photo “borrowed” from Think Progress
The New York Times has a story,titled “Around St. Louis, a Circle of Rage” about how police harassment and political ostracism of African-Americans has given fuel to the protests we see in Ferguson. You can substitute “Oakland” or “San Francisco” for St. Louis and get the same story. People of color – mostly, but not exclusively, African-American – are tired of having their children shot and being the object of police harassment.
When you add to these issues, the fact that the middle class is being decimated, that jobs and opportunities for youth are disappearing and that America is no longer a democracy, we have a volatile situation.
The federal government, owned by Wall Street, has responded by militarizing the police and creating a surveillance state to try to identify leaders-in-the-making. As the NYT said in another article, the protests in Ferguson suffer from lack of leadership.
The repression of peaceful protesters and journalists in Ferguson should not be considered casual. It”s intended, at least in part, to serve as a warning to other communities that may rise up and specially to the middle class, which still has something to lose. State terror exists because it works.
Over the years I have seen the relationship between the police and the public go from one of trust to one of opposition. Where we were once served by the police, we are now their enemy. In the mid eighties, while in the Alameda County Sheriff Dept. Acadamey, my brother-in-law confided in me that ” if you are not one of us you are a scumbag” was one of the main lessons he had learned.
The now two decades old Program 1033 of the Defence Logistics Agency which provides surplus military hardware to local law enforcement has served to further the adversarial nature of this relationship. Soldiers who have returned from Iraq, seeing the footage of the police in Ferguson have been quoted as saying such things as “we rolled lighter than that in Fallujah”. Couple the up- armored police with the 2010 DOD document FM3-39.40, Internment and Resettlement Operations, which outlines procedures for inprisoning US citizens without trial, and the future begins to look ominous for most of us.
It is beginning to look like the days of “The Land of the Free” are numbered.