I don’t have anything in particular to add about the decision last night not to indict officer Darren Wilson. Here are a few other voices you should be listening to.
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JUST IN: Newly released photos of Officer Darren Wilson’s injuries, presented to the grand jury pic.twitter.com/SfGTVgKVG3
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 25, 2014
try to find a list of people tweeting from ferguson for info you can trust. mine needs cleaning up but here’s a few: https://t.co/VWi0jwTfOU — Tracy Clayton (@brokeymcpoverty) November 25, 2014
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You can check the Ferguson Response Tumblr and No Indictment for information on protests, demonstrations, and aid efforts in your area.
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The story of Tamir Rice shouldn’t be forgotten amid all this.
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Officer Darren Wilson has been drawing a paycheck from the police department ever since August and has made over $500,000 in online fundraising.
In the book of 1 Kings, Ahab and his wife Jezebel conspire to murder a poor man named Naboth because Ahab covets his vineyard; after Naboth is murdered Ahab takes possession of his properties and inheritance.
Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, “Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, who lives in Samaria. There he is, in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone down to take possession of it. You shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Have you murdered and also profited?”’
I’d also like to point you at Ferguson Public Library, a safe, warm oasis in the midst of chaos. http://iworkatapubliclibrary.com/post/10355686283…
Mallory, your decision to respond last night (and this morning) with Bible passages was great. It feels correct to use that tool to communicate about what’s happening.
Thank you for posting these. I’m going to go read some more Families in Western Art History first, before I follow any additional coverage. My brain needs relief.
This seems quite important: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ferguson-defen…
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. No one calls for justice; no one pleads a case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments, they utter lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil. They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider’s web. Whoever eats their eggs will die, and when one is broken, an adder is hatched. Their cobwebs are useless for clothing; they cannot cover themselves with what they make. Their deeds are evil deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands. Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. They pursue evil schemes; acts of violence mark their ways. The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks along them will know peace. So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows…So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.”
-Isaiah 59:2-9, 12-15
Between this and the Rolling Stone article about my (grad school) alma mater, it’s shaping up to be a pretty gloomy Thanksgiving.
“I believe in aristocracy, though – if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.” –E.M. Forster “What I Believe”
I tend to reread this essay when it seems like everyone in power is horrible.
Isn’t it depressing, though, that so often the only consolation we have is “well, some of the people with power aren’t horrible and even on occasion do some good”? That the distribution of power is so concentrated that it’s often very difficult to oust the horrible people in power?
I always think of it the way Douglas Adams put it in Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Wanting power means a person shouldn’t have it, therefore people in power are automatically not qualified to wield it.
I keep thinking that God preferentially loves those the world hates and fears; his justice is preferentially *for* those this world denies justice to. But it’s not much comfort and I think it’s the easy way out, to conclude that justice here is a lost cause. Matthew 25 is the biblical basis for that piece of the tradition (I know it primarily as part of Catholic social teaching, but I’m sure we don’t have a monopoly on the idea), and coincidentally it was this Sunday’s reading. At my parish, the priest talked about how the *only* description of the final judgment in the entire new testament is Matthew 25 — where Jesus sends those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoners, to heaven, and those who didn’t are condemned. The priest kept repeating “that’s all that counts, that’s all that counts, you have it here straight from God Himself: that’s all that counts.”
Akai Gurley shouldn't be forgotten either, shot accidentally in New York by a cop on Thursday http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/akai-gurley-killed…
That part about the fundraising is what really got my blood boiling. He needs it for his legal expenses! HE DIDN’T HAVE ANY LEGAL EXPENSES!
This morning I attended a Q&A session with my state’s (Republican) Attorney General-elect who, when asked her opinion on the decision not to indict Wilson, essentially responded that she was horrified at the “dangerous situations” the police would have to face in light of further protests.
Right. Because the police are definitely the victims in Ferguson (or anywhere, for that matter). (Sarcasm, if not obvious).
I despair for my state – or actually, the entire country.
Non-American here glued to the coverage hoping against hope it would seem, for some glimmer of good in all this awfulness. Everything is awful and sad and the world just makes me want to cry sometimes.
No, he was literally being paid for murdering a black person. The donors made no effort to even pretend otherwise. It makes me want to throw up.
Non-American here glued to the coverage hoping against hope it would seem, for some glimmer of good in all this awfulness. Everything is awful and sad and the world just makes me want to cry sometimes.