The Hijacking of Fergu$on

T-Dubb-O, UrbanCusp

The Ferguson uprising started the development of a revolution here in the United States. There is no question that Ferguson was much different and more radical than anything we’ve seen here in this country. A movement filled with young, black, oppressed, and fearless males and females who were unapologetic on their conquest for freedom. St. Louis, MO opened the door for factual conversations around racism and oppression in this country. The entire world watched and supported Ferguson, but that support did not reach the people of St. Louis, MO.

“They Will Not Take the Street”: Ferguson and Colonial Histories

Paddy O'Halloran, CounterPunch

Last week, activists staged protests in Ferguson, Missouri to memorialize the death of unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of an armed policeman a year ago. The protesters marched and shouted, publicly challenging the legitimacy of the police department. The police response shows continuity with a longstanding logic and practice of colonialism in regard to protest and space.

Freedom Dreaming & Liberation: Robin D.G. Kelley

Reality in Colour

Danielle Bowler, Eyewitness News

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it… How does it feel to be a problem?

The St Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, did not come as a surprise. While it registers as unthinkable, it simultaneously fits within a paradigm that continually devalues black lives.

Ferguson is Everywhere

Danielle Bowler: Defined by Your Blackness

Danielle Bowler

Eyewitness News

Singer Lauryn Hill recently posted a new song dedicated to the residents of Ferguson, Missouri, on her website. Titled Black Rage, it is a virtual mini-thesis that succinctly details the experience of the black body throughout history, played out in three minutes and 46 seconds. The rage Hill sings about has been made visible in protests throughout America, which has seen opinion pieces try to explain or defend black rage in the face of liberal rights discourses that remain unable to see how there exists only tacit, paper-thin equality of races. An image taken at one of these protest has been circulating on social media. In it, a protestor holds up a sign that says “I can’t believe we are still protesting this shit”.

What happens in Ferguson does not stay in Ferguson

Jerome Roos, ROAR Magazine

Last week, the Governor of Missouri declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard to the St Louis suburb of Ferguson to quell a fortnight of civil unrest following the police murder of the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. It was the first time since the Los Angeles riots of 1992, after the severe police beating of another black man, Rodney King, and the Battle of Seattle during the WTO trade negotiations seven years later, that the army had been called in to restore public order within US borders.

Ferguson: breaking out of post-racial hypnosis

This interview with George Ciccariello-Maher (GCM) by Anna Curcio and Lenora Hanson was originally published on CommonWare (CW). ROAR Magazine

CW: Our first question has to do with the way that Ferguson exploded after Michael Brown’s murder and the police response. What are the social dynamics that led to and preceded these intense riots? What led to the uprising of the black community and how can you explain the violence of the police response there?

How to write about the deaths of people who don’t matter

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick

I was asked this week what it takes to tell the stories of black lesbians killed in the townships in South Africa. The answer, in some ways, lies in Ferguson, Missouri, far away from South Africa, in an American community that has been burning all week.

There is much that South African journalists and editors can learn from the coverage of the protests that have arisen in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. Under normal circumstances the shooting death of a black teenager from a segregated community in the Southern state of Missouri would not have garnered much attention nationally, let alone globally. After all, two black men are killed every week by law enforcement officials in the US – most of them unarmed. Indeed, until he died, it is unlikely that Michael Brown mattered much to anyone except those who loved him. In his death he has come to matter a great deal to a great many people in America and beyond.

What is an 'outside agitator'?

Richard Seymour, Lenin's Tomb

In Ferguson, Missouri, there are 'outside agitators'.  On this, the reactionaries and liberals agree.  Of course, there are all sorts of racialised rumours flying around in the guise of reporting about what is taking place in Ferguson.  We are well used to this.  We remember Katrina.

There will be time to sift through all that.  For now, I simply want to ask a quick question: what is an 'outside agitator'?  The metaphor of exteriority, of being outside, has two salient connotations.  First, one is transgressing the spatial ordering of the state.  It is states which constitute social spaces like districts, wards, counties, etc - a process that is historically far from racially innocent in the US.  Second, one is 'outside' the polis; one's political being as such is 'outside', one is traitorous and disloyal.  It is not just that one travelled from one city to another - that's fine, provided the political agenda one brings is benign for the system - but that one brought ideas that are not only not native to the destination, but actually foreign to the nation, the free world, civilisation itself.

Marikana, Gaza, Ferguson

Richard Pithouse, The Con

In colonial wars the occupying power invariably reaches a point where it has to acknowledge that its true enemy is not a minority – devil worshipers, communists, fanatics or terrorists – subject to external and evil manipulation, but the people as a whole. Once this point is reached every colonised person is taken as a potential combatant and the neighbourhood and the home are cast as legitimate sites of combat.

This is the moment when liberal paternalism breaks down.