There appears to be no justification for the police behaviors in Ferguson last night. First it was bad; then it got worse. [icopyright one button toolbar]
Then it got positively insane, thanks to police behaviors.
There something nutty about the police when, “at 8:22 P.M. the police began demanding that the crowd stay twenty-five feet away from them and their vehicles,” as Jelani Cobb reports in the New Yorker.
A voice in the crowd shouted, “Michael Brown was thirty-five feet away when you killed him!” I stood near a cluster of journalists, but less than two hours after Lowery and Reilly had been arrested, nothing suggested that the police there would make distinctions between the people protesting and those who were covering it. …NYer
Then it got nuttier.
Officers demanded that we move farther back, as well. People began chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” Ten minutes later, the sound of breaking glass was heard and the police demanded that the crowd disperse. Only seconds after that I saw a half-dozen canisters launch into the air and the streets were bathed in the strobe lights of flash grenades.
The crowd scattered into the surrounding subdivisions as a haze of white smoke drifted outward through the neighborhood. Some, choked by the fumes, covered their eyes and coughed by the side of road. Umana grabbed my arm and we ran into a nearby park. …NYer
And finally, totally crazy.
The protest dispersed immediately; still, the streets were tear-gassed for the next two hours. ..NYer
Even though the streets had emptied. Thanks to the sheer volume of tear gas in the air (ever been in a tear gas cloud? really nasty) , the disabling, poisonous stuff spread to surrounding suburbs.
The line between coward and bully doesn’t exist. That they are one and the same is well-illustrated by these brutal, fraidy-cat Missouri police who, armed and tossing tear bas canisters, want to maintain a signficant buffer zone between them and the people they’re supposed to serve. They have become symbols of brutality and that’s inexcusable.
But it must also be said that they are not alone. Their kind shows up from Berkeley to New York and back again.
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Why, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump from Ferguson to Houston.
Brains and Eggs reports from DeepintheHeart.
So maybe you have heard about the rally in Houston’s Fifth Ward this weekend being held by the supporters of Open Carry Texas.
The event on Saturday afternoon is set to be located at the corner of Lyons Avenue and Lockwood, and scheduled to last about two hours, with two guest speakers included. It will not be a march, as past Open Carry Texas appearance have been, but a static event.
On Wednesday night members of the local Open Carry Texas group and (leader CJ) Grisham will be meeting with members of the community and the Houston Police Department to discuss what’s coming up. Grisham says that he will not subject his members to an unsafe environment.
Maybe we’ll hear today they called it off. Because maybe Grisham took note of Quanell X’s response.
Meanwhile community activist Quanell X has had some terse words for the Open Carry people. He told KPRC-TV that if the group shows up armed that people from the community will show up with weapons too to counter them.
“Coming like this is totally unacceptable. So if you do come, I guarantee you we will not bring a butter knife to a gun fight,” Quanell X told KPRC-TV.
Gun rights activists, overwhelmingly Caucasian and conservative, travel to Houston’s most predominant African American neighborhood with their rifles slung across their backs in order to stage a rally. What could possibly go wrong?