It’s turned into a militarized bully session where police point rifles at protestors and arrest journalists.
Where are the peacemakers?
People looted businesses and lobbed burning bottles. Police aimed tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bombs at protesters.
Where are the peacemakers?
Some folks argue that the point has been made and people should get back to their regular lives. Others seem to demonstrate by their actions that this is not a situation where one can simply return to life as usual.
Where are the peacemakers?
At 5:00 CST, local clergy members are gathering to march with Fergeson youth. The immediate problem is that many people can’t even get to Fergeson right now because things are blocked off.
At 8:00 CST, there’s something called Lights Out, where people turn off their lights, light a candle, come outside and talk to their neighbors.
The management of the situation has been handed over to the Highway Patrol, which is much more racially diverse.
Maybe this can be the beginning of a new movement as this story unfolds.
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This is something that is important for all of us, regardless of where we live or the color of our skin. We all have a stake in this. We all have skin in the game. These are our children, this is the history of our nation, the attitude of our hearts. Do I think police should be able to use force to defend themselves if their lives are at stake? Yes. Do I think a young man should be at greater risk because of the color of his skin? No. There are such deeper root problems than the inciting incident, which was tragic. The death of a young person is something to be mourned. This is about even more than the loss of one boy. There are many nuances to the situation, and things are rarely as cut and dried as we’d like to make them. However, a few things stand, such as…
People have value.
People should be treated with dignity. That means people on the police force. It also means civilians.
People of color have a history of being treated unjustly, and therefore have reason to be suspicious of institutionalized racism. So many long years of an entire people group being actively and systematically disenfranchised. St. Louis is pretty racially divided, and its leaders are largely Caucasian. You can see why people might have a certain opinion about positions of authority when they don’t feel fairly represented.
People should be allowed to voice their dissent and their frustration through public protests without being unfairly penalized.
Ultimately, I care about what happens in Fergeson, and you do too, because it matters to us all.
TC, most of us care. How can we not?
But what we should care about is that the black community can’t get traction healing itself. How many white police kill black people in comparison to how many black children kill each other? Why do the cameras and civil right leaders show up for an isolated incident but do little to show up when the massive problem of black on black crime happens on a stunning scale every day? Are they fixated on blaming whites for racism when they should be asking why the hearts of the fathers are not turning to their children? This is a regrettably broken cultural group that continues to wait for a fix from beyond themselves that will never come. They must learn, like we all need to learn, that broad social change starts by me working on myself. Michael Jackson said, “I’m looking at the man in the mirror.” Healing must surely start once we all begin here.