“Is This Just The Beginning?”: Raging Protesters Set Ferguson on Fire
It’s nearly impossible to capture the pain, frustration, and sadness in Ferguson following the announcement that a white cop will not be charged for shooting an unarmed black teen three months ago. But if the faces partially hidden by gas masks and bandanas are any indication, last night’s events can be summed up by one simple word: rage.
“I guess it’s legal for police to kill unarmed black men now,” said one woman, defiant but in despair.
For many of those gathered, the grand jury’s verdict didn’t even really matter—it was the expected outcome of a system that works against them. “We already know what they’ve decided,” said one man outside the Ferguson Police headquarters before St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch had approached the microphone.
A few optimistic souls had not yet given up hope. “It’s never happened, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen,” said one. But when the announcement came, there was no surprise: Officer Darren Wilson will not stand trial for killing a teenager.
The reaction of the crowd wasn’t a surprise either. It started with chants. Then taunts. A few water bottles tossed at police. Tear gas. Smoke. Random gunfire. Arson and looting.
They flipped a cop car and torched it not far from the police station; flames reflected in the glass of storefronts that hadn’t been boarded up in the downtown shopping district, which is dotted with “Welcome to Historic Ferguson” signs. They fled from tear-gas canisters hissing through the air underneath the words “Seasons Greetings” that joined white lights and garlands on street lamps.
The crowd began to chant: “We gonna burn the shit down.”
A few protected stores from fellow residents and one man pleaded tearfully as water bottles flew over his head at police, but a mob mentality took over on South Florissant. That was nothing compared to the utter destruction going on across town. There, on the strip of West Florissant, which is now so familiar to protesters and TV news viewers, the night sky was lit by an inferno. Several, in fact. A storage building became a ghostly concrete frame lit bright orange. A small fire in an auto parts store created explosions that quickly got out of control. Black smoke rolled through the front door and the entire structure was gone to Hell in minutes. Business owners swept up glass in front of their barber shop. Next door, a strip mall popped and hissed as unknown accelerants aided in its fiery destruction.
“This was probably worse than the worst night we ever had in August,” said Jon Belmar, chief of the St. Louis County Police Department, who claimed to have heard 150 gunshots.
In truth, the genesis of these scenes that shocked the country came three months ago when residents of the apartments on Canfield Drive saw Mike Brown lying motionless and bleeding while Ferguson’s cops looked on.
Anger rose through the summer, as the names of more victims added fuel to the fire; starting as Twitter hashtags and making their way on to signs and T-shirts worn by the protesters in Ferguson—VonDeritt Myers and Kajieme Powell. Eric Garner and Ezell Ford. Then last week, a 12-year-old in Cleveland shot dead for holding a toy gun. A 28-year-old gunned down in a dark, New York City hallway by a rookie cop who apparently made a fatal mistake.
They were all Mike Brown, said the protesters. “We are,” the chant goes, “Mike Brown.”
The chanting—so much a part of protests here for the past 100-plus days—was sporadic through Monday night. As looters roamed, you could hear a few of the refrains that have defined this situation, most notably “No justice, no peace.” The phrase took on a greater sense of immediacy as chaotic midnight approached, with the streets belonging mostly to whomever wanted to take them. For a while it seemed like the cops didn’t. The destruction appeared random; it’s impossible to tell why some businesses were spared and others were torched. Although in at least one instance, there was discussion of saving black-owned shops. The Ferguson Burger Bar—a favorite among protesters—was spared despite having never boarded up. Across the street, Ferguson Market and Liquor, the convenience store that was home to Brown’s alleged robbery, was again wide open to pillagers. The tear gas smoke that consumed West Florissant in August—a sign of police oppression for some—was replaced by black plumes coming from the burning businesses.
Protesters simply trashed the place. But I didn’t see any smiles. It was an unfiltered anger that drove them to bust windows and set the flames that would consume a recognizable portion of their community. For the most part, the police simply backed off. And with the streets filled with protesters, gunfire ringing out in the air, the situation was too dangerous for firefighters to do their job.
So Ferguson watched itself burn.
For the young man’s defenders, this country’s sins—past and present—are the reason for his death and subsequent slandering in the media. The loss of his life, and all the others from this summer, back to Trayvon and well before that, are part of a pattern. But for one young woman, who recognized her chance to give a passing quote, Brown’s death is indicative not of an ending, but the start of something. What that is remains unclear.
In front of an engulfed auto parts store, surrounded by mayhem, she shouted five words before disappearing into the crowd: “This is just the beginning.”
By: Justin Glawe, The Daily Beast, November 25, 2014
“The ‘Right’ In It’s ‘Wrong’ Mind”: Will The GOP Scrap Obama’s State Of The Union address?
In early 1999, the political environment in Washington, D.C., bordered on surreal. President Clinton had just been impeached. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had just been ousted from his leadership post, forced out by his own members. Gingrich’s apparent successor, Louisiana’s Bob Livingston, was soon after forced to resign in the wake of a sex scandal.
And at the same time, the U.S. Senate was weighing the charges against Clinton, hearing arguments as to whether or not to remove the sitting president from office.
It was against this backdrop that the White House announced in mid-January that it was time for the annual State of the Union address. TV preacher Pat Robertson, an influential figure in Republican politics at the time, gave his GOP allies some stern advice: don’t let Clinton speak. To give the president an august national platform, Robertson said, would allow Clinton to solidify his support and end the impeachment crusade. Congress isn’t required to host the speech, so there was nothing stopping Republicans from denying Clinton’s request.
GOP leaders on Capitol Hill weren’t prepared to go nearly that far. So, Clinton spoke, he pretended like impeachment hadn’t just happened, and Gallup showed the president’s approval rating reaching 69% soon after.
Nearly 16 years later, another Democratic president, also hated by his Republican attackers, is poised to deliver his penultimate State of the Union address. And like Pat Robertson, the idea of denying the president a SOTU invitation is once again on the right’s mind.
“Yes, there’s a risk to overreacting, but there’s a risk to underreacting as well,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. “And I fear that’s the way the congressional leadership is leaning.”
Mr. Lowry suggested one way Congress could react. “If I were John Boehner,” he said, referring to the House speaker, “I’d say to the president: ‘Send us your State of the Union in writing. You’re not welcome in our chamber.’”
Lowry may not dictate GOP decision making the way Limbaugh and Fox News do, but it’s important to note that he isn’t the only one publicly pushing the idea.
Politico reported yesterday that congressional Republicans are weighing a variety of tactics to “address” their disgust over Obama’s immigration policy, and “GOP aides and lawmakers” are considering the idea of “refusing to invite the president to give his State of the Union address.”
Late last week, Breitbart News also ran a piece of its own on the subject: “Congress should indicate to President Obama that his presence is not welcome on Capitol Hill as long as his ‘executive amnesty’ remains in place. The gesture would, no doubt, be perceived as rude, but it is appropriate.”
For the record, I rather doubt Republican leaders will go this far. Indeed, if they seriously pursued the idea, GOP officials would risk a backlash that would help, not hurt, the White House.
That said, don’t be too surprised if this talk grows louder between now and the big speech.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 26, 2014
“Stick A Fork In It, It’s Done”: When Even ‘Definitive’ Isn’t Enough For The House GOP
Towards the end of the House Intelligence Committee’s report on the 2012 attack in Benghazi, the document notes that the panel’s findings were the result of two years of “intensive investigation,” which included careful review of thousands of pages of materials, 20 events and hearings, and extensive interviews.
“The report,” the Republican-led Committee concluded, “is therefore meant to serve as the definitive House statement on the Intelligence Community’s activities before, during and after the tragic events that caused the deaths of four brave Americans.”
And yet, even now, the House Republican leadership just doesn’t care.
House Speaker John A. Boehner announced Monday he will re-appoint Rep. Trey Gowdy as chairman of the Select Committee on the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya in the 114th Congress.
“On September 11, 2012, four Americans were killed in a brutal terrorist attack in Libya. Two years later, the American people still have far too many questions about what happened that night – and why,” Boehner said in a statement.
To date, Boehner, who didn’t want the Select Committee in the first place, has failed to identify even one of these questions that has not already been answered.
Several Senate Republicans don’t care, either.
Senate Republican leaders are under pressure from GOP lawmakers with presidential ambitions to join the House in investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), three young rising conservative stars who are weighing 2016 bids, say the Senate should participate in a joint investigation with the House.
This really is getting embarrassing.
As we talked about yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the State Department’s independent Accountability Review Board have all published reports on the 2012 attack, and each found the same thing: none of the conspiracy theories are true.
In addition, the attack has been scrutinized by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, each of which has held hearings, and each of which failed to find even a shred of evidence to bolster the conspiracy theorists.
Do Boehner and other Republicans believe their own allies are somehow in on the conspiracy? That GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate have somehow been co-opted into hiding imaginary evidence?
The “definitive” report, prepared by House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, makes it painfully obvious that this story has run its course. It’s over. Done. Stick a fork in it.
And yet, there’s the hapless House Speaker, pointing to questions he can’t identify, saying what the nation really needs is … another committee.
The irony is, the far-right went looking for a scandal, and in the process, they created one themselves. The political scandal isn’t the attack that left four Americans dead in Libya, it’s the ugly exploitation of the tragedy by mindless partisans looking for electoral and fundraising gimmicks, raising the prospect of important questions that have already been answered repeatedly.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 25, 2014
“Darren Wilson Saw ‘A Demon.’ What Do You See?”: Michael Brown Was A Very Human Being
“He looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face.” That’s how police officer Darren Wilson described unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. “The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon.”
Wilson’s testimony convinced the grand jurors and others that the officer was justified in shooting and killing Brown last summer in Ferguson, Mo. Yes, the citizens did a tough job admirably when confronted with mountains of material. But could they also have been affected by research that says black boys as young as 10 are seen as older and guiltier than their white peers?
In an August column “So, black teens who aren’t angels deserve whatever they get?” I wrote, “The shelf life for innocence is short when you are a black male — and there is no room for error.” You don’t get the second chance others might have after an incident of teenage rebellion, such as mouthing off to an authority figure or a more serious scrape. See any number of car-overturning, fire-burning melees after a big sports victory or loss for proof of a double standard.
The answer to the question I posed then has consequences for all Americans because Ferguson, Mo., is about more than one shooting in one town in Middle America. Whatever anyone thinks of the grand jury’s findings, “it” was not a “demon.” Michael Brown was a very human being.
By: Mary C. Curtis, She The People, The Washington Post, November 25, 2014
“Lift Yourself Up”: Rand Paul Wants To Prevent Another Ferguson By Scolding The Poor
Rand Paul begins his Time op-ed about Ferguson with a good point: One concrete way politicians can lessen discrimination in the criminal justice system is by reforming policing practices and the war on drugs. “Michael Brown’s death and the suffocation of Eric Garner in New York for selling untaxed cigarettes indicate something is wrong with criminal justice in America,” the Kentucky senator writes. “The War on Drugs has created a culture of violence and put police in a nearly impossible situation.”
But Paul’s meandering argument unravels from there. Going into full libertarian mode, he writes that “we all hold a certain degree of responsibility for our lives and it’s a mistake to simply blame others for our problems.” He says, unbelievably, that “no law” can possibly reform the criminal justice system. Then he points to the “link between poverty, lack of education, and children outside of marriage is staggering and cuts across all racial groups.”
It sounds a bit like another one of his rambling speeches. And then there’s this:
I have no intention to scold, but escaping the poverty and crime trap will require more than just criminal justice reform. Escaping the poverty trap will require all of us to relearn that not only are we our brother’s keeper, we are our own keeper. While a hand-up can be part of the plan, if the plan doesn’t include the self-discovery of education, work, and the self-esteem that comes with work, the cycle of poverty will continue.
Paul is essentially arguing that escaping poverty is not just a matter of criminal justice reform, but of character reform, too, on both the individual and community level. Of course, in scolding the poor, he also manages to scold government assistance. Lift yourself up, he’s saying, because the government can’t—and shouldn’t—do it for you.
Paul’s references to “lack of education” and single parenthood are the only nods toward the systemic socioeconomic issues that make it so hard to escape poverty. And character’s hardly the reason for it. For starters, it’s the lack of job training and opportunities, inner-city schools’ inability to attract top talent, and the struggle to put enough food on the table (the link between learning and nutrition is well documented). And guess who has the power and means to address many of these problems? The very government whose laws Paul has no faith in.
By: Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, November 25, 2014
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