I spent most of yesterday anticipating bad news. Everything that was coming out of Missouri foreshadowed disappointment for the people demanding a trial for Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in August.
First, the St. Louis prosecutor’s office released a brief statement to the media that said the St. Louis County grand jury had reached a decision, but the announcement would not be made until 8 pm.
The judge involved in the hearings soon released the demographics of the 12 jurors who had made the decision. 9 were white and 3 were black. This was disappointing for several reasons, the first being that only 9 jurors needed to reach agreement to decide Darren Wilson’s future.
The second disappointment was that in a case involving a racial divide, in a city where 67% of the population is black, three fourths of the people deciding on the case had no idea what it was like to be black in America.
My disappointment reached it’s peak when the news broke that the killing of an unarmed black teenager whose body was left laying in the streets for 4 hours would not result in an investigation, court proceeding or consequence for his killer. The jury decided that Michael Brown’s death was justified.
The CNN live feed I watched showed the protesters gathered outside as word spread through the crowd. First they huddled into groups, comforting one another. And then many of them became angry and began shouting.
Property destruction, violence and arson were all committed in Ferguson last night. People looking for a chance to cause trouble committed some of the crimes, but some of it was outrage over the system that silences black voices. And I do not place fault in those citizens who set cop cars on fire or burned American flags.
It is easy to say that violence is never the answer when you are the white governor of Missouri. It is hypocritical to say that violence is never the answer when you are President of a country commanding drones strikes.
Non-violence only works in systems where the oppressive force is willing to listen. Yesterday, regardless of the public outcry for investigation, the United Nation’s comments on racial discrimination in American police force and Michael Brown’s family requesting that their son’s killer be brought to trial, the St. Louis grand jury did not listen.
So now we watch while the group historically stepped on, enslaved and treated with very little dignity and respect in our country breaks their silence.
The protests and demonstrations, which have been taking place across the country, are not particular to the case of They are the case of any black body prematurely laid to rest following a crime that they were not brought to trial for. We can say the justice system failed Michael Brown, but the system was not meant to work for Michael Brown in the first place.
The system is meant to work for people like James Holmes, the 24 year old gunman who opened fire in a Colorado movie theater in 2012. Holmes killed 12 people and injured an additional 58 before walking out of the theater and peacefully being arrested by police.
Meanwhile, a grand jury has claimed that 18-year-old Michael Brown, alone and unarmed, was too much for Darren Wilson to control without using deadly force.
Ferguson’s Police Department reported in 2013 that for every white resident in Ferguson who is stopped by police, there are two black residents who are stopped and searched. But the searches of black residents are far less likely to discover illegal activity than the searches of the whites.
There is a racial divide in our justice department that favors Holmes, a serial killer over Michael Brown, who allegedly stole cigars from a gas station. This divide allows Holmes to continue his constitutional right to a trial while Brown is cast as a criminal post-mortem.
We asked for this. We created the conditions in which Michael Brown died and Darren Wilson does not face trial. And we are going to have to deal with our racial divide or we are going to have deal with the consequences from those who cannot quietly watch their friends and family killed by police.
This is not about the town of Ferguson, Missouri anymore. And it never really was.
Jana King is a twenty-year-old communication studies junior from Ponchatoula, LA. Follow her @jking_TDR on Twitter.