Police gun down 17 year old unarmed black teen. (Update) Darren Wilson Not Indicted
Options
Comments
-
-
-
-
We have to guard against a growing trend in this country to replace due process and the legal system with media-fueled mob rule and sensationalism," said John McNesby, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge.
This just shows you they aren't listening.
Our police in this nation are way past delusional. All that hero talk and war on _____ has gone to their heads. He's talking about sensationalism while making a sensational statement ("trend in this country to replace due process and the legal system with media-fueled mob rule"). All ppl have to do is protest and demand change and this is the reaction you get out of them.
They have the guns and the law/govt on there side and many of them prove everyday that there is no reasoning with them. You think your police are honorable? Just a bunch of savages with guns who feel like they have authority over your life.
I was going to post a rebuttal to this fat pig,but while searching for his info I found this.
phillylawblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/john-mcnesby-cant-stop-saying-stupid-things/
He's not even worth it. -
North Carolina Fire Fighter Loses Job Over Mike Brown Facebook Comments
inquisitr.com/1698560/north-carolina-fire-investigator-loses-job-over-michael-brown-facebook-comments/ -
? _i_look_like wrote: »North Carolina Fire Fighter Loses Job Over Mike Brown Facebook Comments
inquisitr.com/1698560/north-carolina-fire-investigator-loses-job-over-michael-brown-facebook-comments/
-
Michael Brown memorial destroyed overnight
FERGUSON - Michael Brown supporters say a car drove straight through a makeshift memorial for him on Christmas day, according to CBS St. Louis.
Social media buzz about the incident started around 1:45 a.m. Shortly after, people came together to reassemble the memorial that has been around since Brown's death in August.
Around 4 a.m. the memorial was re-built.
-
washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/26/auto-draft/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpostMichael Brown memorial destroyed overnight
Supporters helped to rebuild a memorial built in honor of Michael Brown on Friday in Ferguson, Mo., after a driver crashed into it overnight. (Netta via Vine)
People hurriedly cleaned and rebuilt a memorial to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on Friday morning after they said a car intentionally destroyed it.
Flowers, signs and other mementos, left in remembrance of the 18-year-old who was killed in a police shooting in August, were scattered throughout the streets, stirring supporters who saw pictures on social media to gather to restore the makeshift shrine.
Officer Timothy Zoll, the Ferguson Police Department’s public relations officer, said that no crime had been reported in connection to the memorial’s destruction. He suggested that the department would look at any video of the incident, but he did not specify whether the department would investigate.
“I don’t know that a crime has occurred,” Zoll said Friday. “But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?”
Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Brown on Aug. 9, sparking a national conversation about race relations and police enforcement in the United States. The memorial sits in the middle of a street near the Canfield Green apartment complex, where Brown was shot and died.
The memorial was rebuilt by morning.
smh... -
A spokesman for the Ferguson Police Department was placed on unpaid leave after reportedly making dismissive comments about a memorial for Michael Brown, the 18-year-old black man who was shot and killed by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in August.
The makeshift memorial for Brown had been partly destroyed last week. When a reporter for The Washington Post asked the Ferguson Police Department about the incident, public information officer Timothy Zoll told the paper: “I don’t know that a crime has occurred. But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?”
RELATED: Michael Brown memorial rebuilt after destruction by car
The city of Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, said Saturday that Zoll had been placed on unpaid leave and now faces disciplinary proceedings.
“The City of Ferguson wants to emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of City officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location,” the city said in a statement, adding, “The City of Ferguson and the Ferguson Police Department in particular, are focused on creating a trusting relationship with the entire community and taking impactful steps to improve the effectiveness of the department.”
-
Ferguson Police officer on leave after calling the Mike Brown memorial 'trash'
A Ferguson Police Department public relations officer has been put on administrative leave over his response to the destruction of a memorial to Michael Brown, the teenager who was fatally shot by a police officer.
The memorial included signs in the middle of a street near the Canfield Green apartment complex where Brown was shot. Photos on social media showed the mementos scattered, and they appeared to have been run over by a vehicle.
“I don’t know that a crime has occurred,” Officer Timothy Zoll said Friday in an interview with The Washington Post. “But a pile of trash in the middle of the street? The Washington Post is making a call over this?”
The department said in a statement Saturday that Zoll misled his superiors about the contents of the interview, that he had been placed on unpaid leave, effective immediately, and that there would be disciplinary proceedings.
“The Ferguson Police Department wants to emphasize that negative remarks about the Michael Brown memorial do not reflect the feelings of the Ferguson Police Department and are in direct contradiction to the efforts of city officials to relocate the memorial to a more secure location,” the department said in a statement, according to KSDK (Channel 5). -
-
readingeagle.com/ap/article/analysis-in-2014-racial-tension-over-policing-reached-a-breaking-pointAnalysis: In 2014, racial tension over policing reached a breaking point
It was a year of grand juries and smashed windows, of tear gas and video evidence, and of boisterous demands for police reform in Los Angeles; New York; Oakland, Calif.; and Ferguson, Mo., as crowds cried, “Black lives matter.”
It was the year in which a black Staten Island, N.Y., man suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes, Eric Garner, died after an altercation with police; the officer accused of putting him in an unauthorized chokehold was not indicted. Ohio police were similarly absolved after fatally shooting John Crawford III in a Wal-Mart after he picked up a BB gun while talking on the phone with his girlfriend. Elsewhere in Ohio, a Cleveland police officer fatally shot a 12-year-old boy who was carrying a toy gun in a park, a death the state medical examiner ruled a homicide.
It was the year two police officers were shot dead in their patrol car in Brooklyn solely because of the uniforms they wore, and of a solemn funeral afterward at which hundreds of New York Police Department officers turned their backs on the mayor of the nation’s largest city, who had said he’d told his mixed-race son to be wary of the police for his own safety.
In city after city, 2014 became a year in which the nation’s lingering racial fissures burst open from the strain of a fundamental disagreement over the nature and purpose of policing, especially in African-American communities.
More so than teachers, tax collectors or elected officials, police officers are often the most visible representatives of the government — and its policies — on the streets of black communities across the country, which remain widely disadvantaged both economically and politically.
Eugene O’Neill, a former NYPD officer and prosecutor who is a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, put the role of police in terms of political philosophy: “They use force on people, they are agents of coercion, they are surrogates sent there on our behalf.”
But while the role of officers to use force to protect life and property is a universal feature of American government, polls have shown that the degree of public trust in the police is politically polarized largely by skin color and, to a somewhat lesser extent, political affiliation.
That political friction has long existed in American life, so when black activists this year likened the arrival of widespread protests to a new civil rights movement, their grievances centered on and came face to face with an old foe: the police.
The latest tumultuous chapter in America’s racial history can be traced back to a few moments on Aug. 9.
That’s when 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed, was shot and killed by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, after a struggle and a foot chase through the predominantly black St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.
Officer-involved shootings, even of unarmed victims, happen all the time, but it’s unclear exactly how often, though some estimates put the number at least in the hundreds. Small protests or calls for reform afterward are common.
So why did Ferguson come to be a launching point for months of intense dissent? Some observers pointed to the predominantly black city’s overwhelmingly white political leadership and police force, both of which were quickly overwhelmed by the duration and intensity of the protests that claimed its streets.
Then there was the high drama of St. Louis-area police agencies using tear gas and intimidating force in failing to quell often, but not always, peaceful demonstrations, in which every passing day seemed to bring some kind of escalation.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who ordered a state of emergency and twice called in the state National Guard, created a commission to study the roots of Ferguson’s civic crisis.
Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who is black, took a special interest in Ferguson, to the pique of some police unions who thought he was being too critical of ground-level law enforcement.
Federal officials descended on the suburb to open an investigation into the shooting and the practices of local police departments; the U.S. Justice Department also will continue to investigate various police departments to check for patterns of civil rights violations.
A running theme in the year’s debate over policing has been understanding — or the lack of it.
Protesters in Ferguson and elsewhere repeatedly said police and the rest of officialdom do not understand the pressures, challenges and dangers facing black Americans.
“Insurance is high, gas is high, but that’s not why I get mad,” Ferguson demonstrator Ricky Jones, 34, said during one of the first nights of the uprising in August. “At the end of the day, when I’m driving home, they ask me to pull over and get out of the car. No ‘license and registration, please.’ ‘Get out of the car. Lay on the ground. Put your hands on your head.’ ”
Police, for their part, say they are misunderstood too.
“There is a very pervasive feeling in law enforcement ... that the politicians are not supporting us,” said Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, which has 325,000 members. “Law enforcement is the only arm of government that is ever asked to do anything about (troubled) communities. The politicians are the ones saying, ‘Get in there and stop that crime.’ And then, when an incident happens, they rush to judgment that police were wrong.”
The opposing accounts of what happened the day Michael Brown died seem to capture the divide that will no doubt continue as debate continues on tactics, body cameras and shooting investigations.
Some witnesses said Brown had his hands up when he was shot. Wilson told investigators Brown was charging at him to attack.
It was a basic disagreement of fact that would foreshadow the much larger debate looming for the nation — on what it means to be black in America, or to be a police officer in America, in which voices from both sides would claim to be betrayed and, most of all, deeply misunderstood. -
greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/c6b40028e0ec4600883e1a1aa032c6ab/MO--St-Louis-County-ExecutiveUnspecified threats force private inauguration for St. Louis County executive, prosecutor
CLAYTON, Missouri — St. Louis County's new executive pledges renewed efforts to help impoverished residents.
Steve Stenger was sworn in Thursday in a private ceremony. He defeated incumbent Charlie Dooley in the August Democratic primary and narrowly won the general election in November.
The inauguration is normally public, but threats led to the decision to make it an invitation-only event. Details of the threats were not released.
Prosecutor Bob McCulloch was also sworn in. McCulloch drew protests for his handling of the investigation into the August shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. A grand jury ruled in November that officer Darren Wilson would not be charged.
Stenger says he will establish an Office of Community Empowerment to help close the gap in jobs and education in places like Ferguson. -
esquire.com/features/michael-brown-father-interview-0115
MICHAEL BROWN SR. AND THE AGONY OF THE BLACK FATHER IN AMERICA... -
news.stlpublicradio.org/post/grand-juror-sues-mcculloch-says-he-mischaracterized-wilson-case
Grand Juror Sues McCulloch, Says He Mischaracterized The Wilson Case -
stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/police-supporters-rally-in-front-of-ferguson-police-department/article_57fdb59f-ee15-5df5-8b39-0cf1f91c953d.htmlPolice supporters rally in front of Ferguson Police Department : News
A cold rain didn’t keep nearly 200 people from making their way Sunday to the Ferguson Police Department for a rally in support of the area’s law enforcement officers.
The umbrellas were out as people mingled on the police department’s parking lot on South Florissant Road, keeping warm with a fire pit and hot coffee and cocoa during a dreary afternoon. Organizers of the rally that began shortly before 2 p.m. passed out American flags, and some carried signs that read “We love Ferguson police” and “? bless our police.”
A man with a megaphone yelled “Thank you police.” At one point, rally-goers broke into a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
“We just kind of came out to show them we love them and support them and say nice things to them instead of some of the bad things people have said,” said Trudy Giancola, a retired Ferguson Fire Department captain.
The sidewalks on south Florissant Road outside of the police station have been a meeting point for groups protesting the death of Michael Brown, the teen shot by former Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson. Some of the regular protesters made their way onto the parking lot for their own rally, chanting “Black lives matter,” “You can’t stop the revolution” and other familiar slogans.
They and police supporters mingled peacefully, although there was at least one confrontation.
“This has been a bad situation, and I think the community wants to make things better,” said Jeff Ahrens, who has lived in Ferguson for 30 years and was attending the rally for police. He tried to engage one of the counter-protesters in conversation, he said, without success.
“There’s been some great conversations going on between black and white and Hispanic,” Ahrens said. “The people who shout past each other don’t solve anything.”
There were some civil conversations between police supporters and those who are still angry with police over Brown’s shooting.
“You can be pro-black life without being anti-police,” said Aaron Banks, who documents the protests and says that as a black man he understands the anger of many protesters.
That’s what he talked about with a man who was there for the police rally, Banks said. It shouldn’t be such a polarizing issue, he said. Police should be out protesting, too, against the socioeconomic conditions that led to the unrest in the first place.
“There was a lot of positive dialogue,” Banks said. “There was also a lot of emotion, but it’s an emotional thing.”
Some of the police rally organizers asked participants to leave as the other group of protesters grew to about 50. most participants in the police rally had left by a little past 3 p.m.
Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III and Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson were present, and they talked with some of the protesters on the parking lot. Some protesters yelled insults and cursed at them.
Protesters soon outnumbered police supporters, and some joked it was the closest they had ever been to the police headquarters entrance. A group posed for a picture.
About 4 p.m. there was commotion on one end of the parking lot, and a police supporter was restrained by other members of the group, who escorted him away.
More Ferguson police officers arrived shortly after the confrontation. Jackson then asked everyone to leave the lot, and protesters complied. -
-
sfgate.com/news/article/Protests-planned-around-Bay-Area-for-MLK-holiday-6024006.phpProtesters around Bay Area echo MLK’s call for justice
About 150 people marched through Oakland on Sunday evening, capping a weekend of Bay Area demonstrations aimed at highlighting injustices against African Americans.
The demonstration, which began around 7 p.m. at 14th Street and Broadway, was one of several events around the Bay Area timed to coincide with the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
There was a large police presence as the crowd marched north on Broadway and Telegraph. The crowd then circled back into the downtown area.
By 9 p.m., the crowd dwindled to about 15 to 20 people, marching south around Lake Merritt and onto International Boulevard. Police issued a crowd dispersal order, then started to arrest people for obstructing International. It was unclear how many were arrested Sunday night.
A small knot of demonstrators continued marching east on International well into the night. As of 9:30 p.m., however, there had been none of the violence or vandalism that marred recent other demonstrations in the East Bay. Around 10 p.m., Fruitvale BART Station was closed due to a civil disturbance, said the transit agency.
The march was at times tense. Some marchers repeatedly taunted the police, in some cases yelling within inches of officers’ faces, “You ain’t s—! You mother—s think you’re helping, but you’re killing our kids.”
Two marchers carried a banner proclaiming, “Gentrification is violence.”
Other demonstrators, however, were trying not to be confrontational. At one point when the demonstration passed under a freeway underpass, and some in the crowd started screaming, “Let’s take it,” others urged them not to try to block the freeway.
The demonstration included people from across the Bay Area and all races.
“I’m here to support the black community,” said one Berkeley resident who gave only his first name, Brennos. “I’d like the local government and the national government to do something about the disparities in the way black people are treated. The best way to do that right now is coming out into the streets, because they don’t seem to be listening.”
A marcher from Alameda who gave her name as Chris said she thought King would approve. “I think he’d be happy to see the young people here speaking up for themselves and defending themselves.”
Earlier Sunday, 50 demonstrators gathered at the Walmart on Edgewater Drive near the O.co Coliseum to voice frustrations with the retail giant and to remember unarmed black men killed by police around the country.
Billy Garner said his cousin, Billy Vaughn, was shot and killed by Oakland police in December 1999. On Sunday, the 25-year-old held his late family member’s photo as he stood in the Walmart parking lot.
While Garner did not elaborate on the circumstances of his cousin’s death, he said the killing was emblematic of what he sees as a larger issue of police violence against young black men throughout the country.
“It changed how I felt about law enforcement,” he said about the shooting. “This situation hit close to me. I feel like because he was black he was killed.”
Organizers chose Walmart as a backdrop for Sunday’s action to call attention to the Aug. 5 death of 22-year-old John Crawford, who was shot by police in an Ohio Walmart while he held an air rifle he had taken off a store shelf.
“Not only is Walmart the site of the killing of an unarmed black man, but it’s also a site of perpetual economic violence,” said 23-year-old Lucas Solorzano, who led the crowd in a series of chants before the group staged a “die-in” in the parking lot.
Protesters called out Walmart for what they see as meager pay for employees, and the blocking of workers from unionizing.
“Poverty is violence,” Solorzano said to the crowd. “Let’s take Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for justice seriously. Let’s organize. Let’s shut it down.”
Later Sunday afternoon, demonstrators, many of them families with children, marched in Emeryville and vowed to shut down “business as usual” at the Bay Street mall. Others staged a moment of silence in a Whole Foods in Berkeley.
As dusk fell in San Francisco, demonstrators gathered at the Powell Street cable car turnaround for a “sleep-in” to protest laws they said do nothing but target the poor.
They took particular aim at San Francisco’s ban on sleeping in public, saying the homeless have a fundamental “right to rest.” To make their point, they brought blankets and coffee for a long night on the pavement, in the heart of San Francisco’s main shopping district.
“If you think it’s wrong to criminalize people for sleeping on the street, give me a 'Hell, yeah!’” said human rights organizer Bilal Ali to the crowd of perhaps 50 demonstrators, as shoppers and tourists stopped to snap photos. “We say housing, not handcuffs. ... If Dr. King were alive today, he’d be right here with us.”
Sunday’s demonstrations followed several protests Saturday where marchers blocked traffic in Oakland and San Francisco.
More than 100 people, many chanting “Black lives matter,” converged on the Oakland Police Department’s Eastmont substation at 2651 73rd Ave. after gathering at the Fruitvale BART Station.
Four people were arrested during Saturday’s march, according to reports, after the mostly peaceful crowd advanced through the streets around 4 p.m. By 7 p.m. the protest had ended, according to Oakland police. -
washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/01/19/st-louis-protesters-prepare-to-march-for-civil-rights/St. Louis protesters prepare to march for civil rights
ST. LOUIS — Crowds gathered at the Old Courthouse here Monday to honor the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in an annual observance that was expected to be more pointed and potentially more tense this year because of the unrest over the police killings of unarmed African Americans that was touched off in nearby Ferguson and has since gripped the nation.
The annual commemoration begins every year with remarks by politicians followed by a march and interfaith service. It is typically well attended, but organizers said they expect even greater turnout because of a renewed belief among African Americans that the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer in the St. Louis suburb, and similar killings around the country, suggest that the work of King and other civil rights leaders remains unfinished.
They also prepared for the potential that some of the unrest could disrupt the commemoration. They have reached out to protest leaders, some of whom will participate in the events, as well as church leaders and the heads of sororities and fraternities, asking them to emphasize the peaceful nature of the event. They worked with the St. Louis police to increase security, said Gary Boyd, a member of the committee that organized the observance, which he cast not as a protest but a solemn moment to “keep the dream alive.”
Typically, about 25 police officers are on hand to help with crowd control, Boyd said. This time there will be about 75 to 100, he said. Still, he expects that even the most angry protesters will treat the day with reverence and that there will be no trouble.
“It’s like going to your grandmother’s house,” Boyd said. “You might sag outside and you might drink that beer, but you don’t take that inside.”
But protest organizers here and around the country have made it clear that they view the moment as more than than that. They have pledged to “reclaim” what they say is the softened and pacified legacy of King, who despite his calls for unity and peace also favored unapologetic and sustained civil disobedience.
The event Monday was preceded by several days in the St. Louis area of teach-ins, marches, and civil rights-themed events and church services. About a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus attended services at a church in Ferguson on Sunday and pledged to push criminal justice reforms. -
Feds should've BEEN taken this case. Tf? It's already confirmed the prosecutor sabotaged the case. What else are you lookin at? C'mon now
-
nytimes.com/2015/01/20/us/king-holiday-events-include-air-of-protest-over-deaths-of-black-men.htmlKing Events Include Air of Protest Over Deaths of Black Men
In Atlanta, about 200 young demonstrators sat down in the middle of Peachtree Street, not far from the annual Martin Luther King Day commemoration at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and briefly stopped the parade.
In St. Louis, a group of protesters rushed the stage at a prayer service, bringing the event to a halt until the police arrived.
In New York, there was a “die-in” outside Bloomingdale’s, in the heart of an upscale shopping area, while in Boston, similar “die-ins” took place on streets between Boston Common and the Public Garden and then in front of the State House.
The nation’s celebration of Dr. King’s birthday on Monday was punctuated by protest, as a new generation of activists, angered by the deaths of several unarmed African-Americans in confrontations with the police, demanded that the traditional holiday rituals of speechmaking, community service and prayer breakfasts give way to denunciations of injustice and inequality.
“The events that have happened have kind of diminished his dream a little bit,” said Aleah Hutchinson, 17, who attended a King event in Athens, Ala. and won a local essay contest about Dr. King. “He wanted us all to work together in unity, but when certain events occur, like the events in Ferguson and the Trayvon Martin case, it kind of diminishes his dream a little bit because at that point, we’re not working together.”
In Atlanta — where the holiday has long been a big but generally mellow and celebratory affair — a showdown occurred between the civil rights old guard and the new, more boisterous generation of protesters, many of whom were catalyzed to action by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, both at the hands of the police.
The protesters argued that the holiday had become corrupted by corporate involvement, diluting Dr. King’s ideas about economics as well as race. With signs, slogans and shouts, they inserted themselves into the annual parade as it made its way down Peachtree Street, Atlanta’s downtown thoroughfare. Several times, the group sat and lay en masse in the middle of the street, raising fists toward the air as the police pleaded with them to move on.
“We’re going to reclaim M.L.K.’s holiday!” Aurielle Marie, 20, an activist and author, yelled at the Atlanta protest. “We will not allow those that actively subject us to an oppressive lifestyle to lead the parade or be in the parade.”
In front of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King and his father both preached, protesters marched to the front of a stage where a service was underway. Carrying a cardboard box decorated like a coffin, and demanding to be heard, they chanted, “Black people are dying.”
Organizers of the commemoration seemed both frustrated and accommodating, allowing the demonstrators to take the podium for a time, during which one young man declared that he had had enough of “the M.L.K. they shove down our throats.”
K. Renee Robertson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said afterward that she thought the insurgents’ passion was “great.” “But do it in the right way,” Ms. Robertson said.
Similar events unfolded in St. Louis, where several thousand people marched from the city’s Old Courthouse, where enslaved blacks were once sold as property, to Harris-Stowe State University, where the marchers joined a packed auditorium for an interfaith service.
As a musical act took the stage, a couple dozen demonstrators ran up and seized the microphone, where one man shouted, “St. Louis P.D., K.K.K., how many kids did you ? today?” About a dozen St. Louis police officers helped university security officers clear the stage.
“The difference this year is that people are more energized,” said State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, a St. Louis Democrat who has been involved in the Ferguson protests. “They are ready to rise up and promote change.”
One of the day’s larger gatherings was in Philadelphia, where thousands marched peacefully through the city center, calling for an end to a stop-and frisk policy by city police; higher funding for cash-starved public schools and an increase in the minimum wage.
“This is to make people aware that it’s not just a day of service,” Wesley Wilson-Bey, 68, said at a rally outside the school district headquarters. “People have relegated Dr. King to just cleaning floors and all that kind of stuff on this day, and that’s not what he was. He was a person who made things happen.”
More than a thousand people gathered in Harlem; across the plaza, a banner reading “Black Lives Matter” was suspended from the front of a church. Demonstrators, some carrying signs demanding justice for Mr. Garner and Mr. Brown, marched down Lexington Avenue through the Upper East Side, accompanied by a mobile system broadcasting Dr. King’s speeches.
“Martin Luther King’s dream hasn’t been realized yet,” said Norell Edwards, 23, a graduate student from Washington, who joined the protesters in New York. “This is a way to try to finish his work and stand together with unity and equality.”
In Boston, where hundreds gathered, march organizers said they wanted criminal justice reforms, a $15 an hour minimum wage, and an end to efforts to bring the Olympics to town, among other demands.
Lena Zuckerwise, 35, a senior lecturer in political science at Simmons College, carried a sign that read “Dr. King was no moderate/Shut it down.”
“There is a perception that what Martin Luther King Jr., was doing was honorable, and what we are doing today is disruptive,” Ms. Zuckerwise said. She added, “I think it’s a historical falsehood, that there were profound differences between what Martin Luther King and others were doing at that time and what we’re trying to accomplish here.”
Smaller crowds gathered in Chicago, where more than 100 protesters marched down the sidewalks of the upscale Magnificent Mile shopping district and to the Board of Trade, and in Washington, where about 100 gathered in front of the White House.
“Just seeing the recent news with unarmed civilians being shot by the police, it’s an obvious injustice,” said Denisha Burns, 33, in Chicago, where protesters recited the names of people killed by police.
In Washington, as 16-year-old Ananda Ewing-Boyd sang “A Change Is Gonna Come,” organizers passed out lists of demands, including an end to violence by the police, and raised money for local homeless shelters. “Part of the idea is reminding people what M.L.K. Day is about,” said Caroline Tyson, a 19-year-old college student. “It’s not just a day off work.”
Even in small towns, the events of recent years affected the celebrations. In Athens, Ala., where a column of junior R.O.T.C. cadets and the mayor led an annual parade past Limestone Drug and the U.G. White Mercantile, some marchers wore black shirts with the names of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin as well as Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, the two New York City police officers who were shot to death as they sat in their patrol car.
“We’ve got to break the cycle of the past,” said Lionel Turner, a 38-year-old marcher. “There used to be slave masters and stuff like that, but now it’s changed to organized police officers, and they find a way within the law to break the law themselves. You’ve got to find some kind of way to unify everyone.” -
So they about to clear this lying azz racist? That's some ? . There is absolutely no hope in the justice system for ? . Eric Holder, Barack Obama, ? YOU. You know they murdered that boy and did just about everything to cover it up. Yet you clear him. AFTER we find the racist prosecutor withheld evidence, purposely confused jurors & put forth planted witnesses. ? THE SYSTEM.
-
blackamerica wrote: »So they about to clear this lying azz racist? That's some ? . There is absolutely no hope in the justice system for ? . Eric Holder, Barack Obama, ? YOU. You know they murdered that boy and did just about everything to cover it up. Yet you clear him. AFTER we find the racist prosecutor withheld evidence, purposely confused jurors & put forth planted witnesses. ? THE SYSTEM.
Not surprising, do you see this ? for what it really is now? -
I held out a shred of hope the system would do right this time. I was wrong. You wanna know why racism still exist? Because the system PROTECTS white ppl that commit hate crimes against minorities. It will never change. White ppl have too many loopholes in the system nobody else has. Until somebody points this out, talking about race is useless.Bully_Pulpit wrote: »Not surprising, do you see this ? for what it really is now?
White privilege prevails once again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edp4F6HZtF8
http://youtu.be/zAtqb3T5CHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1pmYXQ-y40
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZtscK8B_rU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6syWpcBiQc
