by Sean Robertson/Love and Rage
The attempted murder of the two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri last night is truly sad, but not at all surprising. The recent Department of Justice report regarding Ferguson PD proved that what the protesters were shouting over the past six months was absolutely true. The entire city, not just the police department, were corrupt to the bone and created a system of oppression that was intentionally designed to be enforced along racial and socio-economic lines.
It took a riot and months of protests before anybody in power pretended to give a damn. Years of complaints and suffering did nothing to change the oppressive system in Ferguson. The people who could have done something, the ones in power (city government), the “good apples” (police), either stood by and did nothing by choice or through ignorance. Both are equally damning.
Ferguson isn’t changing because the system finally caught the problem and is acting accordingly. It is changing because the pot began to boil over. As any cook can tell you, when a pot boils over, it burns. It scalds. It makes a mess. Sometimes even the contents inside are ruined.
People on the outside will look towards Ferguson thinking the heat has died down. That everything is returning to normal. That the corruption in Ferguson was an exception. One that is easy to fix and well underway.
Except that is not the case.
The people currently in charge of fixing the problem are some of the same exact people who presided over it. They are the ones who call their former co-conspirators “honorable people” as they resign in shame of being caught as the racist, immoral, incapable little shits that they are. They are the ones ensuring that their brethren leave their offices with severance packages including a year’s worth of salary and health benefits.
They are the ones who believe that the very perpetrators that created a tinderbox like Ferguson are as much a victim as the poor black citizens they were extorting. More so it appears, since they are the ones receiving financial compensation as they are forced to continue their careers elsewhere, while the citizens of Ferguson get nothing.
It took a dead man’s body lying in the street, a riot, months of protest and hundreds of arrests before anybody started to actually do something about the corruption and oppression that plagued Ferguson.
It took the shooting of two police officers to remind the public that people are still pissed off. That the pot is still boiling over. That the problem hasn’t been solved.
The protesters and activists in Ferguson are still in the streets, they are still demanding change because for them, it hasn’t happened yet. They have been beaten, arrested, and ignored. They are the non-violent voice of the oppressed, the true victims of Ferguson, and if they are continued to be pushed aside so that the very villains they rally against can organize the “fixing of Ferguson”, some may abandon their non-violent stance.
Unless real change occurs, the violence may only get worse.
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