Ferguson Grand Jury Indictment Announcement: No Charges Filed!

The grand jury tasked with deciding whether or not to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown has reached a decision. That decision was just announced shortly after 9 PM EST this evening. Update: No criminal charges will be filed against Darren Wilson. Not a one. The grand jury found no probable cause. Stop back here later for updates, discussion and analysis of next steps, if any. With any luck one of the blog attorneys will stop by to comment and provide perspective. I think this whole process has been janky, to borrow a word often used by one of my cousins but we shall see what will happen. One of the things which has bothered me about this situation is that too many people who support Officer Wilson seem to want to try the facts before a trial has even been set. The grand jury is only supposed to decide if there is enough evidence for an indictment. It's a much lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt. Everyone should remember that. If the grand jury indicts it doesn't mean that the people on the grand jury thought that Officer Wilson was guilty of the crime. That remains to be seen. One of the things that some of the commentary around this incident does show is that in general people with more melanin and people with very little melanin have completely different viewpoints of reality, to the extent that one wonders how there can ever be any "coming together". Of course such coming together can and does happen on an individual level but in so many ways institutionally we remain a nation completely divided in perceptions and everything else. This CNN poll shows that 38% of whites think that Wilson should not be charged with a crime at all while a full 50% of whites think that police in their area have no or almost no prejudice against blacks. LINK 
Anyway, indictment or not, once the decision has been announced let us know what you think of the process, the case particulars and what if anything this means for the future of race relations in America.

Jon Stewart, Fox News and Ferguson: Race Matters

The all too predictable thing about many conservatives is that whenever there is a situation in which there is an abuse of power by state agents and the alleged victims are Black, conservatives, with very few exceptions, rush to defend the state agents, insult and smear the victim, and go out of their way to do to the alleged victim what a police dog allegedly did to the Michael Brown memorial.  In defending alleged or even proven abusive state agents on hidden or not so hidden tribalistic/racial grounds they often will claim no bias. In their view they are being objective. Obviously conservatives aren't the only people with blind spots and unchallenged assumptions. Liberals, libertarians and people of other political persuasions and ideologies have their own hypocrisies and instances of moral myopia. I just don't care to discuss those today. What I find fascinating about the normal conservative stampede to defend the police, provided the victim is Black, is that these are often the very same people who will work themselves up to a high dudgeon about overreaching government when it comes to the IRS, or Obamacare or bossy TSA agents or the EPA or nosy census questions or Common Core standards or any number of other instances of government bigfooting that usually fall far short of a policeman beating or shooting someone. These folks will wave the Gadsden flag and opine about "freedom loving Americans" but won't criticize police who wrongly harm someone provided that someone doesn't look like them. Such actions say everything about who's considered a "real American" and why the President has been dogged with false claims about his nationality, race and religion.

Ultimately though, we're all in this together regardless of race.  As Angela Davis said it they come for me in the morning they will come for you at night. Police who are comfortable insulting, harassing, abusing, assaulting and killing black people will do the same things to any "unworthy" white people. We've talked about that before. You let some dogs get off leash and they will bite whoever they see.  Unfortunately some conservatives, say Bill O'Reilly, can't see this.  Such conservatives assume that if a black person got hurt, that thug/thugette had it coming. These folks glory in their privilege even as they deny it. In his own inimitable manner Jon Stewart tried to explain this to Fox News watchers/hosts in general and Bill O'Reilly in particular.

Ferguson Video: Michael Brown Shooting

The sobering thing about life today is that so much of what we do for good or for bad is captured by video, whether it be private, business or governmental.

Cell phone video taken by Ferguson resident Piaget Crenshaw and shown by CNN on Monday provides more footage of the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. Crenshaw described the scene to CNN, in which she said that police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown multiple times after Brown had ceased running and turned around.

“I knew this was not right, I knew police should not even have been chasing this young boy and firing at the same time,” Crenshaw told CNN. “That fact that he got shot in the face, it was something that clicked in me, I thought, somebody else needs to see this. This isn’t right.”

Crenshaw said there was a struggle at the police car in which it seemed Wilson was trying to draw Brown in. Brown took off running, and Crenshaw said Wilson began firing; when Brown turned around, he was shot multiple times. Crenshaw said that her accounting of the incident concurred with what she knew of the autopsy report, which found that Brown had been shot from the front. “When [Brown] turned toward the cop was when he let off the most shots,” Crenshaw said.