Last night police in riot gear marched down West Florissant Avenue, ordering people to leave the area and firing tear gas onto the streets. Police even fired tear gas into the backyard of a home where several people held their “hands up” in what’s become a symbol of protest over the shooting of Michael Brown.
Daily RFT caught the melee on video.The incident occurred after police had already evacuated nearly everybody on West Florissant Avenue. Between tear gas firings, a police officer bellowed “go home” into a loudspeaker. It took about an hour, but nearly everybody within vicinity of the police left the streets.
Yet a group of four male protesters remained defiant on West Florissant, screaming profanities at the police and putting their hands in the air. The police responded with threats of tear gas.
“Turn around and leave or we will deploy gas,” shouted a police officer through a loudspeaker. Residents in their backyards pleaded for the men to get out of the street. After a few minutes of prodding, they did so. But the police still decided to advance.
Standing in his backyard along with a few friends and family was 24-year-old Rich West. And after seeing the police deploy tear gas as they marched down the empty street, West and his friends felt like protesting.
“You go home! You go home!” they chanted. As the police come closer, they all put their hands up.
Once again, the police officer with the megaphone ordered the protesters to go home.
“We’re in our yard!” they responded.
At one point West walked to his fence with his hands high up in the air.
“This my property! This my property!” he shouted, prompting police to fire a tear gas canister directly at his face. He moved at the last second.
“This my shit!” West screamed irately after narrowly avoiding the gas canister. Eventually a friend grabbed him and pulled him back to calm him down.
“This is my backyard! This is my shit!” West continued screaming into the camera. He turned to the police: “Y’all go the fuck home!”
“This is our home. This is our residence,” West’s brother added. “Why do you think people say ‘fuck the police?’ Because of that shit.”
Flora Busby, West’s mother, a soft-spoken woman in her 60s, came into the backyard to see if her sons were alright.
“We in our backyard!” she said. “Why you gotta shoot us?”
Again West shouted at the police. And again they fired another gas canister into the yard — this one nearly hitting his house.
“It’s pure ignorance,” West responded after catching his breath. “I pay property taxes here. I should be able to be in my backyard any time.”
He said that regular harassment by the Ferguson police department, often in the form of traffic stops, has been occurring ever since he was sixteen years old.
“They ain’t gotta be throwing tear gas in my backyard,” added Busby. “This is my property. We were just standing back there, my son was standing back there, and I go to see about him and they threw it.”
She continued: “I’m angry about that. They shouldn’t be doing that. And they didn’t need to kill the poor little boy. “
(via floraplasm)
a commission i did. theyre still open if anyone is interested! :3
How Fox host Todd Starnes reacts to Obama’s offering condolences to shooting victim Michael Brown’s family on Tuesday.
Shocking Pattern Reveals President Obama May Have Human Sense Of Empathy Despite Being President. Hear How One Host Discovered The Secret.
pee drinker todd starnes drinks his own piss again
(via onewonderfulbug)
((This post is a branching-off of a really good piece Rachel Maddow did on the history of racial bias within the justice system of St. Louis county as a whole. The full segment is about half an hour long; first 12 minutes or so are focused on laying out all of the broader context. Highly…
- me: *sees ur message right away*
- me: *doesnt respond right away so u dont think i was waiting*
- me: *forgets to respond*
#FERGUSON protestor returns tear gas canister back to sender…
This is Amerikkka 2014
ICONIC
I feel like this picture is going to go down in history
Michael Brown remembered as a ‘gentle giant’ (St. Louis Post- Dispatch)
Michael Brown posted a haunting message on Facebook last week as he prepared to enter a new phase in his life: college. “if i leave this earth today,” he wrote to a friend, “atleast youll know i care about others more then i cared about my damn self.”
Dozens arrested during protests over Ferguson police shooting (Al Jazeera America)
At least 50 were arrested in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, according to police and local media, after a second night of protests over the death of an unarmed African-American teenager shot to death by a police officer.
Police use tear gas in Ferguson, people jam church for moment of silence (St. Louis Post- Dispatch)
Tension stayed high and raw Monday as the St. Louis region waited for answers in the fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager by a municipal police officer.
Police use tear gas on crowd in Ferguson, Mo., protesting teen’s death (Washington Post)
For a third night, summer rage pitted the people of Ferguson against those sworn to protect them. On Saturday, officers shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. On Sunday, resident protests turned to riots, marked by looting and the burning of several local stores.
Michael Brown Shooting: Tear Gas Fired at Crowd in Ferguson (NBC News)
Fifteen arrests were made. St. Louis city alderman Antonio French posted a series of videos and pictures on Twitter documenting the police response. Young people were seen holding their hands up in the same manner that some witnesses have suggested Brown was at the time of the shooting.
Tensions in Ferguson remain ‘high and raw’ (MSNBC)
“I saw the barrel of the gun pointed at my friend,” said Dorian Johnson, 22. “Then I saw the fire come out of the barrel.” He added that “what began as an order by a police officer to ‘get the f— onto the sidewalk’ quickly escalated into a physical altercation and then, gunfire.”
FBI Investigating Ferguson Police Shooting of Teen Michael Brown (NBC News)
The FBI is opening an investigation into the shooting of unarmed Missouri teenager Mike Brown by a police officer in suburban St. Louis, officials said on Monday.
Eyewitness to Michael Brown shooting recounts his friend’s death (MSNBC)
The last moments of Michael Brown’s life were filled with shock, fear and terror, says a witness who stood just feet away as a police officer shot and killed the unarmed teen. “I saw the barrel of the gun pointed at my friend,” said Dorian Johnson, 22. “Then I saw the fire come out of the barrel.”
In defense of black rage: Michael Brown, police and the American dream (Salon)
The people of Ferguson are angry. Outraged. The officer’s story is dubious. Any black kid with sense knows it is futile to reach into an officer’s vehicle and take his gun. That story is only plausible to people who believe that black people are animals, that black men go looking for cops to pick fights with. Absurdity. Eyewitness accounts like these make far more sense.
This Is Why We’re Mad About the Shooting of Mike Brown (Jezebel)
As a black person in America, it’s getting exhausting to still have to explain, in the year 2014, your right to exist in this country. To explain that you are a human being whose value sits no lower than anyone else’s. To explain our basic humanity. And perhaps worst of all, to explain exactly why we are outraged.
#IfTheyGunnedMeDown Shows How Black People Are Portrayed in Mainstream Media (The Root)
The vicious slaying of Mike Brown by Ferguson, Mo., police has once again shown that the narrative the media paints surrounding black people in America more often than not includes depicting us as violent thugs with gang and drug affiliations. It’s safe to say that Brown has become a victim of what I like to refer to as the “Trayvon Martin effect” in the media.
Michael Brown’s Death Didn’t Happen in a Vacuum (ColorLines)
Residents of Ferguson, Missouri, the black St. Louis suburb where Brown lived and died, confronted police officers on Sunday in a scene that’s since been described by the national media as one that quickly devolved into “looting.” In photos, black residents stood in front of police with their hands up to show that they were unarmed. They chanted the slogans we’ve all become too used to over the years: “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
When Parenting Feels Like a Fool’s Errand: On the Death of Michael Brown. (Stacia Brown)
Did they say, “Kill the police?!” As long as that’s the way you heard it, they did. And that is what AP will wire out to every mainstream news outlet who can be bothered to report the death of another unarmed black son on a Saturday night. Their truth is not our truth.
When police departments don’t look like the cities they’re meant to protect (Washington Post)
The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson where the working-class, majority-black population has been clashing with law enforcement for the last three days has 53 commissioned police officers. According to the city’s police chief, three of them are black.
When We Are Young (Crunk Feminist Collective)
When we are young, often too young to fully understand the anxiety in their voices and the fear in their eyes, many of us listen to our parents tell us how to behave when, not if, we are stopped by the police.
Black Kids Don’t Have to Be College-Bound for Their Deaths to Be Tragic (The Root)
Missouri teen Michael Brown was unarmed when police gunned him down. We don’t need to keep talking about his college plans to communicate that his killing was dead wrong.
Michael Brown and Anti-Black Violence (The Feminist Wire)
Black life matters. Yet the police and their media support team have already begun to execute their standard playbook in the aftermath of yet another slain black youth.
National Moment of Silence Will Remember Victims of Police Brutality (Feminist Majority Foundation)
This Thursday, a National Moment of Silence will be held in cities across the country to remember the lives lost and impacted by police brutality. In the wake of two deadly police-involved shootings in less than a week, online activist Feminista Jones and individual Twitter followers were able to coordinate the event in a single day.
National Moment of Silence #NMOS14
How social media helped facilitate a national moment of silence to honor victims of police brutality, show solidarity with their families, and allow communities to come together in a moment of mourning and support.
(via poiuytrewq420)
I’m about to cry. My 60 year old mother watched a netflix documentary and only just now found out she’s asexual. I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring up this idea to her for years. I am so glad to hear her, she’s so happy and saying “there really is nothing wrong with me!” I didn’t realize it wore on her like that. God bless the internet.
They just fired on the crowd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! peaceful protesters
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035483/events/3271930
watch this link please now!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do not just like this, reblog it and watch it, they need witnesses, the police need to know they are being watched and that black lives fucking matter






