The Chris Moeller Archives

Riots! Riots! Run for cover!

African-Americans and Americans of good conscience should be insulted by the theatrics and public hysteria being whipped up by the Democratic governor of Missouri and the Democratic mayor of St. Louis. The chief executive of one of the nation’s most segregated states, Jay Nixon, has been keeping up a constant stream of rhetoric promoting his administration’s preparation for race riots that he thinks are going to erupt upon the inevitable Grand Jury acquittal of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Nixon has preemptively ordered a state of emergency and Ferguson residents have responded by stockpiling guns. Mayor Francis Slay has ordered 400 National Guard troops deployed throughout the city of St. Louis-- in addition to the troops that are already being ordered to Ferguson. The state chapter of the Ku Klux Klan has vowed its support against an uprising as well.

The implication, in case it’s too subtle for you, is that the Ferguson protestors are incapable of peaceful demonstration against injustice. They are wild animals that require the restraint of a fascist state paramilitary strike force. Peaceful demonstration in Ferguson has already been met with the same this summer even though the protestors demonstrated remarkable restraint in the face of the kind of confrontational, excessive, and targeted policing that has drawn the ire of the United States Department of Justice, the type of brutality that had been demonstrated towards Michael Brown

To catch you up, this is what's gone down. The white police officer, Wilson, shoots the unarmed 18-year-old black man running away from him, Brown, and kills him. Brown's body remains at the scene, uncovered, for several hours. Wilson handles his own weapon and turns it in as evidence. He washes blood off his hands without anyone taking a picture of them first. A day later, the Ferguson police still provide only minimal information about the shooting. Wilson disappears the day of, and has been hidden away from public view during the three months since. (Publicly-expressed fears for "Wilson's safety" by police are another insult to Brown's friends and family and the protestors.) Within 24 hours of the shooting, local police are in riot gear with military-grade weapons and armored trucks on the street. Police use rubber bullets and tear gas against peaceful demonstrators, a violation of international human rights law and part of the reason that Brown's family appeared earlier this month before a gathering of the United Nations.

Two days after, still no release of the officer's name, even though he's admittedly safe in hiding. The FAA bans flight traffic over the Ferguson area, and we find out later that it's ordered by police to keep media away from the scene of the crime and the protests. Ferguson police continue to take to the streets in riot gear nightly and have their names removed from their uniforms and refuse to identify themselves to the people they are policing. Reporters from al Jazeera America are hit with tear gas while preparing a broadcast and have their equipment confiscated by police. Reporters from both the Washington Post and Huffington Post are arrested for refusing to leave a fast food restaurant "fast enough." A St. Louis city alderman, Antonio French, while documenting the protests and police action, is arrested on the scene and spends a night in jail, even though no charges ever come against him. Other protestors are arrested for "manner of walking," which-- hopefully this won't surprise you-- is not a crime.

About a week after the shooting, the officer's name is finally released but with no details at all about the shooting. Instead, it's released along with video of Brown allegedly committing an unarmed robbery prior to the shooting. MSNBC television anchor Chris Hayes is threatened by police with mace, CNN's Don Lemon is shoved by an officer, and a journalist from Argus Radio is warned by an officer to turn off his camera light or else he will be "shelled." An officer is caught on camera shouting at protestors, "Bring it, all you fucking animals! Bring it!"

A full week after, the public defaming of Brown continues. An anonymous leak comes from police that Brown had marijuana in his system according to his as-yet-unreleased autopsy. Nixon first calls in the National Guard and refuses to remove from the case a county prosecutor with strong ties to police whose father, an officer, was killed in the line of duty by a black suspect. Another video from the nightly protests reveals an officer shouting at the crowd, "I will fucking kill you."

About two weeks after, the Ferguson police chief says he released the video of the alleged robbery because of numerous media requests, but public records show there had been none. What there had been was numerous requests for records about the shooting, which the chief still refused to release at the time. The Department of Justice opens its investigation against the police and the police use that investigation as a further excuse to violate media "sunshine" laws and to arrest protestors. What the news organizations have been able to determine is that the Ferguson Police Department never did an accident report about the shooting. If Wilson refused to file an accident report, it would be grounds for immediate firing. The law requires him to do so, even if it implicates him in a crime. (It's also, of course, fucking suspicious.) The failure of somebody in the department to abide by open records laws is itself a misdemeanor, carrying a large fine, and punishable by up to a year in prison.

Will there be justice for Brown? We already know there won't be. It's been obstructed from the very beginning, as the details above should ably demonstrate. Any potential evidence that could hold Wilson accountable for his actions has been shielded. Is this the way they fucked over Michael Brown or is this the way they fuck over everybody? It's the justice system we're dealing with in this case. The police's version of the truth certainly can't be trusted. They've shown no interest at all in getting at the truth. All we've seen is one act of fear after another on behalf of the city and state's army of white privilege. Nixon and Slay's recent publicity-oriented actions are more of the same. And this is what I meant earlier when I said that protestors, and the men and women of Mike Brown's community, have shown nothing but remarkable restraint. The head "white guys in charge," clearly in over their heads, keep playing the riot card to drum up support among the white community for Gestapo policing.

Dr. King, a true leader, regretted the turmoil that boiled over in Newark and Detroit in 1967, but he knew it was the corrosive and failing acts of the police state that led to it. He reminded us that we "cannot have white affluence amid black poverty and have racial harmony." He wasn't interested in headlines that promoted the security of some over the rights of all, of stripping the dignity of the least fortunate to offer an inauthentic feeling of stability to the lucky possessors of privilege. He knew the source of the people's rage, and he respected it. He knew that the protestors against injustice, then as now, were the adults in the room.

posted by CM @ 9:25 PM