Reports from Ferguson: City Council Meeting Erupts, 36 Arrested Demanding Justice for Michael Brown

September 15, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Revolution/revcom.us received the following reports from Ferguson:

Ferguson City Council Meeting Erupts – “Cool Out” Package Backfires

One month after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a City Council meeting was held that was covered by the national media. Over 500 people attended. You could almost hear a sigh of relief in an article in the New York Times the day before the meeting. Local authorities offered a package of reforms and reform proposals aimed at cooling out people's anger over Mike Brown's murder and the outrage that the killer cop Darren Wilson still walks free. But the City Council and its cosmetic reforms were widely met with contempt and unleashed a torrent of deep-spoken bitterness at years of abuse and brutality at the hands of the police and government authorities.

You got a taste of the "new, kinder face" of Ferguson right off the bat when you entered the City Council meeting. The public was greeted by a heavy police presence. Revcom.us posters with the demands for justice around Mike Brown's murder were confiscated.

The City Council's reform package includes a citizen-police review board, hiring more Black cops in their overwhelming white force, and modifying a set-up where 25 percent of city revenue comes from court fines from warrants issued for things like missed court dates on traffic infractions which the youth are the main victims of.

The City Council meeting, aimed at cooling people down and restoring badly frayed legitimacy, boomeranged. A deep reservoir of anger at racism and police abuse erupted. People told stories of children being tear-gassed and terrorized; a mother brutalized and arrested in front of young children who were then left in the car as she was hauled away; young men routinely being stopped and humiliated; people following the procedures and reporting police abuses to city authorities only to be scorned and disrespected.

One speaker talked about the police department and city authorities being like the KKK. The stench of old-style, straight-up racism is strong here. The city of Ferguson, which is 67 percent Black, has a white mayor and four out of five council members are white. Of the 53 cops in Ferguson, only three are Black.

One speaker put it straight-up to the City Council: "You've lost your authority to govern this community." There were some comments expressing hopefulness in these reforms or, more often, in voting out these City Council members. The combination of the paltriness of these proposed reforms, the lack of trust in the city and county authorities, and the reality of killer cop Darren Walker still walking free, all represented another failure of the system to quell people's anger.

A representative for the Michael Brown family asked a simple question: Why has nothing happened to the killer cop, Darren Wilson? Was the City Council still paying him? The question was dodged, but it is known that Wilson has not been fired and is on paid leave. The demand to indict and arrest Wilson was a central demand that got spoken to repeatedly in people's comments and in yells from the audience. Mike Brown's murder, and the powerful rebellion against it, has brought all of this to the surface in a way that is precious to people who want justice, and is horrifying to the authorities.

A revolutionary spoke about how people's stories told a deep truth and would outrage anyone in the world with a conscience—what's been described as the front end of a whole program of criminalization and mass incarceration; how the youth, endlessly and viciously demonized, have stood up with responsibility and courage impacting all society; that justice means indicting and jailing the killer cop and we can take that fight further by getting with the Stop Mass Incarceration Month of Resistance.

The very next day after this City Council meeting, I got an up-close and personal view of how youths in this area are dogged and criminalized by being trapped in the system of warrants and fines, which was a big issue at the council meeting and in the proposed "reforms."

I was in the county lock-up with about 40 other people being processed after being arrested at the I-70 Highway action that afternoon. Most in the lock-up are Black youths. After being held for several hours, everyone was brought out of the holding cells and lined up in the large day room. The head jail guard runs down a lengthy explanation about how, while many will be processed out, many others ain't going nowhere because they have outstanding warrants. And then he starts to run down how those who have outstanding warrants will have to start running the wheel of warrants and fines. You have to first call the town that has a warrant out for you to find out how much you owe there (and do the same for other towns in many cases). Then start calling people to get the money to pay off the fines. For example, if you've missed a court appearance for a bullshit traffic stop, you got an additional $50 "warrant recall fee" and a $15 "notification fee" to pay off in whatever town you were arrested in before you can get out of jail. It is common for people to be held on warrants and end up being transferred from one town police station to the next town until the fines can get paid off and warrants cleared.

A common yet bitter joke among Black people in Ferguson is—only Black people must drive cars around here because that's all you ever see at Traffic Court. Likely underestimating this, a 2013 Missouri Attorney General's report found that Ferguson police stopped and arrested Black drivers nearly twice as often as white motorists, but were less likely to find contraband among the Black drivers.

An attorney explained that fines and subsequent warrants stem from traffic citations but also from things like a non-returned Blockbuster DVD from years ago!

Back at jail, lines form at the telephone to start the process. But, wait, before you use the phone you must fill out a registration form; go to a separate phone so it can take a voice print; go to another phone where you enter a PIN and it verifies that your voice print matches. Then you can make a call.

A brother who has been fired from two jobs already because of his involvement in the rebellion is told he has a warrant, so won't be going to a job interview he fought to get the next day. A man with diabetes is sent back to the holding cell because he has a warrant for what he guesses might be for a petty theft from 1992. A young man was distraught because he won't get out until who knows when to be able to see his two-day-old daughter. A white guy says he's sure he has no warrant in St. Louis (where he's informed a warrant was issued), but "my Pops who lives there has the same name."

I ask a young photographer grabbed up during the protest—do you feel criminalized yet? He references a comment from the City Council meeting the night before. Pointing to the jail guards, he says, "This is illegitimate."

Think about where this process leads. It's not accidental and it amounts to entry-level criminalization. A Black man in jail for protesting commented on the vicious irony in this: that education—supposedly the channel for oppressed youth to get ahead—is funded on the backs of youth being messed over and trapped in the racist justice system.

More than one of the arrestees commented that all these arrests, and then the whole fine and warrant process keeping people locked up for days and weeks, as well as several people facing heavy charges who may not get out at all, are part of a strategy to break, or at least get off the streets, the youths who have been in the forefront of the struggle to get justice after the murder of Mike Brown.

This cannot be allowed to happen to front-line fighters whose actions have issued a wake-up and stand-up call against injustice to all of society. ALL the charges on those arrested during the rebellion must be dropped, and all must be released from jail immediately.

36 Arrested at Hwy 70 Demanding Justice for Mike Brown

Ferguson, Missouri, September 10, 2014. Thirty-six people were arrested at an entry to Highway 70 near St. Louis as people's outrage and determination to find justice continues to alternately simmer and erupt. This action was organized as a highway blockade by a coalition of forces, many of which have mainly been working to cool out the youths' defiance and constrain street protests. While the highway blockade did not materialize, 250 people came out and powerfully expressed their refusal to back down or wait for justice for Michael Brown to come from the system.

People gathered at an entry-exit intersection with I-70. There were huge contingents of Missouri Highway Patrol and St. Louis County Police. Many youths who have been in the streets since Mike Brown's murder were there. People chanted, "If we can't get some [justice], shut it down," "No Justice, No Peace," and "Indict, Arrest, Send the Killer Cop to Jail, the Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell." Many people held revcom.us posters with the demands—"Indict and jail the killer cop! Fire the police chief! Full Accounting of what happened immediately! Fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution!" Another demand voiced was for the removal of St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch.

Soon people, many of whom were young women, were marching into the street and right up into the enforcers' faces. The confrontation went on for over two hours as people refused to leave in the face of the cops arresting protesters, with people linking arms, doing a "Hands up, Don't Shoot" die-in, and squads of pigs running into the crowd and chasing defiant youths into surrounding apartment complexes.

Even as the confrontation was still raging, some of the protesters began heading over to the Ferguson police station, where a crowd of 75 people took over the street. Initially, the police kept their distance from the crowd, but eventually positioned themselves to attack the protest. The youthful crowd, mainly young women, chanted: "We're young, we're strong, we're marching all night long!" "Hey, hey, ho, ho, killer cops have go to go!" and rather than retreat, they defiantly faced off with police until the police decided to back off. Tension continued until 6:20 pm when a thunderstorm descended on Ferguson and dispersed the crowd.

I got a chance to talk to many arrestees in jail. One young man, one of the "defiant ones," told me his story. How three family members, including his older brother, have been killed by the police, and his sick girlfriend clubbed in the head by a cop. Humiliating run-ins with cops were too numerous to count. One night during the rebellion, he was grabbed by cops and then arrested when he refused to give information about youths the cops were searching for. "I would rather die than snitch." Since the rebellion began on August 9, he has been fired from two jobs; one was explicitly political retaliation for his role in the rebellion after an employer saw his picture in the news. He is now homeless and living in his car, where he was tear-gassed one night. He was not planning to risk arrest this time, but when a new, younger protester got grabbed, he said he couldn't leave her side.

A young musician has essentially uprooted and moved to Ferguson and Canfield Avenue (where Mike Brown was murdered) after the rebellion began. He talked about the unity forged in the rebellion between different street organizations, and he sounded the alarm about threats by the police to demolish the memorial at the murder site (cops have already driven through it at least one time). This cannot go down, and the people at Canfield cannot be left to do this alone. In jail cell discussion, he exposed the bigger picture of the murder and criminalization of youth, and challenged the illusion from others that the Highway Patrol Black police captain (Ron Johnson) was there to help. The October Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation and the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality on October 22 were announced, which he liked. But then he pointedly said—if the grand jury comes down with the wrong decision before, we aren't waiting until October 22.

The revolution crew here is talking about how the October Month of Resistance might make the grand jury announcement in Ferguson (expected in early to mid-October) a day of national action.

A small, middle-aged woman talked about being jumped on by four cops and arrested as she walked out of her apartment. "How can I trespass [which people were originally being charged with] right outside my home?" Several of those arrested were not part of the protest. One was an older diabetic man (his cellies demanded he get food, which he got), and a young man picking up his son at the Metro-Link stop nearby.

There were a number of young Black women arrested. Also, several white people were in the (jail) house, including a well-known minister who runs a homeless shelter; a young Anonymous supporter wearing a Guy Fawkes mask; an older progressive activist on his bike; and a young photographer.

Most arrestees were finally released late that night. But for others, including four people facing charges of assaulting a police officer, and many held on warrants, this was just the beginning.

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