What’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri is out of this world. More precisely, we’ve gone back in history. History has a way of repeating itself. And what we’re seeing in Ferguson in the aftermath of the shooting death of young Michael Brown, looks as if we’re taking pages straight from the history books. Firehoses, police dogs and the backing of Jim Crow laws with the help of racist law enforcement personnel kept alive segregation when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. Now we have Ferguson.
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From Trayvon’s mother to Michael Brown’s mother. http://t.co/z2X7pTdsLu
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) August 14, 2014
Tear gas bombard neighborhoods. Rubber bullets fly at protesters. Journalists arrested for doing their jobs of reporting the news. Armed police taking aim at citizens of Ferguson, which is nearly 70 percent African American, as if they are enemy combatants. All kinds of civil rights violations are being infringed upon. This scenario is playing out like a scene from the Civil Rights Movement. Since when do public servants, employees of the state, get to treat citizens of the United States as if they are terrorists? What's going on down there is now beyond local and state jurisdiction. The federal government, just like they did during Civil Rights Movement, have to intervene. This situation is out of control. And the entire world is watching.
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A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing. So why are the #ferguson police so afraid? #FergusonShooting pic.twitter.com/jpILISg7Vw
— Direct Activism (@DirectActivism) August 14, 2014
The epicenter of all of this chaos and confusion is the death of another unarmed black teenager by a police officer. The name of the cop who shot and killed Michael Brown has not been released, thus providing more tension to an already hot-button situation. With the recent death of black men at the hands of law enforcement officers, Ferguson, it appears, has become ground zero for protesters demanding answers.
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#Ferguson crowd threw rocks, bottles, Molotov cocktails, saw a gun, right before this stepped off pic.twitter.com/qNngeVLtVL
— David Carson (@PDPJ) August 14, 2014
Series of incidents like the Jena 6 and the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Oscar Grant have triggered a swelled shield of anger within the African American community. And it is not going away anytime soon. Now with the shooting death of an unarmed black man here in Los Angeles, this country is facing a major problem that it needs to solve. Instead of worrying about what is going on in Iraq, President Obama would be better served to do something about what is going on in Ferguson and in the killing fields better known as Chicago.
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#Ferguson #FergusonShooting @cnnbrk @CNN Is this the free America that we love? @BarackObama I voted for you. pic.twitter.com/phiZJIgMrm
— JoChi (@jochi27us) August 14, 2014
Dennis has covered and written about politics, crime, race, sports, and entertainment. Dennis currently covers the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, and Olympic sports. Dennis is the editor of News4usonline.com and serves as the publisher of the Compton Bulletin newspaper. He earned a journalism degree from Howard University. Email Dennis at dfreeman@news4usonline.com