Events from Ferguson explain why we are weak

Summary: Events in Ferguson display some of the problems plaguing the Republic — our unresolved racial conflicts, sclerotic governing institutions, and most importantly our weakness as citizens. Decades of propaganda have erased from our minds our history of successful collective action, and replaced it with a mostly false belief in markets and individuals. It’s left us as atomized consumers, incapable of effectively becoming leaders and followers and so governing ourselves. It makes us sheep. We can do better.

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
— Edmund Burke (English statesman and philosopher), Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

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Contents

1. Tinderbox: a racially charged community
2. Poor leadership
3. Why we’re weak
4. Other posts about events in Ferguson
5. For More Information

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(1)  Tinderbox: a racially charged community

Slowly we gather information so as to piece together some of the puzzle that is Ferguson MO.

(a)  Racial mistrust

Note the common mention of “outside agitators”, although there’s no evidence of this as yet (update: the police have given evidence if at least a small number of outsiders arrested).

“The protesters like seeing themselves on TV,” her friend added.  “It’s just a small group of people making trouble,” said another.

“The kid wasn’t really innocent,” chimed in a woman at the other end of the table (they all declined to give their names). “He was struggling with the cop, and he’s got a rap sheet already, so he’s not that innocent.” (While the first point is in dispute, the second isn’t: The police have said that Michael Brown had no criminal record.)

If anything, the people here were disdainful and, mostly, scared — of the protesters, and, implicitly, of black people. “I don’t think it’s about justice for Michael Brown’s family,” said the teenage boy. “It’s just an excuse for people to do whatever they want to do.”

One man I talked to, a stay-at-home dad who is a landlord to three black tenants and one white one in Ferguson (“my black tenants would never do that,” he clarified) was more sympathetic to Brown and also had the sense that the police had overdone it a bit. But he was scared of the protests. I told him that the protest that day was entirely peaceful, festive almost. “You know,” he said. “I have a wife and three children, and if something were to happen to me, that would be very bad.”

As for the protests, well, they weren’t about justice; they were just an excuse. “People are just taking the opportunity to satisfy their desire for junk,” said one woman, knowingly. As if black people, the lust for theft encoded in their DNA, are just barely kept in line by authority.

“When they kill each other, we never hear about it,” one of the Starbucks women said. This, she meant, was a good thing. “When it’s black-on-black violence, we never hear about it.” I asked why she thought that was. “Because, basically, they hate whites!” her friend chimed in. “Prejudice, reverse prejudice. Prejudice goes both ways.”

The others signalled their agreement. “It’s not Ferguson people. It’s a lot of outside people coming in.” {The New Republic}

(b)  White leaders for a Black town

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Ferguson’s police chief and mayor are white. Of the six City Council members, one is black. The local school board has six white members and one Latino. Of the 53 commissioned officers on the police force, three are black … {LA Times}

Ferguson’s elected officials did not look much different than they had years earlier, when it was a largely white community. Ferguson had, instead, recently seen two highly visible African-American public officials lose their jobs.

Two weeks before Brown was shot, Charles Dooley, an African-American who has served as St. Louis County Executive for a decade, lost a bitter primary election to Steve Stenger, a white county councilman, in a race that, whatever the merits of the candidates, was seen as racially divisive.

… In December, the largely white Ferguson-Florissant school board fired Art McCoy, the superintendent, who is African-American. Those who were gathered at the QuikTrip parking lot on Saturday were as inclined to talk about the underlying political issues as they were about the hail of bullets that ended Brown’s life. {The New Yorker}

Also see “In Ferguson, Black Town, White Power“, New York Times, 17 August 2014.

(2)  Poor leadership

(a)  Crisis management requires appointing a local manager, anointing him as Czar. Governor Nixon appointed a leader, but then failed to support him.

{On} Thursday Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, a black Ferguson native, took charge of operations …

But as early as Friday morning people began to wonder if Johnson really was in charge, in any meaningful way. Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson began the day by releasing Officer Wilson’s name, which had been kept from the public until then. He undercut that gesture by simultaneously releasing a video that appeared to show Brown menacing a local store owner soon before his encounter with Wilson — thus suggesting that Wilson had been pursuing Brown as a suspect. It took a few hours, and a second press conference, for Jackson to acknowledge that Wilson hadn’t stopped Brown because he thought he was a robber but because Brown was walking in the street and not, as Wilson believed he should, on the sidewalk.

Ron Johnson had to concede that he had not even known that the video would be released; he saw it on television just as everyone else had. (“I would like to have been consulted,” he said at his own press conference.) After sporadic looting on Saturday night — halted largely by other protestors who rushed to protect the establishments being vandalized — Governor Jay Nixon declared a curfew, further undercutting Johnson’s authority. In the span of twenty-four hours, Johnson had gone, in the community’s eyes, from empowered native son to black token. One of the local activists I’d met in Feguson sent me a text message after the curfew announcement saying, “Johnson has good intentions but no power. This is beyond him.”

… Johnson had promised not to use tear gas in the streets of Ferguson but, during a skirmish with looters on Saturday night, police tear-gassed the crowd. {The New Yorker}

(b)  Community leaders lose control

Desperate efforts by black leaders, clergy, the Black Panthers, and Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson to get protesters in Ferguson, Mo., to heed a midnight curfew and go home Saturday failed. The result was that riot-geared police once again clashed with protesters in the wake of the Mike Brown shooting … {CS Monitor}

(3)  Why we’re weak

“abstract lofty aims that have great resonance but are almost empty of practical meaning”
— Raja Shehadeh (Palestinian attorney) in the London Review of Books

(a)  Reform will remain impossible so long as we see ourselves as consumers of government services (rating them like waiters), not citizens. As seen in “Video Killed Trust in Police Officers“, Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, 18 August 2014 — “Recordings of police brutality have undermined the public’s perceptions of law enforcement—and changed how Americans see ‘good cops’ and ‘bad cops’.”

(b)  Fantasy (the article provides not the slightest evidence to support the title): “A Movement Grows in Ferguson“, Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, 17 August 12014

(c)  Wishing won’t make it so: “The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race“, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Time, 17 August 2014 — He has no idea how this might happen, or what might make it happen.

(d)  Without political organizations we’ll rely on magic: “Stop Night Protests in Ferguson and Start Recalling City Leaders“, Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, 19 August 2014 — “Energy spent squaring off against an incompetent police force is better directed at the city’s power structure. Protest by day, collect signatures by night.”

(4)  Other posts about the events in Ferguson, MO

1. Our elites smile at events in Ferguson, MO. They’ll cry if it pushes Blacks to try 4GW., 14 August 2014
2. Will the Ferguson protest force development of African-American leaders?, 15 August 2014
3. Why America has militarized its police and crushes protests, 16 August 2014
4. The protesters at Ferguson might have won, but choose to lose, 18 August 2014

(5)  For More Information

(a)  See all posts about:

1. The quiet coup now in progress in America
2. Inequality & social mobility: once our strength, now a weaknesses
3. Reforming America: steps to political change

(b)  Using anger as a tool to revitalize America

1. Now is the time for America to get angry, 24 March 2009
2. Re-envisioning the FM website, becoming soldiers in the war for American’s future, 21 December 2009
3. Vital reading for America: two stories that might help arouse us to action, 17 January 2013
4. The Idiocies of “Oversight” and “Accountability”, 9 February 2013
5. In “Network”, Howard Beale asks us to get mad and do something. He’s still waiting., 19 October 2013
6. A simple thing you can do to start the reform of America: get angry, 11 December 2013
7. How can we arouse a passion to reform America in the hearts of our neighbors?, 20 December 2013
8. Should we risk using anger to arouse America?, 16 January 2014

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