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November 26, 2014 11:20 AM UTC

Ferguson Protests Spread Across America, Colorado

  • 22 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

 

A quick roundup on a story that has dominated national headlines since Monday evening and resulted in two consecutive days now of protests in Denver, Colorado Springs, and elsewhere–CNN:

Like Ferguson, outrage over the grand jury's decision escalated from coast to coast, with protests in about 170 cities nationwide.

From New York to Los Angeles and dozens and dozens of cities in between, protesters flooded the streets to denounce the grand jury's decision. Some demonstrations blocked bridges, tunnels and major highways. But the protests were largely peaceful.

"They have given us no justice! We will give them no peace," protesters chanted as they massed in front of the Underground Atlanta shopping mall.

In the New York area, they briefly blocked one of the entrances to the Lincoln Tunnel.

As the Denver Post's Anthony Cotton reports, protests yesterday evening downtown almost got out of hand, with a handful of protesters arrested, but overall stayed peaceful and law-abiding:

Besides the Brown protest, there were banners decrying the July shooting death of Ryan Ronquillo. And after an hour of marching, the protesters ended up at the front doors of the Denver jail, where they repeatedly shouted, "Marvin Booker, Marvin Booker," recalling the inmate who died at the facility in 2010…

Although there were no obvious signs of discord, things did get a bit tense when three armed sheriff's deputies, perhaps disquieted by the size of the gathering, stood on alert just inside the front doors of the jail.

Organizers had planned for the march to conclude at the jail, but a large group continued the protest, moving west on West Colfax Avenue and blocking the viaduct over Interstate 25…[p]olice formed a line to prevent protesters from moving onto the interstate about 8:10 p.m.

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports a robust protest there Tuesday:

Hundreds of protesters, chanting "Hands up, don't shoot" and "Whose streets? Our streets," marched through downtown Colorado Springs on Tuesday, demanding police reform after a grand jury opted not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot a black teen in Ferguson, Mo…

Clutching a megaphone while blocking Cascade Avenue, Trina Reynolds-Tyler, a Colorado College senior, read a list of demands from FergusonAction.com, which has often helped support protests in Missouri.

Among the demands: Police departments nationwide need to stop using military equipment and weaponry and a U.S. Department of Justice review on racially biased policing across the nation. She said money going to law enforcement needs to be redirected toward community-based alternatives to incarceration.

Other events around the state related to the protests over the police shooting of Ferguson, Missouri teenager Michael Brown included an apropos forum on race relations in Boulder and a protest in Pueblo organized by the Colorado Progressive Coalition. Also fueling debate locally over police violence and race relations is a new report from Rocky Mountain PBS I-News highlighting racial disparity in Denver police shootings:

At a time when the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, has brought tensions between police and minority communities to the forefront, Rocky Mountain PBS I-News has found that racial disparities persist in police shootings in Denver.

Seven of the 33 people shot by Denver police and sheriff’s deputies in the past five years were African American, according to data collected by the Office of the Independent Monitor, a city watchdog. That’s about 21 percent, compared with an overall black population in Denver of 9.7 percent during roughly the same period, according to Census data.

Thirteen of those shot between 2009 and 2013 were Latino, and 12 were white. That means about 39 percent of the shootings involved Latinos, who comprise 32 percent of the population, while 36 percent involved whites, who account for 52 percent of the population.

Whether we like it or not, this is an issue that we need to be talking about in Colorado. So, please do.

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22 thoughts on “Ferguson Protests Spread Across America, Colorado”

      1. Thanks, PCat.  It's much like the difference between the American Corn Growers Association and the National Corn Growes Association!  Same crop, two diverging ideologies.

    1. @Diogenesdemar:

      Ignorant?  I grew up in the St. Louis area. Keep that in mind.  I've lived there–and moved away from all the problems.

      While the NYT item was interesting in that many black women strive to rear their children in a safe enviroment—there are many roadblocks in life.

      Now Diogenesmar, tell me this:  Why are the St. Louis area law enforcement people (at various levels) looking at perjury charges at one witness, and looking at evidence against two others? 

      Those lies have been at the base of all the rumors repeated all across America and on some political talk shows. And why, despite rumors/lies otherwise, did the rioters in Ferguson burn down the black church where Micheal Brown and his Family attend?

      Have a good day.

       

      2. Harley,

        So you're an expert on black people – because you once lived in the St. Louis area- and therefore

        • are entitled to call protesters "animals",
        • as an "expert", can ignore all evidence  that the Ferguson Police department is biased
        • Focus on two witnesses, while ignoring multiple other witnesses who said that Michael Brown was moving away from the confrontation, and had his hands up when he was shot by Officer Wilson. More than half of the witnesses interviewed corraborated this.
        • And, Brown died 148 feet away from the police car, not 35 feet away from it as Wilson claimed. He was trying to get away, not "charging".
        • Wilson was never cross-examined as a witness – his racially charged language that Brown was "like a demon", "hulk hogan" "charging at me", was never challenged in court.

        I'd put more links in, but I suspect that you are one of those people whose mind is made up, and don't want to be confused with facts.

        As far as the attitude that African Americans are "animals", I'll let your statement stand on its own. It is the same attitude Darren Wilson, and most of the Ferguson Police Department, shares.

         

  4. When I ask my teen students about their experiences with the police, almost all of the young males have been "profiled" – that is, pulled over, questioned, names and IDs searched, even without any probable cause (they were not doing anything wrong or suspicious.) They are not happy with this, and see it as unfair treatment because of their ethnicities and ages.

    Black adults see racial profiling as widespread, while white adults do not (per Gallup poll).

    I can't really compare white and non-white experiences, since most of my students are not white, but this does not bode well for future taxpayers' attitudes towards police and justice.

    This is why outrage over the Ferguson verdict will continue to smolder, protests will continue to spread…

    • police practices of unjustified profiling,
    • disproportionate arrest rates of minorities
    • unbalanced court sentences on drug use
    • little funding or attention to community policing while communities continue to militarize

    The abuse in Ferguson stands out because it is so blatant, and so blatantly racial. But it happens everywhere in the US.

  5. It's time to ask anyone who is connected with law enforcement and is running for office if there are any conditions when a police officer is not justified in shooting a civilian.

    This is a post racial society, after all. Let's include all of us.

    1. Post racial? Yeah right. That's why middle class black parents have to give their kids instructions as to how to survive a police encounter while middle class white kids rarely have to worry about getting beaten to a pulp or worse for reaching for their ID. Regardless of the specifics of this particular case, anyone who thinks racism doesn't enter into how different people are treated by police, store security, prospective employers, etc. doesn't know WTF they're talking about. Ask any African American professional and you'll hear tales about how they or their kid got stopped in their own nice neighborhood because being behind the wheel of a high end car made them suspicious or jogging made them suspicious. You'll hear about how they or their kids get followed around higher end department stores no matter how well dressed they may be. Not being able to get a cab to stop  is so common it's a cliche. You'll hear about how they warn their kids never to run on the street. Post racial is a joke.

      1. 41 shots, Lena gets her son ready for school
        She says, "On these streets, Charles
        You've got to understand the rules
        If an officer stops you, promise me you'll always be polite
        And that you'll never ever run away
        Promise Mama you'll keep your hands in sight"

        Is it a gun (is it a gun), is it a knife (is it a knife)
        Is it a wallet (is it a wallet), this is your life (this is your life)
        It ain't no secret (it ain't no secret)
        It ain't no secret (it ain't no secret)
        No secret my friend
        You can get killed just for living in your American skin
        Bruce Springsteen                                                                                           41 Shots (American Skin)

  6. As Toni Morrison so effectively stated it, "There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race — scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct… it has a social function, racism."

    1. But as long as people treat it as something real , which we still do, it's real for all practical purposes such as being being stopped for driving a Porsche while black or being hunted and gunned down while minding your own business while black.

      1. It certainly is real.  All I was noting is that the only reason to even have an idea of race is to discriminate.  There is no reason to ascribe "blackness" as a distinct race to someone if you don't want to make them a slave.  There is no reason to ascribe "brownness" to someone if you don't want to make them toil in the fields.  There's no reason to ascribe "yellowness" to people unless you want to force them to build your infrastructure.  The construction of race is designed to use difference as a hammer, not a descriptor.

  7. Robert Reich's Post on Ferguson

    Robert Reich

    9 hrs ·

     

    Here's what I hope we've learned from the debacle in Ferguson, Missouri:

    (1) When there’s conflicting evidence about whether an unarmed person has been murdered by a police officer, a public jury trial is the appropriate process for determining guilt or innocence, not a grand jury in which there’s no opportunity to cross examine the accused.

    (2) The role of the media isn’t to guess whether someone is guilty or innocent, or to give the accused free airtime to explain his side of the story (as did ABC this morning). It is to report the news.

    (3) Poor, minority communities deserve community policing that builds trust, including minority police officers, rather than law enforcement that’s viewed by a community as repressive.

    (4) Armed law enforcement personnel should be equipped with body cameras of the sort now used in many communities to assure responsible behavior.

    (5) There is no excuse for looting, burning, or other forms of violence. Innocent people are harmed or killed. Communities may not recover for years. Trust is further destroyed.

    Other lessons?

     

    1. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that this prosecutor was on the side of the officer and  never intended to get an indictment. Grand juries almost always give prosecutors what they want and prosecutors are supposed to be presenting the case for indictment. Since concerns raised about this prosecutor at the beginning of the process, including that his father was a cop killed in the line of duty, were ignored, it was clear from day one that there wasn't going to be an indictment whether there should have been or not.  All we, the public, know is what we get via the media so it's possible that a legitimate indictment process would have had the same result but this one was a travesty.

  8. I really hoped that when President Obama was elected, we were entering into a post racial society.  Sadly, it was and is still here; it just smoked the racists and haters out.  It saddens me how many mothers and fathers won't have their child at the Thanksgiving Dinner table today and my heart hurts for them.

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