Skip to content

Ferguson

Cornel West Sparks #SHUTDOWNA14 Movement

April 13, 2015 Shantell E. Jamison, www.jetmag.com , ,
Dr. Cornel West has called for people across America to participate in a national movement to put a stop to the killing of black and Latino people. Dr. West’s call to action is trending on social media under the hashtag #ShutDownA14, with supporters and participants of the movement using the expression to speak out on the injustice of police brutality. According to the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, #ShutDownA14 is meant to “disrupt business as usual.” People are encouraged to flood public offices, buildings and spaces in the name of justice.

Journalists Sue Police Over Treatment During Ferguson Protests

April 2, 2015 Associated Press, www.theguardian.com , , , ,
Four journalists arrested during last summer’s protests over the Fergusonshooting death of Michael Brown are suing St Louis County’s police department for civil rights violations and unlawful detention. The lawsuit filed Monday in St Louis also names 20 unidentified St Louis County officers. Plaintiffs include two journalists who were covering last August’s protests for German publications, as well as a freelance reporter and a journalist for an online investigative publication. The suit describes them as US citizens. The lawsuit alleges that the journalists’ arrests for failing to disperse when ordered by police was unjustified and was an infringement of constitutionally protected freedom of the press.

Ferguson Police Settle Lawsuit Over Use Of Tear Gas

March 27, 2015 St. Louis Post Dispatch, www.stltoday.com , , ,
Three police agencies have agreed as part of a federal lawsuit settlement with Ferguson protesters to restrict use of tear gas and other chemical agents on crowds. U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson, who issued a temporary restraining order on police after a hearing here Dec. 11, was expected to dismiss the lawsuit Thursday while keeping supervision of compliance through Jan. 1, 2018. The restraining order had told police to provide “reasonable” warning before using gas on a crowd. Lawyers for St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar and Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson signed off on settlement terms. Police agreed not to use gas to frighten or punish people lawfully exercising their constitutional rights.

Can States Slow The Flow Of Military Equipment To Police?

March 25, 2015 Jake Grovum, www.pewtrusts.org , , ,
You get these pictures that just shock the conscience,” said Republican state Sen. Branden Petersen of Minnesota, referring to news footage of heavily armed police patrolling streets or carrying out sting operations. His bill would bar law enforcement in the state from accepting gear that’s “designed to primarily have a military purpose or offensive capability.” But Petersen and those backing similar efforts in other states — they’ve come up in California, Connecticut, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont — face an uphill climb, partly because of the way law enforcement acquires the gear. The equipment flows through a Pentagon surplus operation known as the 1033 Program, which makes available gear that the military no longer wants.

Ferguson Police Shooting Not From Area Of Nonviolent Protest

March 13, 2015 Democracy Now!, www.democracynow.org , , ,
Two police officers have been shot during a protest outside the Ferguson police headquarters early this morning. Both of the wounded officers have serious injuries. The shooting came just hours after Police Chief Thomas Jackson quit following last week’s Justice Department reports finding widespread racial bias in the city’s criminal justice system. Jackson is the sixth Ferguson official to be forced out in the wake of the report, including the city manager and the top municipal judge. We are joined from Ferguson by Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, who witnessed last night’s shooting, and Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of the Ferguson Legal Defense Committee.

Embattled Ferguson Police Chief Resigns; Protests Resume

March 12, 2015 Christine Byers, www.stltoday.com , , , ,
Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigned Wednesday, saying he always wanted to do what’s best for his community and realized that now meant leaving it. Jackson, whose departure has been a high priority for protesters since the controversial shooting of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, said in an exclusive interview, “This city needs to move forward without any distractions.” Officials said that when Jackson leaves March 19, Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff will become interim chief until a national search for a replacement is finished. Eickhoff declined to comment. Jackson has been chief for five years. Patricia Bynes, an activist and Democratic township committeewoman, said she is pleased by Jackson’s departure but “not ready to pop the champagne yet.” She noted, “We don’t need new faces to the same culture, so I’m not ready to jump up and down yet to celebrate his resignation.”

Ferguson Alternative Spring Break For College Students

March 11, 2015 Jon Swaine, www.theguardian.com , , , , ,
College students are being urged to scrap plans for beer bongs on sunny beaches, in favour of a serious-minded spring break in Ferguson, the Missouri town that was roiled by protests and unrest following the fatal police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old. Six months after the death of Michael Brown, activist leaders in the St Louis suburb are looking to sign up 250 young people for a grittier week of “community service and civic engagement” including registering new voters, running food banks and cleaning up streets. “Maybe there were some people who had planned to go down to Miami or Acapulco, and now see that there is something bigger,” said Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman for the town and a co-founder of the Ferguson alternative spring break programme.

PTSD Among Ferguson Activists Long After Police Abuse

March 11, 2015 Terrell Jermaine Starr, www.alternet.org , , ,
Johnetta Elzie rose to national prominence as a leading protester in Ferguson last summer. Her activism protesting the police shooting death of Michael Brown has been highlighted in national publications like the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, but the police aggression and the intensity of protesting nonstop took a serious toll on her mental health. During the height of the protests, she was tear-gassed at least nine times, faced off against menacing police dogs, regularly confronted by aggressive law enforcement officers, and spent many nights running away from cops. A rubber bullet struck her left collarbone during one protest. “It was just crazy for me to see the police responding to us like we were almost at war. Only we weren’t armed,” Elzie, a native of St. Louis, told AlterNet.

Victory For Justice As Unjust Judge Removed In Ferguson

March 10, 2015 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
The judge who allegedly turned Ferguson's municipal court into a city cash cow resigned Monday, and the Missouri Supreme Court ordered a new jurist to take over the city caseload. The Supreme Court of Missouri said in a statement that it was assigning Judge Roy L. Richter to take over Ferguson Municipal Judge Ronald Brockmeyer's court "to help restore public trust and confidence." Reform advocates who said Ferguson is one of many small municipalities in St. Louis County that routinely violate the rights of residents said the judicial moves are a good start. “I hope that it marks the beginning of a long process,” said Brendan Roediger, a civil rights lawyer and St. Louis University Law Scool professor who is involved in a lawsuit against Ferguson and a neighboring municipality. Roediger said Brockmeyer “was never the worst municipal court judge” in the St. Louis region, where similar conflicts exist in many courtrooms. A group of residents waiting outside a closed meeting of the Ferguson City Council on Monday night cheered the news. “That’s big,” said Melissa Sanders, 32, of Ferguson. “I’m elated — for now.” Sanders, of the activist group Lost Voices, said she was concerned that “they may be just pacifying us.”

Justice Department: The Problem Is Way Bigger Than Ferguson

March 6, 2015 Matt Sledge and Ryan Reilly, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
It was billed as an investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. But a hard-hittingreport released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice also reads as an indictment of cities and towns across the St. Louis region. The report implicates at least four other municipalities in alleged misconduct or questionable behavior. And as the Justice Department itself acknowledged, many of the conditions described in the report could have been written about any number of the 90 municipalities in St. Louis County. "What's listed in the report about Ferguson is a widespread practice," said Thomas Harvey, executive director for the Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that has brought attention to the municipal courts in St. Louis County over the past several months.

From Crispus Attucks To Michael Brown: Race & Revolution

March 6, 2015 Amy Goodman, www.truthdig.com , , ,
March 5 marks an important but oft-overlooked anniversary. On a winter’s day 245 years ago, in the year 1770, an angry crowd formed in Boston, then the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. People were enraged by the extortionate taxes imposed by the British Parliament. In order to quell the public furor, the British sent troops, who violently quashed dissent. On that cold day, people had had enough. Word spread after a British private beat a young man with the butt of his musket. By late day, hundreds of Bostonians gathered, jeering the small crowd of redcoat soldiers arrayed with muskets loaded. The soldiers fired into the crowd, instantly killing Crispus Attucks and two others. Attucks was a man of African and Native American ancestry, and is considered the first casualty of the American Revolution.

Ferguson’s True Criminals

March 6, 2015 Jamelle Bouie, www.slate.com , , , ,
Take traffic stops. Not only did police stop blacks at a rate greater than their share of the population—from 2012 to 2014, blacks were 67 percent of Ferguson residents but 85 percent of traffic stops—but they were twice as likely to search blacks than they were whites, who were 26 percent more likely to have actual contraband. You see the same dynamic with small, discretionary infractions. Ninety-five percent of tickets for jaywalking were against black residents, as were 94 percent of all “failure to comply” charges. Either black people were the only Ferguson citizens to jaywalk, or the department was targeting blacks for enforcement. On the rare occasion when police charged whites with these minor offenses, they were 68 percent more likely to have their cases dismissed.

Michael Brown’s Family To Sue Darren Wilson

March 6, 2015 Breanna Edwards, www.theroot.com , , ,
A day after the Justice Department confirmed that federal charges would not be filed against former Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown, Brown’s family lawyer has announced plans for the family to file a lawsuit of its own, Vox reports. According to the site, family attorney Anthony Gray announced at a press conference Thursday morning plans to file a civil suit against the former cop and the city of Ferguson. The family’s legal team underscored the difference in the standard of proof between a federal civil rights suit and a personal civil suit, suggesting that it might be able to succeed in its case.

Reactions To DOJ’s Scathing Report On Racist Policing

March 5, 2015 Rigoberto Hernandez, www.npr.org , , ,
Over at the Two-Way blog, NPR's Carrie Johnson breaks down the shocking numbers. "Blacks make up 67 percent of the population in Ferguson. But they make up 85 percent of people subject to vehicle stops and 93 percent of those arrested. Blacks are twice as likely to be searched as whites, but less likely to have drugs or weapons. "The report found that 88 percent of times in which Ferguson police used force it was against blacks and all 14 cases of police dog bites involved blacks." And, as NPR has previously reported, the courts have problems of their own. "Blacks were 68 percent less likely to have cases dismissed by Ferguson municipal judges and disproportionately likely to be subject to arrest warrants. From October 2012 to October 2014, 96 percent of people arrested in traffic stops solely for an outstanding warrant were black."

Police Killed Over Twice The People Reported By US Gov’t

March 5, 2015 Tom McCarthy, www.theguardian.com , , , ,
An average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in the country’s most authoritative crime statistics every year for almost a decade, according to a report released on Tuesday. The first-ever attempt by US record-keepers to estimate the number of uncounted “law enforcement homicides” exposed previous official tallies as capturing less than half of the real picture. The new estimate – an average of 928 people killed by police annually over eight recent years, compared to 383 in published FBI data – amounted to a more glaring admission than ever before of the government’s failure to track how many people police kill.
«12345678910»

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.