Protests swept the United States at the end of November in the wake of a grand jury decision which affirmed that cops can kill Blacks with impunity.

Eighteen-year-old African American Mike Brown was killed by police in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, on 9 August. Brown had his hands raised in surrender when officer Darren Wilson shot the unarmed teen multiple times.

The decision not to indict Wilson came after a series of killings in recent years, all of which have provoked outrage and demonstrations. In recent months, Ferguson, which is a predominantly Black neighbourhood, has been gripped by mass unrest as the community has mobilised again and again. US commentator Barry Sheppard outlines the events.

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When the St Louis County grand jury, after a three-month farcical “investigation”, decided not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for the murder of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown, Ferguson erupted.

Over the next days, protests spread to more than 170 cities across the US. In Oakland, California, near where I live, protesters blocked major highways in mass civil disobedience. More than 100 were arrested in Los Angeles.

In New York, thousands blocked major highways, tunnels and bridges. A protester threw fake blood on police commissioner William Bratton. At least 1,000 marched in Washington, DC.

The announcement by county prosecutor Robert McCulloch exonerating the murderer fanned the flames of anger.

McCulloch presented not only a defence of Wilson, but an indictment of Brown. As reverend Al Sharpton said at a press conference in Ferguson the day after the announcement, “I have never seen a prosecutor hold a press conference to discredit the victim … [H]e went out of his way to go point by point in discrediting Michael Brown, who cannot defend himself …

“Have you ever heard of a prosecutor … explain[ing] to the press why the one that did the killing is not going to trial, but the victim is guilty?”

An epidemic of police violence

Just days before the grand jury made its announcement, a cop lurking in a darkened stairway in a public housing project in New York shot dead an unarmed young Black man who was coming down the stairs with his girlfriend.

The day of McCulloch’s whitewash of Wilson, police in Cleveland shot and killed a 12-year-old Black youngster for “brandishing” a toy gun.

Even the staid bourgeois New York Times editorialised, “The case resonates across the country – in New York City, Chicago and Oakland – because the killing of young Black men by police is a common feature of African American life and a source of dread for Black parents from coast to coast.

“This point was underscored last month in a grim report … showing that young Black males in recent years were at a far greater risk – 21 times greater – of being shot dead by police than young white men.

“These statistics reflect the fact that many police officers see Black men as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.

“We get a flavour of this in Officer Wilson’s grand jury testimony, when he describes Michael Brown, as he was being shot, as a soulless behemoth who was ‘almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him’.”

No wonder that Michael Brown’s mother described Wilson’s testimony as “unbelievable”.

It defies common sense to believe that unarmed Michael Brown, who was some 45 metres away from Wilson, turned to run at the cop who was firing a hail of bullets at him.

No wonder that the youth of Ferguson rioted in the face of McCulloch’s turning of the criminal into a victim and vice versa.

The language of the unheard

A few weeks before he was assassinated in 1968, in this the most violent of all the “advanced” capitalist countries, Martin Luther King said of riots in Black communities at that time:

“It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.

“These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel they have no alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention.

“And I must say that riot is the language of the unheard.”

At a demonstration in front of the courthouse where McCulloch delivered his racist speech, reverend Osagyefo Sekou from the Fellowship of Reconciliation was interviewed by the liberal media show Democracy Now!.

“The rage we have seen today, and last night, is a reflection of the kind of alienation and the few options that young people feel they have to express their democratic rights at this moment”, he said.

“We hear for the 100 days [since the shooting], young people saying that ‘I’m ready to die because I don’t have anything to live for.’

“School systems have betrayed them. The president has betrayed them. [US attorney general] Eric Holder has betrayed them. [Missouri] governor Nixon has betrayed them. [Police] chief Jackson has betrayed them. The electoral system has betrayed them …

“While the president calls for calm, he has not dispatched enough resources to hold Darren Wilson and a draconian police force accountable.”