Grief and rage

[clevermanka]

My Tumblr dash is full of horrifying photos and tweets from Ferguson, MO.

I just wrote a long email to a (white, male) friend who yesterday posted on FB a comment about "well, but maybe he might have deserved (being shot)" and "these people who are rioting and looting are just acting like criminals."

I'm supposed to compile the packets for next week's GTA orientation.

All I want to do is burn shit down.

Update: Friend wrote back and agreed his words were problematic. So at least that is off my emotional plate.

Comments

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

I really hope that no one I like thinks that Michael Brown deserved to be shot and killed. I have seen zero credible evidence that Brown did anything at all to deserve to be shot. There are folks out there trying to say that ALL cops are bad, or ALL cops are good, and of course that is absurd. There are SOME bad cops, and I believe that the one who shot Michael Brown is one of them.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Well, he didn't use the words "deserved." He said "I'm appalled that an unarmed kid was shot, but he may not have been without fault. There is evidence he attacked the police officer."

When...no, actually, there is no evidence of that.

And TBH, if I was in the shoes of the people of Ferguson, I'd be rioting, too.

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

The police response to this, every step of it, has just made everyone more suspicious of their motives, and rightly so. As another friend of mine said, the claim that Brown tried to get into that police car for any reason seems absolutely ludicrous to me. It makes no sense.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[sherwood21.livejournal.com]

I have seen a statement that said Brown was trying to enter the police vehicle and take the officer's gun. I saw another statement that said it was determined that one round was fired from the officer's gun inside the vehicle. These two statements do not necessarily correspond. If the officer was a moron (the kindest word I can come up with), he may have discharged his own firearm inside the vehicle accidentally, prior to shooting Michael Brown. Statement one then may have come in response to "Officer Dumbass, you moron, why was one of these rounds discharged in your vehicle?" Presuming statement 1 is a response to the question of what happened, it has no bearing on whether or not it is factual - therefore, NOT evidence.

While most of my experience is in Corrections, not Patrol, I have known a lot of really stupid and venal officers. And I have known them to make some astonishingly ridiculous statements in their own defense. This is very much the same impression that I get from most of the statements released so far from the Ferguson police department.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

The behavior of Ferguson police and local government makes me even less inclined to think they're not a bunch of lying liars.

[the-themiscyran.livejournal.com]

I keep recycling the WTF-ness of why small town cops needed full RIOT GEAR in the first place. Seriously, does no one remember the "otherness" studies that proved that sort of "preparedness" only makes things worse?

"To serve and protect" is supposed to mean being a part of the community, knowing it's citizens, and being able to help them. Not fucking scaring them to death and shooting kids without cause.

I know, I am ranting to the choir. But seriously, WTF.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I don't have the energy to put these into a cohesive comment, but it's not just small town cops.

http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html?_r=0

http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/08/the-pentagon-gave-the-ferguson-police-department-military-grade-weapons/376033/



It's everywhere.

[the-themiscyran.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. The entire idea that any of our cops need military gear is just offensive. I'm probably just too used to the idea that larger cities have it to be shocked or surprised when they use it, sadly.

[mystic-savage.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

You're welcome? I ... guess? Such horrible information.

[msmitti.livejournal.com]

are you kidding me?!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I wish.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

This really stinks.
I was really disturbed by the "no-fly zone" over the area, and reporters being turned away, told to turn off their cameras.

Unfuckingbelievable.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I find it all-too-completely believable.

[whirledpeas.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely torn-up about the happenings there...and at the same time...TORN. It's charged so electrically from both sides, with a deep and wide river of suspicion, exclusion, disparity, and mistrust running between them. My heart aches for any family and community who loses a youth, either by their wrong turn or someone else's. They have questions that demand answers, but that will take time. In the same breath, I don't know exactly HOW a community is restored to peace after repeated protests-turned-riots occur. I desperately wish this weren't such a vitriolic tug-of-war.

All of this...it just makes my heart ache...and makes me pissed and somehow feel guilty.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Hello Ms. Peas! I thought you'd given up on LJ. Nice to see you again!

[poincaraux.livejournal.com]

Nice, and too rare IME, job re: the update!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Yes. He's a good person. It was such a relief to have that confirmed.

[the-lucky-nun.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to avoid facebook. Trying being the operative word. I see so much outrage and frustration from my friends who are black, or have black children, about the fact that this is still a problem, that black lives have less value in America than white lives. My friend Kyra put up a YouYube video of Levar Burton explaining how he puts his hands up when he's confronted by police, and she was like, "You guys, this man. Who taught a lot of you to read or encouraged your love of reading. This man fears the police." And I can't think of that video, or of the footage of Michael Brown's mom begging people to understand how hard and heartbreaking it is to raise a black child in our country--because he picks up that his life doesn't mean anything--I can't think of these things without wanting to cry. It appears we've made no real progress since the 1960s. I want to march against this. I gave some money to the bail fund for the protestors who were arrested. I've talked with my boys about this, and I had a good talk with a couple of my co-workers, one who wasn't aware of the protests, and one who disclosed his own worries as a black man about the perception of him as a dangerous element if he's out driving or walking around. my hands keep clenching into fists whenever I think about it. I wish I could do more.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

You said it. All of it. Yes.