Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Why People are Rioting in Ferguson

Would you like to know why people are rioting in Ferguson? Hint: Its not because a black kid was murdered by a cop. Hint 2: Nor is it because an uppity black kid attacked a cop.

The black & minority community has tried to do things the nonviolent way. The system all down the line has failed them.

I encourage you to read up on the Kerner Commission report that investigated the LA/Chicago/Newark race riots of the 1960s & what it found & suggested. Its findings still pretty much hold up today.

I also encourage you to read Michelle Alexander's "the New Jim Crow" where it illustrates how the War on Drugs & their criminal justice enablers have legally & systematically reinforced a caste system, one for affluent America (usually suburban white) and one that's not (rural whites as a well as urban Blacks & Latinos).

I encourage you to read/listen to NCPR's Brian Mann's work on the 40th anniversary of the Rockefeller Drug Laws in how its passage & the rise of the Prison Industrial complex has become jobs program for ultra rural America. Not only that, locking people up became a socially acceptable cure for society's ills instead of addressing those root problems. You can probably find more elsewhere but this is a good hyperlink as a start.

I encourage you to read Shelby County V Holder & the twisted logic the Supreme Court used to strike down parts of the Voting Rights Act; its implication was almost immediate because FL, Ohio, Wisconsin, Texas, SC, PA to name a few passed laws restricting voting elligibility provisions for voters & rolled back the windows a person can vote.

The rioting is the result in the sand of the Black community saying no more to the status quo. Those in power have made it a fight to the death, if that's the way they want it than so be it. Because, as they see it, the world the status quo wants is one that black community thinks isn't one worth living.

No comments: