#Ferguson: Six Months After the Killing of Michael Brown
#Ferguson: Six Months After the Killing of Michael Brown
*Michael Brown was gunned down by police in his Ferguson, Missouri, neighborhood six months ago today.
*Trayvon Martin, killed by a self-appointed “vigilante,” would have turned 20 years old last Thursday.
*Also last week: the 16th anniversary of the death of Amadou Diallo, who was shot at 41 times by NYPD when reaching for his wallet.
To be a person of color in America means to constantly have these birthdays and anniversaries flitting in and out of your mental calendar. To constantly be reminded of how institutional racism snuffs out black lives.
As Crunk Feminist Collective co-founder Brittney Cooper explores in the upcoming issue of Ms., a new civil rights movement is emerging from the police killings of black youth. And unlike the ones of decades past, this revolution will not only be televised but Facebooked, Instagramed, tweeted–all with the hashtag that became the emblem of a movement: #BlackLivesMatter.
Created by black women activists Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, #BlackLivesMatter has become both an epitaph and a battle cry. And it isn’t going anywhere.
The lack of police indictments, the hijacking of justice, has only further galvanized activists–especially women and young people of color. They are increasingly pushing for overdue changes that will add accountability to policing. Changes that include an end to “hot-spots” policing (which often leads to racial profiling), a program that allows officers to blow the whistle on other officers without fear of retaliation and a requirement for officers to reside in the neighborhoods they police.
A critical solution–one that’s overlooked and rarely mentioned in the press–is requiring police departments to mirror the demographic makeup of their communities. That means not only hiring more officers of color, but more women. As the executive editor of Ms., Kathy Spillar, points out in the new issue of Ms., “women officers are less authoritarian in their approach to policing, rely less on physical force than men do, possess better communication skills and increase police response to violence against women.”
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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/02/09/ferguson-six-months-after-the-killing-of-michael-brown/