The imminent decision by a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri about whether to (not) indict Darren Wilson for his choice to kill an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown looms over Ferguson, Missouri.
The grand jury will likely let Wilson go free without consequence for his wicked deeds. The tension in Ferguson--and around the United States--about the grand jury's decision is not an anxiety about the just Sword of Damocles. Rather, among the good, honest, ethical, and moral, the worry is that justice, of course, will not been done because black life is cheap and a white man wearing police blue has a de facto license to kill black and brown people with impunity.
In the first part of our conversation here on The Chauncey DeVega Show about the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri--and how that community is responding to the killing of Michael Brown by the thug police officer Darren Wilson--I was lucky to have the opportunity to talk with Mr. Lou Dubose, editor and reporter from The Washington Spectator.
For part two of The Chauncey DeVega Show's series on Ferguson, I talked with Reverend Renita Lamkin. She is a resident of Ferguson, a social justice activist, on the ground participant in the people's movement for civil rights and respect against the militarized and racist Ferguson police and local government, as well as a Pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Reverend Lamkin has been the subject of much conversation about the events in Ferguson both because of her participation in the people's movement (and subsequent injuries suffered at the hands--and at the end of the gun barrels--of the police) and bold truth-telling in her writings at the Huffington Post, a new piece at CNN, and interviews with a range of domestic and international media outlets.
Renita and I talk about how the mainstream media is distorting and misrepresenting the events in Ferguson, how white privilege is operative even among those white brothers and sisters who have chosen to stand with the black community in Ferguson, how faith and "liberation theology" guides her social justice work, predictions for Ferguson when/if Wilson does not face negative consequences for his actions, and what events and experiences made it possible for Renita Lamkin to pastor a majority black church.
