Shaking the Systems by Moving the Ground: Reflections on Ferguson
The essay below was written by one of BOP’s members, Keith Snodgrass, a Missouri native. Below, he highlights the deep-seeded history of racist policing and connects to some of his own experiences with police terrorism.
By Keith Snodgrass
An earthquake happens when pressure builds up from either two land masses sliding passed each other, or one landmass moving under another. In both of these cases it’s the release of the pressure built up over time that causes the sometimes violent shaking we experience on the ground. That violent shaking often leads to old infrastructures tumbling to the ground. It’s a common perception that the next big earthquake like the one that hit the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989 will happen in California. Earthquakes are part of the culture of California and there is a lot of investment in reinforcing old infrastructures to make them earthquake proof. However scientists have discovered that it’s more likely that the “big one”, the earthquake that will have major impact across the country will actually come from Missouri.
On August 9, 2014 Mike brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson police department. This erupted and shook the ground into a national movement. The movement didn’t come from the progressive Bay Area or Los Angeles, where most people expect anti-police terrorism protests. It came from a small city in Missouri. It didn’t spark from any of the usual suspects or usual places. It came from people in the neighborhood, it was moved from the ground and it was sparked by the masses who have long bore the brunt of constant pressure of police violence. It caught many people by surprise, including the criminal justice institutions that have stood strong since slavery was abolished in Ferguson. The world could not ignore the voices of the people of Ferguson. The Ferguson Police department has a long history of racist practices and brutality. Ferguson is one of the St. Louis suburban cities located on the North side of the Metropolitan area surrounded by other majority black cities such as: Dellwood, Florissant, Jennings, and Castle Point. Racism is not new to Ferguson, St Louis, or the state. Missouri, after all it was the last remaining slave state.
I grew up in Dellwood Missouri, a majority Black suburb of St Louis. My story is not one of being raised in a really bad neighborhood with little or no money. Although there were some low times, my family was working class and they did their best to be active in my life and made sure me and my three brothers had what we needed. Growing up, nothing could protect my brothers and I from being targeted by the police. It didn’t matter that my parents raised us with love, provided for us or taught us to be respectful. There was one particular time I remember my youngest brother and I were walking to church. Before we knew it there was a police helicopter spotlight on us and two police cars speeding toward us. The cops asked us where we were going and told us we fit the description of some robbery suspects. I remember feeling like we had no control. We had no idea what their next move would be or if they would even allow us to continue on to our destination. I also remember thinking, what if they don’t believe us? And if they don’t, what will we do? That was just one of numerous encounters with the police, as we tried to live normal lives as teenagers. At some point we got used to it and police harassment became “normal” for us.
School was not a refuge from being targeted. My school was made up of mostly Black students, white teachers and a white principal. Starting in kindergarten, my outlook was that white people were the authority figure outside of my home. I remember some of my teachers treating us like we were a lost cause and rather than teach us they would give us busy work like “fetching” them water or running notes to the principals office. Like so many of my Black classmates, many of my early days in school were spent in the principal’s office. We were being babysat until it was time to go home. Although there were no police on campus, criminalization of Black youth was very evident. Police were often called for fights, and other minor misbehaviors. For many black students the police record started as early as elementary school. The criminalization of kids this early in life often leads to a life in the criminal justice system providing a steady flow of occupants into the prison system.
Fox News did a report on the large disparities in what our country spends in incarcerating its people rather than educating them. For example the state of Georgia spends $18,000 a year to house one inmate and $6,000 a year per student. This of course is devastating to the Black community since early exposure to the criminal justice system makes us more likely to experience disproportionate incarceration rates. The students that are mostly affected by the school to prison pipeline are Black and students with disabilities. African-American students are also 3.5 times more likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled, according to a nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Black children represent 18 percent of students, but they account for 46 percent of those suspended more than once. Public Schools across the country are implementing the Zero-tolerance policy. This policy criminalizes minor infractions of school rules that would normally be handled by the school and turns them over to the police. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I would realize that my experiences in elementary school were part of a larger system that was at work and had been at work for a long time.
As a young Black man, getting a driver’s license opened me and my friends up to a new form of harassment. In North County, St. Louis we were getting pulled over by police on a regular basis. It was not unusual to be in debt for traffic tickets or to have to do a few days in jail because of bench warrants. I recently talked to a childhood friend from my neighborhood and we were reminiscing about the constant presence of police in our life. “It wasn’t until I left St Louis that I felt the weight of the police lift from me,” he said. “ I used to think that I couldn’t be relaxed in a car unless someone else was driving”. This kind of pressure and probing of Black people isn’t just a coincidence in North County. It is rooted in racism and enforced through daily police practices.
In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court recently by the legal defense nonprofit ArchCity Defenders found that 86 percent of vehicle stops in Ferguson involved a black driver, although just 67 percent of the city’s 21,203 residents are black. These traffic violations weigh heavy on the black community. In 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court disposed of 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases “about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household,” the report said. Fines and court fees are Ferguson’s second largest revenue. The County uses traffic stops to bring revenue into these North County cities and with a ratio of 10/2 when it comes to white cops versus black cops the stops are disproportionately black. A report by the legal defense nonprofit ArchCity Defenders found that 86 percent of vehicle stops in Ferguson involved a black driver, although just 67 percent of the city’s 21,203 residents are black. The police operate under the assumption that Black people are criminals and that we must be caught and controlled. Investing in that assumption provides revenue to cities like Ferguson.
This problem of brutality and criminalization of Black people is echoed in just about every major city in the United States. This systemic criminalization of Black people is largely supported by mainstream media, which opens the door for widespread acceptance or justification of the unjust treatment of black people in this country. The impact of this widespread acceptance is the growing prison system. The United States houses more prisoners than any other country in the world. According to the Prison Policy Initiative Black people are incarcerated 5 times more than whites. While devastating to the Black community, it is a profitable industry for corporations.
The government and private corporations who run the prisons benefit financially from the disinvestment in education and investment in incarceration. The prison system is the final destination for many of the black children that get caught in the net of the School to Prison Pipeline. Right now approximately 2 million people are in prison and 5 million in the criminal justice system. It starts with police routinely arresting and transporting kids to juvenile detention centers for minor classroom misbehaviors. After this there is a maze of laws, legislation, and policies active in many of the agencies that govern our cities and states that make it easy to disproportionately arrest and imprison black people. This country’s prison system pumps millions of dollars into this country’s economy. The United States depends on the racist structures and ideas that have plagued it from its birth, to keep mass incarceration profitable. In Angela Davis’s Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex, she highlights industries that stand to make millions from mass incarceration such as architecture, construction, and technology companies. The Prison Industrial Complex is much more than the prisons housing the inmates; it is an elaborate system that creates the conditions for mass incarceration. The system uses tools like the Media, which fuels racism imaging and false propaganda, which results in the round up of potential inmates.
The prison system in this country is a hungry monster that can never be filled and greed will continue to feed this system at the detriment of black people. Black people are the ones filling these beds and are the biggest dollar signs for all the industries benefiting from their incarceration. Once again the suffering of Black people has become profitable to not only the greedy private companies, but also the self-proclaimed leader of the free world.
The criminalization of Black people is not a conspiracy theory, it is very real. Although Black people have been continually brutalized since the abolishment of slavery, every now and then there is a moment when we wake up and react to it. We just experienced one of those moments and reaction must turn into creation. We need to create new strategies to counteract these systems set up to persecute black people. Last fall, I was able to go back to St Louis and experience some of those rallies and meetings held by the people of St Louis, and also actions by the people who came to support. I was also able to participate in similar conversations here in Oakland where we are experiencing these systems in the same way.
I was glad to see so many people wake up and say we have to act. Although the response to Ferguson revealed that there is a need for many tactics to really shift and bring to light the dehumanization of Black people in this country. There is still a need to push further. It is critical to connect with the real non-activist people on the ground. I can’t help but wonder how things would have changed for my friends and me if someone would have reached us and heard our stories. We have to make sure that as we go forward we don’t move as individuals seeking to be the next big name in the movement but as people seeking a common reward and ultimate freedom. In order to combat such a vast and organized system, we need to wake up our communities by organizing and changing these destructive policies and laws that allow for the divestment in our education and investment in our incarceration. Communities all across the country took to the streets in outrage of the police murdering Mike Brown and Eric Garner who were both unarmed. These reactions were good in the sense that they woke up our sleeping communities and also brought to light a side of this country’s justice system most white people don’t have to experience. However, after the rallies, marches, and speeches die down the plans for change that came from all the meetings and gatherings need to be put into action that lead to real systemic change. Some questions we may have to ask ourselves are: What does this change look like? Who’s going to lead this change? How do we get started?
We learned during the first Obama election that we could shift the direction of systems with grassroots organizing especially when it’s done with a unified goal. If we grab a hold of some of that same energy it took to get the first black president in office we can not only shift the direction of systems but also create a new systems that actually work for everyone not just the wealthy. We cannot put our hope into electing individuals into office or getting access for the few. We have never seen that really work for us. Our hope has to be in the vision and possibility of the people who are tired of feeling the pressure. The people behind the doors, sitting in the classrooms and even behind bars.
My hope for Ferguson is that after the smoke clears it will reveal an entire community that has a new focus on fighting the oppression they experience on a daily basis. I hope that their ongoing fight is contagious and spreads throughout the whole St Louis area and from there, this whole nation. I hope that the rival gangs that came together for this common cause look at each other as brothers and sisters and continue on to fighting the war waged against black people in this country. I hope that the ground shakes until these institutions fall down.
I also have hopes that my son can experience a world where contact with the police is not a life or death situation. I hope he can go a school where his education is not interrupted by constant police presence and interference. My hope is that he will see Black people have the freedom to be the Kings and Queens we once were, the freedom to become the philosophers, mathematicians, spiritual leaders, and warriors the world once sought after for knowledge.