Updates From Ferguson, Missouri

by Mallory Ortberg · August 14, 2014

We’re not, you know, normally a news site, but as much as I would like to bring you celebrations of minor Simpsons characters or jokes about dirtbag Yeats right now, the city of Ferguson, Missouri is under violent, racist, militarized police occupation.

Since the police have all satellite news trucks out of the area and forbidden all media outlets to send in helicopters, the best video coverage right now is probably this live feed that’s been intermittently available.

Here’s a brief video of peaceful protestors in front of the Ferguson police headquarters chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

Friend of the Toast Rembert Browne has been sending out live updates on Twitter:

available here. The good folks at Reason have been covering the topic of civilians recording police behavior for the last few years, if you’re interested in reading more.

One cop silences another before he can reveal which member of the police force shot a rubber bullet into an unarmed woman’s head.

“Scenes From A War Zone”

Jesse Berney writes about the police’s deliberately provocative behavior at the Blue Nation Review:

It’s not just their refusal to name the officer who killed Brown or their decision not to interview Johnson. More important than either of those is the continuing battle we have seen on the street between residents and police, night after night, since that cop shot Brown. The Ferguson police are armed to the teeth with military weaponry and equipment. They’ve restricted airspace above the city and told journalists they can’t come in. They have treated the people that they are sworn to protect like enemy combatants on a battlefield. They have disrupted peaceful protests. They have done everything possible to inflame tensions instead of easing them.

I don’t trust the Ferguson police. I don’t think they care what happened to Michael Brown. In a city that is two-thirds black with a police force that is overwhelmingly white, it isn’t surprising that a death like this occurred. It’s inevitable.

I don’t know how much of Dorian Johnson’s account is true. Eyewitness accounts are always unreliable, and certainly Brown’s friends and family have all the reason in the world to paint his actions in a positive light. But the account the police have told, with a teenager going for an officer’s gun, isn’t remotely credible. And with police continuing to show zero respect to the people of Ferguson, they aren’t giving us any reason to believe they’d tell the truth.

Jenn M. Jackson’s piece on white fear at Water Cooler Convos is absolutely undeniable:

White fear doesn’t just exist on an individual level. Yes, it was to blame when Michael Dunn shot and killed Jordan Davis, when George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, when Theodore Wafer shot and killed Renisha McBride, when Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, when Officer Randall Kerrick shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, and even now as we discuss John Crawford and Michael Brown. But it is much graver than individual animus.

You don’t have to be white to suffer from white fear. White fear causes upper-class black people to whitewash and downplay their own blackness just to achieve social ‘success.’ Perceived social benefits of ‘acting white’ cause many blacks to also fear ‘the other’ black people who might harm them or their families. But, make no mistake, it is a tool of oppression created by whites seeking unrelenting and perpetual dominance in the US.

Many (white) people believe it only exists between people because they choose to ignore its tentacle-like influences on public media, popular culture, education, immigration policy, and social welfare programs. They use their fear to justify their senseless aggression toward black and brown bodies. Then they sit as judge and jury indicting black teens for eating snacks, smoking weed one time, or running fast. Meanwhile, white teenaged boys live fruitful lives after mowing down entire groups of people while under the influence of stolen alcohol because they suffer from ‘affluenza.’ A drunk white murderer is worth more than a dead black honor student. Such is the function of white fear.

White fear is killing us. It is causing us to fear black skin. It is segregating neighborhoods. It is closing public schools. It is cutting welfare benefits to mothers and children. It is undermining a presidency. It is criminalizing black bodies. It is incarcerating black identities. It is limiting black potential. It is sexualizing black girls. And, it is shooting black boys in the streets of their own neighborhoods.

White fear is the single greatest cause of death for black people today and has been so since this country’s inception.

If you know of any reliable live feeds or local Missouri journalists you’d recommend we follow, please let us know in the comments.

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78 Comments

      1. elsamac +32

        Someone on Twitter asked last night [I’m paraphrasing] “How did we ever get the real story before Twitter?” and I answered with a sinking realization “I think we DIDN’T.”

      2. EPWordsnatcher +4

        Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia is introducing a bill to do just that.

        Thanks, Rep. Johnson. If any of y’all have him as your representative, you got a good one!

  4. freshwaterpearl +54

    The thought I keep having is that no excuses from the police have managed to justify their response, even if you took their version of events at face value. They said Michael Brown tried to get the officer’s gun, but that he didn’t succeed and was unarmed and running away when he was shot. The police chief’s wife (I think that’s who it was) posted a bunch of horrible racist bullshit to her Facebook calling the people of Ferguson “feral” and saying they “kill their unborn children” and hate the cops. But even if, for some reason, you believed her, even if you thought it was a lawless community, that wouldn’t be a good enough reason to surround the entire town with tanks and military weapons and use teargas and rubber bullets on civilians and arrest journalists just for being there. Nobody’s presented a coherent argument that the people of the town pose a sufficient threat for that kind of response, because there is no way they ever could. What’s happening is too extreme for excuses.

    1. queenofbithynia +42

      The facebook thing is not the police chief’s wife, that’s misinformation as far as I know and it matters. And no, it’s true there wouldn’t be any justification if everything they said was true, but I think it’s really vital to keep repeating that it’s a lie. I always get into the “even if” thing but more and more I want to just say No, that is a lie. Because you can’t go down the road of accepting all their premises for the sake of argument, because their first premise is that it’s OK for cops to murder and be exempt from prosecution for lawbreaking.

      1. freshwaterpearl +27

        Thank you for the correction, and I’m sorry for repeating misinformation.

        I think what I’m trying to describe is not so much accepting their premises as evaluating their excuses. Maybe “even if” is the wrong way to get there. Put another way: there’s nothing a civilian community could do to justify this kind of violence by the state. There’s no reasonable way to argue this is the right way to keep the peace, or to achieve any outcome but fear and suffering and subjugation. All excuses, even excuses fabricated to make this seem reasonable, fall short of justifying a fundamentally horrific situation.

        At the same time, it’s important to keep the fabricated nature of those excuses in clear view, so thank you for that.

      2. thinwireoflightning +6

        I agree completely. “Even if” is the start of accepting the legitimacy of their authority. There is none.

  5. queenofbithynia +91

    Thank fuck a couple of reporters got arrested because now I can argue to my bosses that this is an important news story and be believed. not a joke.

    1. Unreadaethel +11

      Seriously. “This has affected Respectable People, we can all start really talking about it now.”

  6. bird_internet +6

    I follow a bunch of Missouri media types and others in the STL area (although I’m not sure who’s on the ground, my twitter feed right now is mostly RTs) and so I’ve been really sucked into this story, in the way that I didn’t want to go to bed last night because I couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on.

    It’s really striking how helpless I feel about this. I was sort of active in politics when I lived in MO, I know people in the area, and so I feel like I ought to be taking some kind of action or at least I should know what could be done to help. And I just don’t.

  8. AddieJoy +35

    Is there anything that people outside the STL area can do besides spreading the word and telling racists commentators to shut the fuck up? Any particular ideas for officials to call/email/write to?

    2. bird_internet +18

      Here’s the Attorney General’s office: http://ago.mo.gov/contactus.htm

      He’s a moderate with higher political aspirations, could probably be pressured to do the right thing if reminded that people are watching and remembering this stuff.

    4. malloryelis +31

      I think spreading the word is crucial because there’s been so little coverage of this story on mainstream media channel (IDK if you saw the USA Today headline but it’s FUCKED UP), so getting the facts out and keeping pressure up is the best a lot of us can do right now.

      1. ThatOtherWench +7

        There are only a few “mainstream” news sources I will even headline-skim, but I was….relieved, I guess?… when I opened Slate this morning and the front page was 100% Ferguson. Given that two mornings ago it was 100% Robin Williams. :\

          1. rkfire +2

            I had seen references to the erasure on Twitter but hadn’t really delved into it further. I think I might let that link lie for now, I’m pretty worked up about it as is. It’s so ridiculous.

          2. ThatOtherWench +5

            I just had an image macro talking about the “day of rage” go by on my FB new feed, completely with snarky dude-poster comment about how was “rage” the right, peaceful way to solve anything.

            When I posted the link to the main page, where the organizers disavowed the “rage” wording, all I got was “well, I hope everyone attending got the message”.

            I’m really glad no one has claimed I should stop with the misandry, because KILL ALL MEN.

    6. pajamaralways +7

      A script for calling/e-mailing your officials and also a League of Women Voters link for finding them – http://bit.ly/1sGvR99
      Tumblr post with links to the fund set up for the bail/legal fees of arrested protesters and the fund for a food drive for kids of Ferguson- http://bit.ly/Vn2OJa

  9. romastrega +4

    I was watching the live video while reading the twitter feed last night and there was not enough bourbon in my house to make me feel any better. 🙁

  10. AnneCoot +23

    Thank you for posting this. I am beyond upset. I’m originally from St. Louis and so many of my facebook friends are silent about what’s going on. I just don’t understand how this is occurring and how it is allowed to keep occurring. Where is the governor? Or the president? The Ferguson and St. Louis County PD are not the highest authority in the land, and their tactics need to be overruled, stat.

  12. cgainz +5

    Are there any other Toasties in STL? I’ve heard some buzz about a moment of silence at the Arch later–anyone have a link or more info?

    2. mmejoy +5

      It looks like people are trying to organize Moments of Silence all over the U.S. tonight. Here’s a Google Doc where information is being gathered – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y6bRJfwVL7JoJ…

      For any Toasties who may be in Madison, WI (like me), it doesn’t appear on the document, but it sounds like someone is trying to put something together at the Capitol tonight at 6pm. That may change or there may be other events, so don’t quote me on that.

      Relevant Twitter hashtag is #NMOS14. Searching Twitter with that plus your city name seems to lead to people talking about local events in real time.

      1. laurenwielgus +2

        I’m a Madison Toastie too! And please update the comment thread if you get confirmation of an event in Madison; I’ll do the same.

  13. LizRiegel +96

    I saw this on Metafilter earlier, bears repeating. “Those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect.” – James Baldwin, 1966

  14. sophie +13

    It’s sickening. I thought I was going to throw up watching the live feed last night. I was hoping that this morning I would wake up to news that the state or federal government had intervened, or at least that it would be splashed across the front pages (there are stories, but not nearly prominent enough in my opinion.)

    I just can’t even comprehend how it is still happening after 5 days of this being documented (I mean I can, but.) Does anyone know more about the legal process side of this? There is video evidence of gross violations of constitutional rights left and right. I can only hope that they eventually will be sued and the courts will HAVE to deal with it, but in the meantime I don’t understand how this can just continue. At a bare minimum, how are they getting away with not allowing journalists access and telling people to stop filming? Is there any type of emergency court process that is underway, or are we all just sitting around hoping for the governor or president to intervene?

    1. blushingflower +20

      Honestly, I think part of the way they get away with it is that they’re armed. Police give people illegal orders all the time, and people obey them because a) they don’t know better and b) they’re afraid. It’s pretty common for the police to tell people they can’t photograph/record something, even when it is actually legal, and people comply, because they don’t want to get arrested and/or shot. I would HOPE that our national news media would have bigger stones and would say “um, no, excuse me, 1st Amendment”, but apparently not.

      1. deleted9457019 +14

        Yep. I would take pictures of police WAY more often if I didn’t have the fear that they would just grab my phone. Sure that would be 100% illegal, but what am I going to do, file a federal lawsuit over a $200 phone?

        1. tubatoothpaste +30

          Bingo – the only “accountability” is through a lengthy, expensive legal process that is completely out of reach for many/most citizens.

          1. sophie +4

            That makes a lot of sense. To be clear, I wasn’t at all questioning why the victims themselves were not standing up to the police – I totally understand why the protesters and journalists would comply with the illegal police orders. I guess I was imagining a team of ACLU lawyers frantically petitioning the attorney general’s office or the courts or whoever to force some kind of intervention. I’m sure that is pretty naive – just because a lot of people on social media are outraged, it doesn’t mean anyone is actually doing anything about it.

      2. Abanthis +6

        Yeah, there’s a long infographic going around Tumblr explaining people’s legal rights as far as photographing the police go, and every time I have to tamp down a scream of NO YOU WILL BE SHOT THIS IS NOT THE SETTING FOR REASONED ARGUMENT YOU WILL DIE. Don’t know how accurate that is, but…

  15. eegghh +41

    This is heartbreaking, and also so typical. The fact that police officers believe they are under siege and at war with the people they are supposed to protect and that they’re being outfitted like soldiers.

    Rubber bullets and tear gas are properly known as “LESS Lethal” weapons, not non lethal. When used for crowd dispersing the police are suppose to fire rubber bullets at a shallow angle at the ground, which causes them to bounce up at the crowd and hit people at or below their waists, not directly in the face or chest. Most police departments who use them use them incorrectly. Same deal with the spraying tear gas directly into the faces of people.

    More people seem to fear an uprising of people who suffer injustice over the continued pattern of injustice. If I lived in ferguson I’d want to break stuff too. There’s only so much you can take.

    1. mirandawmeyer +6

      The entire technology of “nonlethal” police violence is designed, simply, to legitimize brutality. That’s what it’s for and how it works, and it works the same way pretty much everywhere these days–the same in Cairo. The same in Madrid. The same in Gezi Park and the same in Rio. It’s spread all over the world, thanks to the US at least in part, and it’s become its own self-reinforcing culture.

  16. LizRiegel +65

    “I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protestors. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” -Obama in 2011. A world of sarcastic lols.

  19. Sean_Sullivan +21

    Might be some good news for once:

    Missouri Governor Jay Nixon will announce that St. Louis County law enforcement will be relieved of duty in Ferguson, which has been roiled by protests after the shooting death by police of an unarmed teenager, according to Representative William Lacy Clay.

    “The governor just called me and he’s on his way to St. Louis now to announce he’s taking away St. Louis County police out of the situation,” Clay, a Missouri Democrat, said in a telephone interview. He added that Nixon may ask the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to step in.

      1. groovealee +8

        Give the guy a break. The state fair is this week. There are important fried foods to eat!

        Yeah, he should have stepped in DAYS ago.

  20. PonyAlong +20

    Speaking as a rural Canadian, if it wasn’t for The Toast (and Jezebel) linking the stories and updates, I would remain blissfully ignorant; thank you for bringing the social awareness. And just when I think it can’t get any worse, it does.

    1. Glen H

      I’m in regional Australia, and have to agree, last night was the first I saw of this on mainstream media. Have been following it through Toast, and similar sites as well as Facebook links.

  21. Big Rig and Jesse +21

    Thank you for this coverage, and thank fuck they’re getting those cowboy asshole cops out of there. I just wanted to add a link to a piece, America is Not For Black People, which I thought was beautiful and brutal and contextualizes this situation in the unending list of Black victims of police “misconduct”/murder. Edit: In case nobody saw it, which I doubt. Y’all are on top of shit.

  23. hungrybee +24

    “There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay.” Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

  24. Sea_Money +12

    PEOPLE TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER: (As recommended by #smartblackwomen of twitter):
    @BrittanyNoble (reporter from St. Louis new station was on the ground the night of)
    @WesleyLowery for the Washington post, was arrested last night and is not back in the field yet.
    I second @AntonioFrench who has had almost continuous coverage.

    And #smartblackwomenoftwitter who re-tweet news but I value because they are incredibly insightful and have helped me put this event into the context of systematic issues with America.
    @prisonculture
    @Blackamazon
    @Karnythia
    @FeministaJones (who has organized the #NMOS14
    @thewayoftheid

  25. Linette +42

    The president just gave the most ridiculous statement. First he scolded the protesters for reports of looting and violence against police officers. (There has been exactly one reported incident of a police officer being injured – he has, and I am not making this up, a sprained ankle.) Only THEN did he say that we should not be bullying the protesters or arresting reporters there to do their job.

    This was as strong as the language got.

    There’s a fucking military coup led by police we pay for with federal taxes. It’s happening right now, in this country, and the best the President can offer us is “it’s time for peace.”

    Who the fuck is going to make peace happen, Mr. President? Because the cops in Ferguson certainly aren’t trying for it.

    1. lilsebastian01 +12

      all I can do is make a distressed guttural noise and say “America,” because this country is founded on racist garbage and I don’t know why I keep expecting it to change but I do, and it hurts when it doesn’t.

  30. hugpunch +12

    Thought exercise: Imagine if the black protesters were armed with assault rifles, like the “supporters” of Cliven Bundy were. (Those Bundy people were in direct opposition to the government, and were labeled “supporters.”)

    It would be a massacre.

  31. PotterPotterson

    SO LATE ON THIS I'M SORRY

    But I'm in STL and it's the biggest thing on my feed. thank you social justice and social work community.

  33. thisclimbingbean +2

    Sigh. I was listening to NPR on the way to an appointment yesterday (thank you ABC News Radio which partners with NPR and BBC!) The whole thing is so completely appalling. Please can there be something good to come out of this? I’m just disappointed that there is so little responsibility being taken by the police. I basically have no words.

  34. climbing bean

    Sigh. I was listening to NPR on the way to an appointment yesterday (thank you ABC News Radio which partners with NPR and BBC!) The whole thing is so completely appalling. Please can there be something good to come out of this? I'm just disappointed that there is so little responsibility being taken by the police. I basically have no words.

  35. spants +1

    A sampling of solid Twitter follows right now:

    @ChrisKingStL is a good Twitter source. He works for the St. Louis American (@StLouisAmerican) newspaper and has a ton of contacts and information.

    @AntonioFrench, a former journalist, is a St. Louis City alderman who has been on the ground pretty much all day every day since Mike Brown was killed.

    @ACLU_MO is the ACLU of Missouri.

    @Patricialicious is Patricia Bynes, Democratic committeewoman of Ferguson. A delegate for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. She’s been at all the protest events and, among other things, has helped give kids rides home when the police have shut down roads.