The failure to indict Officer Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown was a gross perversion of justice that draws deeply disturbing parallels to Jim Crow and the murder of Emmett Till. In some respects, it was worse than Jim Crow. In the Emmett Till murder trial during the 1950's, the prosecutor, although he was a staunch supporter of the segregationist system, at least brought the case to trial and at least purported to seek justice for his death. However, Till's murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury.
Fast forward to today. Unlike the man who tried Till's murderers, Prosecutor McCulloch made no effort to bring Officer Wilson to justice. Instead, he proceeded to put Mike Brown on trial as well as the six eyewitnesses who saw Officer Wilson kill Mike Brown in cold blood. And the fact that a mostly-white jury (9 white, 3 black) refused to bring even an indictment against Officer Wilson means that this whole process was rigged from day one. I'm not a lawyer, but the fact that McCulloch accused the six eyewitnesses of lying could constitute libel and a reckless disregard of the truth. The witnesses are not public figures and they had no reason to lie about what they saw.
Fox News Commentator Juan Williams said today that rioting was not the way to incite change. We all condemn rioting and destruction of property. However, if we are to condemn the rioting along with pundits like Williams and President Obama, then we have to call it both ways. We have to respect the wishes of the Brown family, who requested everyone to channel their anger into working for positive change. Therefore, we have to look at the structural violence that is the cause of what happened last night. We are not looking at a situation where everyone was at peace until a bunch of crazies decided to riot. We are looking at a conflict that already exists.
For someone who does not like authoritarianism, I have a weakness -- I enjoy watching cop shows even though I would never be a cop. However, it is clear from last night that we live in a society which glorifies cops too much. This is a dangerous mentality which is leading us on the path to dictatorship. Our system of government is based on checks and balances. Officer Wilson had a right to defend himself against aggression. However, he did not have the right to use excessive force, especially given the fact that Brown was not armed. If Mike Brown did in fact rob a convenience store before this happened, he should have been arrested and brought to justice. However, that does not give Officer Wilson the right to be the judge and jury. Contrary to what you see on most TV shows, the cops are not always the good guys.
The violence in Afghanistan and the violence in Ferguson are directly related. Despite the fact that we killed Bin Laden, most Americans do not think that the war there was worth it. We read in the news that the Pentagon is requesting $5.2 billion more to bomb ISIS in the Middle East. That money could have easily been used to provide a living wage job for 173,000 people, paying them $30,000 a year. That could have easily been used to hire everybody in Ferguson who needed a job; the rest could have been spent on President Obama's promise zones.
But the problem is that it's a lot easier to solve other peoples' problems in the Middle East than it is to solve problems in Middle America. And the fact of the matter is that there are too many corporate, political, and governmental interests who are happy to see the world destabilized. The more the world is destabilized, the more profits are made for the bottom line. In the view of certain twisted ideologies, there are winners and losers in the world; the goal in life is to extract the most profit from people as you can. This is similar to the hell depicted in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, where the goal of each demon/tempter was to navigate this monstrous bureaucracy and eat up other demons who did not succeed in tempting their subjects into hell.
As long as we do not live up to the ideals of the Pledge of Allegiance about liberty and justice for all, as long as we as a society think that the goal is to pick winners and losers and extract as much debt as possible out of the latter, then there will be more Fergusons in the future. Stopping the cycle of violence requires us to change the way we think. The first step is to see everyone as having worth in God's eyes, similar to the Quaker ideal of "that of God in every person." The next step is to only elect candidates who share that vision; that goes for local, state, and national politicians. The third step is to live within our means, and only purchase what we need instead of what we want so that we do not continue to fuel the monstrous corporate industrial police state which is droning innocent civilians abroad and which allows people like Officer Wilson to shoot people with impunity.
Unemployment is the lowest it's been in years, the federal budget deficit is dropping, and the stock market is at all time highs. However, Ferguson is a painful reminder that too many people are disenfranchised and are not sharing in this prosperity. That is not change we can believe in. The Book of Amos describes a society in Israel which was seemingly stable and prosperous, yet there was way too much poverty and inequality in the land. Within a short period of time, the Assyrians came in and wiped Israel off the map.
And when people are disenfranchised, then they don't vote. A graphic example of this was when most of the Sunnis in Iraq did not vote in the recent elections there -- many of them went off to join ISIS. The only way this is going to turn around, from a Democratic perspective, is when the Democrats have candidates who act like Democrats. When Democrats act like Republicans, or when they ignore basic economic issues like corporate abuse of power, wage stagnation, and inequality, then they lose. It's not because people are stupid; it's because people are smarter than we give them credit for. Most people know when a candidate is genuine and when they are being pandered to. 2016 is likely to be a strong Democratic year regardless of who is at the top of the ballot. But if the Democrats are to break the cycle of winning in the Presidential years only to lose in off years, then they must do all they can to appeal to people who don't vote.