Michael Brown Jr. b. May 20, 1996. d. August 9, 2014
Yesterday, funeral services were held for Michael Brown, at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, in St. Louis. The funeral is not the end of Mike's journey, though his life was cut short on August, 9, 2014. His family, and supporters are continuing the battle for justice. Please help by contributing to the Michael Brown Memorial Fund.
If you did not get a chance to see or listen to the funeral address, “The World View,” delivered by Rev. Al Sharpton, take time to do so.
Sadly, there is no transcript yet, though TomP reported some of his powerful words in his diary yesterday.
Thank you Tom.
We offer our condolences to the family, to Michael's relatives and friends, and to the members of the Ferguson community.
We here at Black Kos are also a part of the community, no matter the geographic location.
No Justice. No Peace.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The white community is worried about the city’s image. The black community wants justice. Slate: The Two Very Different Worlds of Ferguson.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 80 percent of blacks say that the shooting raises racial issues, compared to only 37 percent of whites. The same goes for views of police conduct toward the Ferguson protesters. Sixty-five percent of blacks say police went too far responding to protesters, compared to just 40 percent of whites.
When you consider the segregated lives of most blacks and most whites, this makes sense. Most white Americans live near other white Americans, and most black Americans live among blacks. Work notwithstanding, there’s not much overlap between the two worlds.
“Overall,” writes Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, “the social networks of whites are a remarkable 93 percent white.” In fact, he points out, “fully three-quarters of whites have entirely white social networks without any minority presence,” a level of social homogeneity unmatched among other racial and ethnic groups.
In which case, of course blacks and whites have different views of the Brown shooting. Separate social lives means few whites are privy to the mistrust and fear that informs the black relationship to law enforcement.
Which brings us to Ferguson.
Pay any attention to the lawns and storefronts near downtown, and you’ll notice a new detail in the landscape: The “I ♥ Ferguson” sign. You’ll find a few on West Florissant, where the protests were, but they’re ubiquitous around the downtown core, dotting homes and businesses as a public declaration of pride for the recently besieged town.
Sixty-five percent of blacks say police went too far responding to protesters, compared to just 40 percent of whites.
And that’s the point. The signs are a starting point for a general campaign—based in the dining room of the Corner Coffee Shop—to show a better side of Ferguson.
“Who can deny that what happened is a horrible tragedy that no one would ever, ever wish on a family, an individual, or a community?” said Chris Shanahan, who was part of a group selling T-shirts with the “I ♥ Ferguson” logo. “I think [the T-shirts] became something to help certain people in the community remember that they still like this community despite certain things that have been shown on TV.”
Pay any attention to the lawns and storefronts near downtown, and you’ll notice a new detail in the landscape: The “I ♥ Ferguson” sign.
Photo by Jamelle Bouie
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Just sad.... Slate: More Online Cash Raised for Ferguson Cop Than for Unarmed Black Teenager He Killed.
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The controversial online fundraisers for Ferguson cop Darren Wilson are surpassing the amount of money that has been raised for Michael Brown’s family. A crowd-funding page set up by Darren Wilson supporters was shut down Friday after supporters raised $234,910 from 5,901 people in five days. A new page was then set up and has so far raised $72,732, notes USA Today. Brown’s memorial fund has so far raised $201,954 in nine days. The fundraising for Wilson grew out of a Facebook page that has garnered almost 60,000 likes. As Slate’s David Weigel pointed out a few days ago, Wilson supporters are raising all this cash even though the Ferguson officer has not been arrested.
Meanwhile, people rallied in St. Louis again on Saturday to support Wilson, who killed 18-year-old Brown. “Many of us have received death threats against ourselves and our families,” a Wilson supporter said, reports Mediaite. “Contrary to media suggestions we are not affiliated with any hate groups.” The supporter, who spoke while wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, declined to give her name: “You want my name? My name is Darren Wilson, we are Darren Wilson.” Another rally has been planned for Sunday.
A protester displays signs and T-shirt during a rally in support of Officer Darren Wilson on Saturday in St. Louis.
Photo by Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images
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The mass immigration of Chinese people into Africa is almost entirely driven by money rather than ideology. Economist: Empire of the sums.
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The numbers are hard to pin down. Mr French reckons that the million cited in his book’s title may be an underestimate. Most of them, he says, came to work on big projects, then stayed on as adventurous entrepreneurs on their own or in family groups. Chinese companies bring far more of their own people to work in menial jobs than Western companies would ever do. Mr French says that in 2011 China’s parliament debated a proposal, admittedly fanciful, to deploy as many as 100m people in Africa. The rumour circulating widely in Africa that many of the more roughneck types of Chinese incomer are prison labourers is, he says, entirely baseless.
The trade and investment figures are hard to verify, too. According to one source used by Mr French, “China’s Export-Import Bank extended $62.7 billion in loans to African countries between 2001-2010, or $12.5 billion more than the World Bank.” Other figures go even higher. What is clear, at any rate, is that Chinese people and money have flooded into Africa in the past decade, chiefly to buy raw materials to fuel China’s roaring economy.
What is tantalisingly unclear is whether the Chinese economic onslaught is the result of a methodical policy fashioned in Beijing as part of an imperialist venture to promote “Chinese values” and dominate the continent as Europeans did a century ago, or whether it has become a self-generating process fired up by individual Chinese who are simply keen to enrich themselves without the slightest intention of kowtowing to the authorities back home.
The conversations recorded by Mr French in a dozen of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries leave an impression that strongly supports the second thesis. Indeed, many of the Chinese in Africa excoriate the Communist Party back home and have dared to start new lives far away precisely to breathe fresher air—much as pioneers from Europe did when heading to the new world or to the dark continent. Many cite the Chinese ruling party’s corruption as a spur for seeking a freer climate elsewhere and even say that Africa is a lot less corrupt by comparison.
At the same time, many Chinese in Africa have intensely nationalist feelings, often expressed in crudely racist terms. They tend to stick together, perhaps even more tightly than other incomers in the past. They are wary of joint enterprises with Africans, except at the highest level, where presidents and generals come into play.
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We hoped he would bring racial understanding. But with two years left, there’s nothing Obama can say about race that doesn’t lead to more rancor. Slate: Why Did Obama Say So Little About Ferguson?
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From the new, nationwide conversation on police militarization to the disturbing pictures of tear-gassed protesters and civil disarray, Ferguson is probably the most important racial event of the Obama administration. In which case, why didn’t Obama—elected on the promise of greater racial understanding—address it with the wisdom we know he has? Why the cautious words?
One answer is that the White House is keenly aware of the president’s poor standing with large parts of the public. “[T]he White House,” writes Vox’s Ezra Klein, “no longer believes Obama can bridge divides. They believe—with good reason—that he widens them. They learned this early in his presidency, when Obama said that the police had ‘acted stupidly’ when they arrested Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates on the porch of his own home. The backlash was fierce. To defuse it, Obama ended up inviting both Gates and the arresting officer for a ‘beer summit’ at the White House.”
This is an important anecdote. Not just because it shows how Obama’s interventions can be divisive, but also because it shows the fault lines for those fissures. The Gates incident marked the beginning of Obama’s free fall with white voters. “In interviews conducted Wednesday and Thursday night,” noted the Pew Research Center at the time, “53% of white non-Hispanics approved of Obama’s overall job performance, compared with 46% of those interviewed Friday through Sunday,” after Obama’s comments blew up. “Disapproval among whites edged up from 36% on the first two nights to 42% Friday through Sunday. And the share of whites who say they like the kind of person Obama is slipped from 75% to 69% over the same period.”
A subsequent survey confirmed the results: Whites disapproved of President Obama’s handling of the Gates incident, with greater disapproval among whites who heard a lot about Obama’s comments. By contrast, neither blacks nor Hispanics changed their views of the president following his intervention.
Polling is highly contingent, and we should be careful about drawing conclusions. Still, I think this shows something profound. By siding with the black Gates against the white police officer, Obama gave greater salience to his race. Put another way, Obama entered office as a president who was black, but ended that summer as a black president. Here’s Coates again, “The irony of Barack Obama is this: he has become the most successful black politician in American history by avoiding the radioactive racial issues of yesteryear … and yet his indelible blackness irradiates everything he touches.”
At last week’s press conference on Ferguson, Obama was weary. He was tired. Part of that, I imagine, was the circumstance: yet again, an unarmed black teenager, killed on the basis of suspicion. But part of it also, I’m certain, was self-awareness.
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The 18-year-old who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri was laid to rest Monday. Ebony: Thousands Gather for Michael Brown's Funeral.
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During a deeply religious service here on Monday, family and supporters remembered Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teenager who was shot and killed more than two weeks ago by a Ferguson police officer.
Thousands of people filled the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church at a service in which several speakers exhorted mourners to work for justice not just for Mr. Brown but for others, long after the funeral was over. “There is a cry being made from the ground, not just for Michael Brown, but for the Trayvon Martins, for those children in Sandy Hook Elementary School, for the Columbine massacre, for Black on Black crime,” the Rev. Charles Ewing, Mr. Brown’s uncle, said.
Speaking before the overflowing crowd, the Rev. Al Sharpton criticized the militarization of the police and their treatment of Mr. Brown, while calling on the African-American community to push for change instead of “sitting around having ghetto pity parties.”
Crowds of Mourners Line Up for Michael Brown Funeral
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
"As much as things change, things remain the same." "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
How many times have we heard those refrains? Yet, are they any less true if we had heard them but once? Or a lifetime's worth? It may be human nature that requires us to be constantly reminded of that which went before; or it may be the affliction Gore Vidal coined, "American Amnesia".
Langston Hughes wrote the following that has the eerie echo of events just happening. But he wrote it when jackboots were beginning a goosestep across the Polish plains; when an American Corporatocracy consolidated wealth in the hands of a distinct few, while tens of millions toiled and starved; when a respected journal published an...
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-- Langston Hughes
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