Ferguson

[KeithE]

The most recent newsletter from has 4 articles on the Ferguson MO police shooting and resulting situation.

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Which article do you think is most appropriate at this time?

There is one article that states a point of fact that I think has been corrected. Which one?

I’ll give my answers after ya’ll give yours (if anyone is still on BL? awfully quiet as of late).

BTW, the is an excellent weekly source of news of interest to Baptists everywhere.

[Sandy]

My wife is a native of St. Louis, grew up in the city itself, and I met her there while serving in missions on the north side, which, in the city back in the 70's, was where most of the African American population lived. Racial tension was high back then, inside the city itself, where the population was about evenly split, white-black, but there was a line through the city that could be seen on a map between the majority black neighborhoods and the majority white neighborhoods. The church in which my wife grew up, and where I served for two years in Christian social ministry, was literally right on that line. Long, hot summers caused a lot of racial tension to simmer, and sometimes erupt. There were few African Americans in law enforcement, from the police force up to the justices of the peace and the courts.

The system was ripe for exploiting the destitute and the poor. Of course, in the 70's, there was discrimination in hiring, the schools were segregated, and I saw a lot of discrimination in the business community. There were two of us on the mission team, and most of our work was daytime, backyard Bible club ministry in the large housing projects that were just blocks from the church. It was the first time I had ever really encountered people who really didn't have equal opportunity in life, since most of the parents and grandparents of the kids we worked with were born before the civil rights movement. Even in the 70's, there was visible discrimination and oppression. Apparently, as African Americans moved to the northern suburbs, the opportunity still eludes them.

[Tim Bonney]

I was in the St. Louis area most of this week though not in Fergeson.

We don't yet have conclusive information about how the unarmed teen was shot or why. I hope full information is forth coming.

My own impression is that the Ferguson police messed up when they started with what looked for all the world like a military style assault on the neighborhood. It also appears from reports that some of the officers egged on protesters and behaved in unprofessional ways. The release of an unrelated video in which the police accused the deceased of having robbed a store made things worse because, as I understand it, the police officer who shot him would not have known of this incident anyway. So it looked just like an attempt to smear the reputation of the killed teen as some kind of justification for the killing.

I think the Governor of Missouri is working very hard to try to help a very bad situation and try to clean up a mess that Ferguson police made worse. In no way am I excusing the violence or looting. But there have been more than one instance when the police use what appeared to be exsessive force to break up peaceful demonstrations leading to further escalation.

What a mess!

[Dave Roberts]

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

Surprisely I liked Russ Moore’s article the best.

Alan Bean’s article led off with I think is a false story that the officer was arresting Michael Brown for the theft of the cigars caught in tape earlier. I believe he was stopped for walking down the middle of the street (correct me if I’m wrong).

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

There are always two sides to the story. There are those who think that the delay in removing Brown's body from the street was a pause to give the police time to come up with a story, and witnesses, to avoid charges. The eyewitness accounts seem to support the contention that Brown was raising his hands to surrender.

The bottom line questions in this case are pretty much the same as they were for Trayvon Martin. Opinions about it run along racial lines. But this is about race, social and economic class, opportunity, and equality. What if MIchael Brown were white? Would he have been shot? What if the cop had been black, and Michael Brown had been white? Would the cop be protected from prosecution?

The inequality and oppression that runs along racial lines is still going on.

[Neil Heath]

Regarding the theft of cigars, I've read that the store video shows him paying for some cigars, and then leaving others on the counter that he didn't buy. They also report that the store owner did not call police to report any theft. The video is online, but I can't tell much from it.

I also read a post supposedly from the hacker group Anonymous which said they had disabled some of Ferguson's infrastructure, with a warning that if the police did not release the shooter's name right away, then they would do it. The name was released that day, I believe.

[Stephen Fox]

First, here is what's right with America. the Jackie Robinson Little league team and the New England Coach gutfelt sportsmanship in a tough loss.

http://espn.go.com/watchespn/player/_/id/1891802/

Take 8 minutes to listen to this historical framework:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/08/19/f ... dred-scott

And let's have Russ Moore come to FBC Montgomery, Alabama and address this indictment of how the Tea Party is playing in Alabama. Maybe it's not too late for Moore to get on the agenda at FBC Spartanburg Life and Liberty Conference and address this as well as strong case to be made there is no Tea Party without the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1190 ... se-alabama

[Stephen Fox]

http://ethicsdaily.com/3-responses-to-f ... -cms-22064

[Stephen Fox]

Tom Edsall covered the 86 SBC in Atlanta for the Washington Post. I've known him ever since but by no means in his inner circle. I still think his 83 New Politics of Inequality obliquely defines the motivating force for Pressler's role in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and expressed that thought to President Carter in the from of a question in 93 in Birmingham:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/opini ... egion&_r=0

[Stephen Fox]

I posted on the facebook wall of the Ferguson HS today, McCluer, and wished their football team well. Great story on them over last weekend on NPR.

And here is another great framework for those who go deep in this thicket

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... on/378928/

[Sandy]

The grand jury has the evidence. It's hard to speculate on what that is, though it seems like the weight of the original eyewitness accounts, and the available video supports the contention that he was shot while raising his hands to surrender. It also seems like the police officer's story took a while to develop, and that there was some 'testing of the waters' before they actually released information. Of course, all you get in the media reports are sound bytes, but this sort of thing has been common in the St. Louis area for a long time, white-dominated communities and police forces treating African Americans differently, profiling and using excessive force.

[Mrs Haruo]

St Louis is not the only metropolitan area where racial profiling is a problem. Here in an unincorporated county area south of Seattle, a good friend of mine who serves on several local government agencies and happens to be black came to the latest business association meeting after a memo circulated in our county sheriff's department with some rather racist remarks prior to an anti-gang crime sweep got leaked to the public. She said her son, while driving home from night classes at a local university to get some sleep before going to his day job has more than once been pulled over and interrogated for the crime of "Driving while Black"- a common occurrence if you take the shortest way home through residential neighborhoods to avoid traffic on the freeway.

[Tim Bonney]

Apparently now there are two police officers suspended for racist remarks in other parts of the St. Louis area. One for giving a speach at some club in which he makes remarks about being a killer and another for suggesting that the protesters in Ferguson should have been "put down" the first night of the protests.

Mrs. Hauro, I'm appalled at how many times I've heard about being stopped for "driving while black" from friends and colleagues of mine. This kind of racial profiling is highly disturbing and apparently it happens all over the US.

What concerns me is that it appears that there are some people in law enforcement for reasons other than to "protect and serve." It seems to me we have a few (hopefully only a few) who get off on the power trip of being the police.

[Sandy]

I think the conspiratorial fear mongering of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and their train of wannabees, has contributed to an "us vs. them" mentality, and when it comes to "protect and serve" it is to protect and serve "us" meaning good American WASP types, and "them" meaning anyone of a different race who thinks differently, holds different political views, and reacts to the lack of opportunity that has been caused by racism and prejudice. The fear that has fueled arms sales (to the immense and substantial profiteering of gun manufacturers and dealers) has also put this high level of fire power into police departments that are staffed by wannabee soldiers, with some racist militant elements among them. St. Louis county law enforcement has had this kind of reputation for a long time.

It's the same attitude that breeds the attempts to pass laws to restrict voting in ways that are aimed at suppressing the vote of any group of people, or individual, who doesn't think like a white person "ought to" think. What have you gained if the only way you can win an "election" is by suppressing enough votes from the other side to actually be a majority? And it's the same attitude that prompts ignorant phrases like, "We have to take back America?" Take it back from what? It hasn't been taken anywhere. It's as American as it ever has been or ever will be.

[Tim Bonney]

Well said Sandy!

I have serious concerns about the growing possession of military style weapons by both police and civilians. When civilians can possess and carry high powered weapondry then law inforcement feel they have to have the same thing. It just ratchets up the fire power and the danger for all concerned. Again, I've got no problem with someone owning a hunting rifle for deer hunting or whatever. But why we let people own some of the stuff that we now allow people to own is beyond me.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: What exactly does either of the last two post preceding this have to do to do with the situation in Ferguson, Mo.? In my opinion, any police department should be equipped with the beast available equipment, some of which has been initially developed for the military. And we need enforceable, enforced laws to prohibit their possession and use by criminals.

I see some of the post in this thread and in the thread about sending the Westbroro group of Topeka to Iran, in the same light as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck's rabble rousing.

I will agree that there are some power hungry police officers, just as there are some power hungry Pastors, professors of religion, seminary Presidents and Christian School Administrators.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

I was there in the late 70's, and worked in ministry right along the line through the city that separated white neighborhoods from black. The church in which I served had a lot of members who drove back in from the suburbs, and some of them were going through the same things in their suburban neighborhoods that they had encountered in the city, as the black population migrated into the northern suburbs, like Normandy, Berkeley, Overland, Pine Lawn, and began to hit the southern boundary of Ferguson. I think the airport expansion, which took out a lot of neighborhoods just west of Ferguson, landlocked the area, and hastened the increase of the black population. There were frequent eruptions of violence, as police clashed with neighborhood residents, much of it prompted by perceived police brutality toward blacks.

I lived in Hyde Park-Bremen, on the north side, in a flat with one other Baptist missionary, in a four flat building with a Ukrainian family, an inner-city single mom and her 15 year old son who was a promiscuous drug dealer, and a black newlywed couple. The neighborhood was the last remaining mixed area in the almost totally black North St. Louis. I rode the bus back and forth every day, sometimes at night, and never felt threatened, even when passing some of the most notoriously violent and dangerous housing projects in the country at the time. Most of the time, changing buses at Washington and Grand, I was the only white person riding north.

The racism was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The common phrase, that the blacks were "taking over everything" and "look what they've done to the city" were heard frequently. It was quite difficult to minister, attached to an all white, Southern Baptist church, but it was actually one of the few in the city that was willing to at least make an effort, mainly VBS and reaching kids, not adults, and providing a weekly food distribution to the elderly who lived in the housing project up the street. We also had a ministry to people in City Hospital, a charity medical facility, and that is a whole other experience.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

Actually, the police had little success in putting down a "riot." If you pay attention to the news reports, when the police marched in to what was developing as a protest with their riot gear and their high powered rifles and equipment, it scattered the protesters, and led to a "riot", looting, and attacks on the police. If they'd just stood by, and allowed the protesters their right to assembly, it is likely the violence would have been minimal, and easy to control.