FERGUSON OVERNIGHT: – 78 people arrested – 2 people shot – Shots fired at police – 6 journalists arrested. (Photo)
This is a small town in America. Still think something isn’t profoundly wrong here? (Photo Scott Olson of @GettyImages)
BTW, Scott Olsen was one of the photojournalists arrested last night, for being across from the media pen.
The white guy on the left is the one who was trying to incite a riot last night. He came here from Chicago. (Photo)
Stay informed! https://twitter.com/AntonioFrench and https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ferguson?src=hash (You do not need an account to read.) A lot of us have been curating moment to moment news, the latest in this thread: Time to arrest the police.
Michael Eric Dyson spells it out for white people: Police won’t ‘kill your child’
#Ferguson made front pages in Turkey
Mike Brown: Facts and dog whistles
‘Kill Switch’ Smartphone Bill Passes in California
12 things white people can do now because Ferguson
Stark Racial Divisions in Reactions to Ferguson Police Shooting
The Mike Brown Killing: It’s Much Too Late for Angry Words by Kobie Colemon
Justice for Michael Brown Rests Almost Entirely in the Hands of This One Man
Campaigns and Ways to Help for #MikeBrown #Ferguson
Please Know, World, Black Lives Do Matter – an excerpt:
In everything we’ve seen from Ferguson, MO, this week, take away this: Black people are not a plague on society. Black people are not an inscrutable waste of time, and black life isn’t negotiable or negligible, but it is endangered. It is at risk. It is in some instances predisposed to be marked for death. Now more than ever before in history, we have got to find a way to indicate to those who would seek to strike black life down, that we are people. We bleed, we die, we have families, we love, we grieve, we have children, we are children, we are men and women, we are here, we matter, we matter. We matter.
First they came for the Black people, and I did not speak out – an excerpt:
This is what we’re doing. We’re watching our brothers and sisters, our fellow countrymen, marched on by a militarized, First-Amendment-breaking attack force, and we’re doing nothing. Because it doesn’t affect us. It doesn’t unsettle us. It doesn’t make is imagine that happening in our neighborhood, because our neighborhood doesn’t have dark boys with sagging pants walking to decrepit apartments.
White America–and Asian America, and Latin (U.S.) America, and everyone else–this is the time to get upset. This is the time to find some piece of this insanity and allow yourself to see how wrong this is. Pick a piece. Government and media aren’t doing anything about it. Cops acting as military and disrespecting citizens. Intrusion of private space. Journalists locked up. Breaking the First Amendment. Racist cops. Dead innocent young boys. Whatever it is, let it get you riled up that you actually want to do something.
Get so upset that you start looking at plane tickets to Ferguson. Realize that this is a massive civil rights issue. This is absolutely absurd and both reflects and predicts a broken, evil thing.
And then find every opportunity you have to act on that. Petition. Call. Inform. Donate. Console. Whatever it is you have in your power to fight this.
In my last post I encouraged you to not be That White Person, who, in the face of Black pain, says “Well, technically…”.
This time, I’m encouraging you to be That Other White Person. The one who, in the face of White apathy towards Black pain, acts counter to your culture and stands in solidarity with people whose neighborhoods might not look like yours. Put yourself in their shoes and see how absolutely insane this situation is, and then act accordingly. Don’t let this happen unchallenged.
Read. Stay Informed. Get mad as hell, and don’t take it anymore.
(Photo)
Let’s clear up that whole ‘black on black crime’ business, too. An excerpt (please click and read the whole thing) from White On White Crime:
In 2011, there were more cases of Whites killing Whites than there were Blacks killing Blacks. Now, in the United States, a White person is almost 6 times more likely to be killed by another White person than by a Black person, according to FBI homicide data.
Whites commit the majority of crimes in America. The term “black on black” crime is a destructive concept that perpetuates an idea that blacks are somehow more prone to violence. This is untrue and is supported by FBI, DOJ and census (pdf) data. Yet the fallacy is so fixed that even Blacks have come to believe it.
It seems that the media in general…and white American society in particular prefer to focus on crime committed by Blacks (character assassination) because it is a way to shift blame & serves as a way to relieve them from the responsibility of murder, violence, prejudice and institutionalized discrimination engendered for generations by whites against blacks.
It offers a buffer against their responsibility, a way to deflect cause and effect. But the truth, and numbers, tell an absolute different story…in particular, whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes. With respect to aggravated assault, whites led blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led blacks, again, more than 2-1.
Respect.
Thank you. Stay strong, and Stay safe, Last Poet.