Michael Brown, One Year Later
Photo: Joshua Lott/Getty Images
A lifetime since Ferguson's police department allowed Brown's bullet-ridden body to lay on Canfield Drive for three hours. Since a grand jury refused to indict Wilson, and a phalanx of police in military gear teargassed protestors and boxed them in with tanks. Since the world met Brown's parents and Jonathan Crawford III's girlfriend and Eric Garner's daughter and Sandra Bland's mom. It feels like a lifetime has passed since "Black lives matter" became the refrain and entry point into an emerging protest movement that demands the end of racialized state and extrajudicial violence against black families. ("Families," because police and vigilantes don't kill some black body in a vacuum. Their loved ones die a little, too.)
Because so much has happened in just one year, it's tempting to wax poetic about what this grisly anniversary means. But if there is to be poetry, it must be located in the everyday work of people across the nation who are organizing, chanting, marching, disrupting, boycotting, teaching, posting, creating, praying, losing their jobs and going to jail to assert what shouldn't need to be stated—that black lives matter.
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Can you say more about this moment?
I don't think we're at the point where we should jump the ball and start trying to force feed candidates down people's throats. I don't think that we should focus on the traditional get-out-the-vote work. I think right now, for people in St. Louis, a lot of folks don't understand that Ferguson was about actual resistance, and it was about actually saying, "You know what? We don't have a plan for what the aftermath of this looks like, but we know that the current situation is not working."...Truth be told, most people—including people in the movement—are still plugged in. There are people who would question why you call Barack Obama an imperialist. There's people who don't have any idea about foreign politics and how that relates to the struggle of black people here in America. Because if we do all this fist-raising and we chant Assata Shakur['s statement], "It is our duty to fight for our freedom,"well, Assata Shakur had a ridiculous gague about internationalism and a ridiculous foresight about what being revolutionary actually means. I just don't think a lot of us are there yet. I think a lot of us are at the point where we're still kind of looking for masters to feed us. And until we can get to the point where we start to genuinely divest from that type of thinking, then we'll be in the same predicament. So I think the movement work right now is more centered around thought-provoking and consciousness.
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One final question: You mentioned we don't have justice. What does justice mean to you?
Justice to me means that I should be able to walk down the street and just be the same way that a white girl is able to walk down the street and just be. Period. I should have the right to live, exist and be in my skin without being brutalized because of it. It's just normalcy—just the luxury of normalcy is what justice is. And we don't have that.
Read More http://www.colorlines.com/articles/michael-brown-one-year-later?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+racewireblog+%28Colorlines.com%29
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You want a Revolution? Here is your Revolution.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025653764
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025912655
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The children pictured there with "Am I Next?" signs just break my heart. 
A poignant tribute 
still going on....
thanks sheshe....you are a soldier.....
Then I must go soon.
All those people on DU that say BLM and Bernie is so passionate about this issue are not here kicking and rec'ing BLM. Why is that?
They were so vocal on my other thread about White America. They said stuff there, they said that is not them. Then why are they not on this thread?
Why are they not here heaven? Why talk the talk and not walk the walk.
Am I missing something here?
I am so tired.
Luv ya.
this type of privileged 'support' or not and the concurrent drop in support for BlackLives has been going on since MLK when it comes to POC looking for a level playing field and an equal chance. A lot of people followed MLK because of the passion of the times. Times they were a changing and I suspect many wanted to be on the right side of history. After MLK's murder/assassination and the Nixon years starting the reactionary RW answer to the 64-65 Civil and Voting Rights Acts with the help of that evil bastard Atwater and his 'Southern Strategy', support of civil and voting rights dropped tremendously among the buffer class.Today is a different day and same old lip service, but when it comes time to produce, not many in the buffer class are to be found.
Just try to remember white privilege and the societal perks garnered with that privilege is deeply entrenched as a god given right by god, church , mom and her apple pie...and no one can threaten that. Racial justice, economic equality, ending police executions would lead many to be able to demand some of the privileges enjoyed by the privileged buffer class, like help us rebuild our schools, hospitals, "inner city" infrastructure rebuilding and revitalizing. Equality might Provide jobs for the many young black people denied one because their name isn't Jim or Bob, June or Marge. Andre or Lakisha could help, with those jobs in rebuilding and sprucing up. But no. All the money in most states goes to the suburban kids of the privileged buffer class, who have latest equipment, computers, all the latest learning tools.
This societies PTB want/needs a permanent underclass. The PTB want to have a class everyone else can point out as the problem that allows the privileged class to be that willfully ignorant buffer between the underprivileged underclass and the true owners of this political and economic system. The PTB and their skill at manipulating and agitating has caused immense problems between the races and that is what is wanted by the people who profit from pain, fear and misery caused by racial and economic injustice. It is mean in the inner city ghettos with anger reinforced by low wages, little opportunity AND an occupation army patrolling it with one purpose, to kill and imprison as many POC as they can. Most of privileged society could care less. You saw that by the 'usual suspects' that showed up for your "TOXIC" OP. Those that were bending over to slam your OP are precisely the ones that have not, except for lip service, really ever been in the AA corner looking for change and a level playing field.
Their attitudes, and they are the majority out there who have always been calling themselves progressives and liberal are the One small difference between your and my progressiveness and liberalness, their privilege which stands in the way of effecting real change for POC. The only real hope is the continuing shift in racial demographics. The POC, and that doesn't mean a lot of different colors will be represented in the group looking for better conditions for AA. The Asians in this country, for the most part, usually identify with the Caucasian. Hell, in the college town I reside in that's all I see in couples if they are not single or in an intrarace relationship. The Latinos know that if they are brown they can be found, so they have no choice but to try for change from the oppressive conditions of white american culture that are aimed at marginalizing the majority of black and brown people and any significant black movement such as #BlackLivesMatter.
The native-American has always been an racial entity unto itself pretty closed off after the Caucasian genocide of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. I wish we AA and native-Americans could find some common ground for an alliance. With such a history as the AA has with the 'Buffalo Soldier' times, I don't know if that transgression can ever by forgotten or forgiven enough for such an alliance. The Seminoles helped a lot of fleeing slaves during that era, so maybe some kind of understanding on agendas can be reached. I have always wished for that.
I commiserate on the feeling of tired. We as a people must just hope that we can begin to realize that if we are killing each other we are doing the racists work for them and we have to make a concerted effort to turn that inner anger and self hate outward to the real enemy and start letting them know whoever they are or whatever they call themselves, that their times of killing and destroying lives in the name of white superiority and dominance is going to end. We must let them know, they do not have the right to be sub human animals toward a race of people who have shown, amazing patience while having to deal with their hate, stupidity and ignorance for too long.
They've talked the talk for generations, now it really is up to us to MAKE them walk the walk. MalcolmX said it best, "by any means necessary".
Hope this answers some of your query.
First, thank you so much heaven for your response. I never fail to learn something from the people off AA here.
Second, your post should be posted as an Op.
You rounded out the picture for me. "We as a people must just hope that we can begin to realize that if we are killing each other we are doing the racists work for them and we have to make a concerted effort to turn that inner anger and self hate outward to the real enemy and start letting them know whoever they are or whatever they call themselves, that their times of killing and destroying lives in the name of white superiority and dominance is going to end."
The Native American and AA connection is a different twist for me, yes I knew some of it. Two groups of peoples, one a victim of Caucasian genocide. The other a victim of Caucasian enslavement, that has continued long after you won your freedom.
You know, I truly believe that when Obama leaves office he will continue making a difference in the AA community of which he is a member. He will no longer be fettered by his office. He started with My Brothers Keeper. I think our community organizer will he back. Yes, I wish he could have done more while in office, yet he is far from done. Mark my words.
Hey, I love my President~
Thank you my dear heaven.
yet this one too.
jwirr, I thank you for your response. You are a good person.
I just wish all BS supporters here felt the same. They never come to threads like this, yet they rage on that BS believes BLM, yet they never support these threads.
I thank you for you support.
In every city in this country, day after day and year after year. And most of us in the white liberal community have been blind and deaf to the suffering and death inflicted on an entire people in this country in 21st century. We have been wrapped in the cotton batting of privilege and ignorance, not bothering to see what has been going on around us for all these years.
I am an old Jewish woman, and I am so ashamed.
And it keeps happening. Still.
Since the end of the Civil War that should have made all former slaves free and equal.
Over fifty years and it keeps happening - since the Equal Rights Act was passed that should have ensured all Americans were equal.
Still.
