisis hit black Americans harder than any other group in the United States. A 2013report by researchers at Brandeis University calculated that “half the collective wealth of African-American families was stripped away during the Great Recession,” in large part because of the impact on home equity. In the process, the wealth gap between blacks and whites grew: Right before the recession, white Americans had four times more wealth than black Americans, on average; by 2010, the gap had increased to six times. This was a targeted hit. Communities of color were far more likely to have riskier, higher-interest-rate loans than white communities, with good credit scores often making no difference.

Add to this the tea party movement’s assault on so-called Big Government, which despite the sanitized language of fiscal responsibility constitutes an attack on African American jobs. Public-sector employment, where there is less discrimination in hiring and pay, has traditionally been an important venue for creating a black middle class.

So when you think of Ferguson, don’t just think of black resentment at a criminal justice system that allows a white police officer to put six bullets into an unarmed black teen. Consider the economic dislocation of black America. Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin interacted, thus transforming a 17-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim. Remember the assault on the Voting Rights Act. Look at Connick v. Thompson, a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2011 that ruled it was legal for a city prosecutor’s staff to hide evidence that exonerated a black man who was rotting on death row for 14years. And think of a recent study by Stanford University psychology researchers concluding that, when white people were told that black Americans are incarcerated in numbers far beyond their proportion of the population, “they reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate the racial disparities,” such as three-strikes or stop-and-frisk laws.

Only then does Ferguson make sense. It’s about white rage.

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KikLove said:

Personally, the only ones making this a race issue are those who set back and wait for something to protest against white people.

I'm not even white and the fact that blacks (and minorities) want to blame everything that's wrong with a young black youth getting killed on white cops is stupid. :roll: I've faced racism all my life, especially being one of two Asians in a small town growing up. I was called all sorts of things by blacks, whites, and Hispanic/latino but I don't hold a grudge against all white cops and assume that they're racist.

It scares me that people complain there are not enough minorities in the work field. People in poverty have all sorts of methods for paying for school - grants, military, scholarships, and so much more - yet they don't use it. It doesn't matter what race. Blacks and Hispanics have more scholarships based purely on their race, they can try and get them.

I think part of the problem is they don't always try and push the race card instead of being one to help bring the change needed. The fact is people are using these protests as an excuse to steal and riot...not make change.

The fact is that Michael Brown got into an altercation with law enforcement. If the cop had been any other race (except Hispanic with "white hispanics") or Michael Brown had been another race...this wouldn't have escalated so far.

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whatdidyousay! said:

http://americaswire.org/drupal7/?q=...h-school-students-perform-levels-30-years-ago

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The Joker said:

Its worse in Oakland CA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djGigsV8zJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka0Imkj3EZc

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whatdidyousay! said:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/11/25/thousands-protest-ferguson-decision-in-boston/


There is a protest going in Boston.

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Reba said:

Charleston had a small protest rally.

"About 50 people held up signs and chanted in front of the federal courthouse in Charleston a day after a grand jury took a pass on charges against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson . . . Several Charleston police officers and two Homeland Security agents stood watch at Tuesday's protest. They took action only to remind people not to stand in traffic on Meeting Street. . . The Charleston crowd was a mixture of black and white, young and old."

This was an interesting statistic from the article:

"Of the 16 people fatally shot this year by South Carolina police officers, four were black."

That means 25 percent of the people fatally shot were black, out of a population of 34 percent black.

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20141125/PC16/141129627/1006

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It is getting more and more likely that your next conversation with a police officer will be recorded on a camera.

And not just any camera -- an official, department-issued one on the officer's glasses, collar or lapel.

Several makers of police body cameras say their orders have grown in recent months, particularly since a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot 18-year-old Michael Brown. A grand jury decided Monday there is not enough evidence to charge the officer, Darren Wilson, with a crime.

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Jiro said:

more info about Taser cam as it seems that it's a popular choice for body cam.

http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/axon-body-on-officer-video

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whatdidyousay! said:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1981217.html



Police union tries to block camera plan for Miami-Dade officers saying it will put cops at risk to do their job. I wonder if this is really true or if some cops know they'll not be able to get away police brutality anymore.

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A 2014 study by the U.S. Justice Department urged more research on the impact of body cameras, though it noted existing research confirms the devices tend to accompany a decline in both misconduct allegations and the use of force by officers. Still, it noted there were only five studies on the topic, leaving doubts about the conclusions.

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Jiro said:

police union means nothing to me. they're virtually powerless against unions of citizens. their concerns are moot point.



citizens of Miami-Dade must unite and demand for body cams. politicians always listen to whoever is the biggest voter. when citizens do nothing but make violent riots... police union is the biggest voter.

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Reba said:

NY Times publishes Darren Wilson's home address

This is bad.

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Reba said:

NY Times publishes Darren Wilson's home address

This is bad.

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