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When Racism Wears a Badge

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Socialist Worker
With a new generation of anti-racist leaders emerging, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor looks at how the movement growing out of Ferguson can confront police violence.

Amid Shootings, Chicago Police Department Upholds Culture of Impunity

Sarah Macaraeg and Alison Flowers Truthout
An exclusive Truthout investigation - released today on a day of national protest against police brutality - reveals that the City of Chicago fails to recognize, let alone sanction, police guilty of repeated episodes of violence, including the shooting deaths of unarmed civilians.

Tom Morello: New Protest Song 'Marching on Ferguson'

Daniel Kreps RollingStone
"100% of the profits from 'Marching On Ferguson' will support defending the protestors in the Ferguson area who have faced attacks, wrongful arrest, and violence from the police," Tom Morello says. "I've witnessed countless incidents of racially motivated police brutality in my lifetime and it's time to say 'Enough!' " -- Hear the song, buy the song, here's the lyrics.

Justice Dept. to Probe Ferguson Police Force

By Sari Horwitz, Carol D. Leonnig and Kimberly Kindy Washington Post
The number of police department reviews the Justice Department has initiated under Holder for possible constitutional violations is twice that of any of his predecessors. At least 34 other departments are under investigation for alleged civil rights violations.

Ferguson Violence Exposes America's Political Decay

By Thomas Adams The Age (Sydney, Australia)
For more than a generation there has not existed in the United States a political force capable of demanding the kinds of changes that would curtail the daily oppressions faced by people like the residents of Ferguson and tens of millions of Americans like them. Opposition to these injustices takes the form of sign carrying, hashtags, morality plays, and the occasional thrown rock.

What’s Exceptional About Ferguson, Missouri?

Zoe Carpenter The Nation
The racial disparities that define Ferguson are indeed shocking. More than two-thirds of the town’s residents are black, but almost all of the officials and police officers are white: the mayor and the police chief, five of six city council members, all but one of the members of the school board, fifty of fifty-three police officers.

Eyewitness to Police Terror in Ferguson - Protestors Shot, News Reporters Arrested

Jon Swaine in Ferguson, Missouri The Guardian (UK)
Raw fury over Brown's killing may slowly fade, but the underlying resentment among Ferguson's young black residents about their treatment by a white police force will likely continue to simmer. Washington Post and Huffington Post journalists detained. Today, Governor Jay Nixon ordered Missouri Highway Patrol to take over supervision in Ferguson, MO.

Why aren’t libertarians talking about Ferguson?

By Paul Waldman Washington Post
The foundation of libertarianism is skepticism toward government and a belief in individual freedom. There aren’t many freedoms more fundamental than the freedom to walk to your grandmother’s apartment, as Brown was doing, without getting shot by a representative of the government.

National Forum on Police Crimes Calls for Civilian Police Accountability Councils

Pat Fry Portside
National Forum on Police Crimes held earlier this month in Chicago. Speaking at the closing rally Angels Davis said, mass incarceration and police killings stem from "structural and systemic racism rooted in the failure to fully abolish slavery." Global capital expansion and its pursuit of profit, she said, fuel the prison-industrial complex. Call issued for legislation to create Civilian Police Accountability Councils.
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