It's 11:13 AM today, Monday, November 24th, 2014, as I'm typing this. The high school's Wi-Fi won't let me publish posts in school. There has been no verdict in the case of Darren Wilson yet. That may not be the case when I get home this afternoon.
The Grand Jury is set to meet today, and they are expected to determine the fate of Darren Wilson, the infamous officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, on August 9th, setting off months of race riots and police militarization. The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson is preparing for the worst: shops are boarding up their windows, people are buying firearms, and protesters are reportedly preparing for battle. Members of the New Black Panther Party were arrested by the FBI for attempting to acquire explosives. The Ku Klux Klan has threatened to use lethal force against the protesters. Jay Nixon, Missouri's governor, has sent in the national guard. And people across the nation are holding their breath.
It's times like these when I really, really hate the media. I always hate it, of course, because all the major stations show one of these two things: socialist garbage or Tea Party hash. There is no sensible middle ground in the modern media. The purveyors of socialist garbage screamed, "It's because he's black!" and people believed it. The dispensers of Tea Party hash screamed, "Look at all these evil protesters!" and people believed it. The biggest problem in our society is that lots of people will believe anything they see on the news. Take the people who watch Jon Stewart like I watch the BBC International news. I love the Daily Show as much as the next guy, and I think Jon Stewart is hilarious. But he isn't a news anchor. He's a political satirist. The thing is, MSNBC isn't all that much better than he is. And I don't think I even have to mention how bad Fox News is. All three - MSNBC, Fox News, and Jon Stewart - only report one extreme view, without paying regard to the logical counterarguments of sensible individuals on the other side. What this nation needs is a bipartisan news network that isn't afraid to call out the mainstream media.
But I digress: back to Ferguson. There are two sides of the story about what happened with Michael Brown. The Far Right's version of the story - that Wilson only fired in self defense - plainly isn't true. The officer got off at least ten or eleven shots at Brown, hitting him with six (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/08/26/audio-recording-allegedly-captures-at-least-10-shots-fired-in-michael-brown-killing/). Now, I have family members who are police officers, so I know what I mean when I say that eleven shots is a bit much for self-defense. But that doesn't mean the Far Left's take on the tale holds up any better. Forensic evidence makes it pretty plain that Brown wasn't standing still with his hands up - blood was found in Wilson's car. That means that Brown was very close to the car when he was killed, lending some credibility to Wilson's version of the event (http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/18/justice/michael-brown-darren-wilson-account/). That doesn't make Brown's death right, and I would say that it doesn't justify eleven shots fired. Complicating matters even further, witness accounts aren't reliable here. Some eyewitnesses say that Brown had his hands up when Wilson shot him, others claim he was running away, others allege that he charged the officer even after taking a few bullets, and others say that he was at the car before Wilson began firing. At any rate, the witnesses are contradicting each other on every point here.
The disturbing thing is, riots are almost certainly going to occur. The fact that Jay Nixon has deployed the National Guard suggests that a lot of people in high places feel that there isn't enough of a case against Wilson for him to be convicted. A decision will come out later this afternoon, or maybe even tonight. And a lot of people on both sides seem to believe that Wilson will go free. And quite a few people in Ferguson, Missouri aren't very happy to that. So the answer is rioting? A disclaimer for this next bit: as a straight white middle-class male, I'm not the best guy to comment on oppression. But I still don't think that rioting is the answer here. America is about working with the cards you've been dealt and trying to use them productively, not about getting into a fistfight with the dealer. When there's a new president elected, the people who voted for them are happy, and the rest of the country deals with it. Texas threatens to secede, of course, but that's all hot air. Because, as a straight white middle-class male, I can say this for certain: rioting, looting, and assaulting people will hardly gain the protesters any sympathy from the majority of Americans. Sitting down and trying to work things out with the police department, or the state government, or just about anybody, would be much more productive. There would be a chance of making progress in this scenario. And who knows? The verdict hasn't been announced yet. Maybe the protesters will heed the advice they've been given by President Obama, Jay Nixon, and many regional officials, both black and white. People in Ferguson are preparing for the worst. Hopefully, the worst won't happen, and the community can attempt to repair the race relations in Ferguson, in St. Louis, and in America as a whole.
I'm home now. It's 8:23 PM, same day. The verdict hasn't been announced yet, but it could come at any moment now. This is a problem for me, because instead of doing my calculus homework, I'm checking Google News every thirty seconds to see if the verdict has been reached. It may come in a few hours, or it may come in a few seconds. Heck, it may even come as I'm typing this. Let's all hope for the best for the people of Ferguson and St. Louis, regardless of what the jury decides.
No comments:
Post a Comment