I Woke Up Two Years Ago
The shooting of an unarmed African-American by a white Ferguson police officer was what opened the eyes to myself and other whites to what blacks had been saying for years. Two years ago this morning Michael Brown died on Canfield Drive.
We weren’t the only ones stopping by on Sunday. Signs indicated Canfield Dr will be closed Tuesday morning for a vigil “planned at the memorial site on Tuesday, August 9th at 10:30 a.m.”
The list of incidents in the last two years it two long to mention — evidence much work remains to be done.
In March 2015 I did three posts on a future Empowerment Center at the site of the former QT:
- Will the Urban League’s New Ferguson Center Be Urban or Suburban?
- Two Community Plans Intersect at Former Ferguson QuikTrip Site
- Top-Down Auto-Centric Thinking Continues In Ferguson, Still Time To Change
The ground breaking was in July 2015, but in March of this year it was announced it would be triple the original size. No mention of the site planning.
— Steve Patterson
Our society should never celebrate or condone strong arm robbery. And a healthy society does not memorialize a thief. That same society should never canonize a thug who threatens the life of one of our finest. As long as this mindset thrives in certain communities all over the US, the gap separating the “great divide” will and probably should never narrow, in my opinion. My personal values are not reflected in these communities that appear (based on multiple instances of well documented modi operandi) to promote recklessness, violence and obvious disregard for social order.
And any new construction in STL should be considered a windfall, regardless of where the building is placed on the parcel or its distance from the sidewalk.
Yes, this is why the thieves who robbed and murdered Michael Brown while wearing cop uniforms need to go to prison.
You do know that Michael Brown had not stolen anything?
You do know that it turned out that the Ferguson “cops” and “judges” were running a scheme to make up fake and bogus criminal charges in order to extract money from the citizens in the form of “fines” and “fees”?
If you don’t know, educate yourself. It’s all documented.
I grew up being taught a) that the correct response to a police officer was either “Yes, sir” or “No, sir”, and b) that you’ll never win the argument on the street, save it for the courtroom, even if you know that you’re “right”. This whole thing devolved because an arrogant teenager decided that it was his “right” to walk down the middle of the street. Should he be dead? Probably not. But a simple “Yes, sir”, followed by moving to the sidewalk, would have avoided EVERYTHING else that followed . . .
Sometimes justice comes when you’d least expect it…and swiftly.
What I “woke up” to following Ferguson was not police brutality, but the punitive nature of the St. Louis County Municipal Court System.
I agree with JZ… should Michael Brown be dead? Probably not… but his behavior — including reaching into the police vehicle — did nothing to ensure the best outcome possible.
You mean the things which he didn’t do at all, which witnesses say didn’t happen, which were made up by cop apologists as excuses after the fact? Like “reaching into the police vehicle”?
The other lesson from Ferguson: cops lie.