Rant may be too strong a word. I have been both angry and sad about the events occurring in Ferguson the past few weeks. Frustration has also been pretty overpowering. I want to fix it, whatever "it" is. Michael Brown should not have died. There should not be a grieving mother, an injured policeman, business people losing their livelihoods to looting scum, outside agitators and media crowding the tiny suburb. But this is the reality. Whatever happened that Saturday afternoon, there are now a dead teenager, a mourning family, a ruined police officer and family, burned and damaged businesses, people from Detroit and Texas who have been arrested during unruly protests, and media and other outsiders stirring the pot for their own reasons. How can we ever dig out from under all of this?
School started finally this week in Ferguson, a sign of normalcy. Mr. Brown's funeral was Monday. Some of the outsiders have gone on to new pastures. Now come the weeks and months of navigating the justice system heading toward an indictment of Officer Wilson, or not. The law suits have already begun. This death has become a flashpoint for some like Al Sharpton and the New Black Panther Party. Anger over other incidents and racial prejudice in all its forms has surfaced and swept over the lives of Brown and Wilson and their loved ones. What galls me is that there is a truth under all of this that we may never know. Truth has become beside the point.
Her are a few more observations:
- Looting is just wrong. I want to bathe after I encounter the activity.
- The ethnicity of a person does not make that person unable to deal with people of other backgrounds.
- Even good eyewitnesses often do not get the whole story.
- Using people who are suffering is evil.
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