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"A unanimous vote
against the DOJ’s consent decree
doesn’t exactly shout racial change."
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It
was no surprise that protests ripped through the first meeting of the
Ferguson City Council since the Council voted down the consent decree
offered by the Department of Justice. Last week’s act of defiance
forced the DOF to file a lawsuit against the incorrigible municipality.
Loretta Lynch, head of the Department of Justice, responded to Ferguson
city officials with harsh words. Remarking that Ferguson had missed an
opportunity to step forward, Ms. Lynch declared the city had instead
“turned backwards” and “chosen to live in the past.”
Claiming the DOJ changes would be too costly to the city, Ferguson city
officials chose to spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars to fight the
recommended changes, dollars that could go towards implementing a more
just course for the municipality.
The unanimous decision by the City Council reneged on an agreement with
the DOJ that was months in the making. The about-face was an arrogant
indication that city officials were steadfastly committed to past
practices and policies of racial discrimination.
The latest action is part of a saga that kicked off with the police
murder of Mike Brown, Jr. in 2014. The DOJ came in to investigate
and found widespread abuses by the police department including illegal
stops, searches and arrests. There was also issues of disproportionate
use of canine dogs against black people (even children), retaliation
for filing or threatening to file reports against police and the
arbitrary use of stun guns.
The City Council’s vote and rationale is problematic on a number of
levels. First, there is some fan-fare that the Council is now majority
black for the first time in history, now reflecting the majority black
population. A look around the country—including the White House—is
proof that Black faces in high places does not mean necessarily
material changes in the lives of black folks.
Two black members were voted in the 2015 election. Another seat opened
up with the death a white council member in January. The appointment of
Laverne Mitchom, an African American woman, was contentious. The
initial vote to bring her on to the council was split along racial
lines. The 6-0 vote against the DOJ’s consent decree caused some
observers to conclude that the three black council members had to agree
to vote against the decree in order for white members to vote for
Mitchom.
There have been all kinds of allegations about the decision of the
council. There is the belief that the mayor and his cronies inflated
the cost of implementation in order to gain support by Ferguson
residents. This was one of the big reasons cited for opposition to the
decree. We can probably expect a more thorough investigation into the
financial components by outside sources in the near future.
Since the decision to sue by the now infamous city was announced, many
fair-minded people in the region and across the nation have been
reacting to the news. The changes in police and court procedures made
since the Brown shooting have been seen by most observers as largely
superficial and inadequate given the persistent and protracted racism
in Ferguson.
What remains curious to all those with eyes on Ferguson is that the
current line-up of city officials and many employees had decades of
knowledge regarding the police department’s terrorizing of black folks
and the oppressive court system that used them as ATM machines. At any
time these public servants could have intervened on the side of
justice. Their actions may have even averted the police murder of an
unarmed teen and a community uprising. It definitely would’ve made the
intervention of the DOJ unlikely. Now that their racist patterns have
been exposed, there is still no genuine effort to tackle the monster of
white of supremacy.
According to the DOJ, Ferguson has violated the constitutional rights
of its majority black population—the First, Fourth and 14 Amendments.
The Department has documented that city and non-city African Americans
are treated like second class citizens. The action of Ferguson
officials and some white citizens affirms that they plan to uphold the
status quo. White residents have been quoting as saying they’d rather
lose their city than to concede to the DOJ demands.
We need a renewed focus on Ferguson to push it into the twenty-first
century. Thousands participated in the Ferguson Commission process to
dialogue about the racism plaguing Ferguson and other north county
municipalities. The idea was to go forward on the “Path toward Racial
Equality” as the Commission’s report was entitled. Thousands more moved
to make officials accountable during the Radical Reconciliation
activities last fall.
It’s time to re-engage and ramp up our organizing efforts to make the
city responsible for its crimes and to work in earnest to rectify the
serious violations of civil liberties along with constitutional and
human rights.
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 is published every Thursday |
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD |
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield, MBA |
Publisher:
Peter Gamble |
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