The Wars Abroad, the Wars at Home

Martin Luther King: “The bombs that are falling [overseas] are exploding in our cities”

DPPer Denise Zwahlen attended the Boston Ferguson protest this week and shared the following: Who knows exactly how many of us gathered at Dudley Square to protest the verdict, 2000 or so. Very diverse crowd but with Young Black people in great part setting the tone. We arrived late at the event and first saw a crowd in the dark and total silence, 4 and a half minutes, in recognition of Mike Brown. Amazing sight and feeling. What I thought was most meaningful and powerful about the event was the March and the Stand Out in front of South Bay House of Correction. There was a long exchange of messages without words from the part of the detainees, just switching lights off and on, raising their arms and waving and chanting of "Let them out" from the part of the crowd. For many young Black men, they don't face immediate death like Mike Brown, but a slow one at the hand of the Criminal Justice System.

 

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Telling My Son About Ferguson

For the past few years, I have traveled from coast to coast speaking to just about anyone who will listen about the horrors of our criminal injustice system. I have written and lectured extensively about the wars that have been declared on poor communities of color — the “war on crime” and the “war on drugs” — the militarization of our police forces, the school-to-prison pipeline, the millions stripped of basic civil and human rights, a penal system unprecedented in world history. Yet here I am, on Monday evening, before the announcement about the grand jury’s decision has been made, speechless… As a civil rights lawyer, I know all too well that Officer Wilson will not be going to trial or to jail. The system is legally rigged so that poor people guilty of relatively minor crimes are regularly sentenced to decades behind bars while police officers who kill unarmed black men almost never get charged, much less serve time in prison.  More

 

Rev. JESSE JACKSON: From Dred Scott to Michael Brown

The issue is not the protests that will follow. The issue is the lack of Federal uplift of the community. The issue is the lack of Federal enforcement of the law. The issue is that Ferguson’s police & fire departments do not represent the people, yet they receive Federal funds. Ferguson’s police department, fire department and contracts issued are all subsidized by the Federal government – including the equipment that will be used to put down the protests – yet there is not enforcement of the law. Ferguson and St. Louis are under military occupation & martial law.  More

 

Race inequality between US Whites and African-Americans by the Numbers

With regard to employment, African-Americans got hit harder by the Bush Depression than did whites, and jobs have not come back for them at nearly the same rate… This vast difference between Euro-American and African-American rates of employment holds true regardless of educational level; college-educated African-Americans are also twice as likely to be unemployed as whites with the same level of education…  On the other hand, although African-Americans are disproportionately likely to be poor, they are only a quarter of Americans living in poverty; whites make up about 41% of the poor.   More

 

Think riots have never caused change in America? Think again

In a number of cases, the crisis caused by riots and property destruction has had a significant role in forcing authorities to respond to demands for political change. And even some of America’s most iconic “nonviolent” movements included moments of destruction and chaos not unlike that which occurred in Ferguson following the grand jury decision…  While Dr. King never advocated violent and destructive behavior, he also said it would be “morally irresponsible” to condemn riots “without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.”  “These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention,” King said in a 1968 speech. “And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”    More