Black Lives Matter + photos from around the nation

The Unprecedented Scale of the #BlackLivesMatter Protests
The past weeks have seen the largest number of Americans taking to the
streets since the Occupy and Iraq War protests. But what really sets
today's ongoing actions apart is that they are in so many cities—and spread
out across them.

http://www.citylab.com/crime/2014/12/the-unprecedented-scale-of-the-blacklivesmatter-protests/383461/
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Cornel West, others, arrested today in Ferguson

Report from Ferguson

By Femi Agbabiaka

This weekend, I, along with several other students from the University of Missouri-Columbia, traveled to Saint Louis to stand in solidarity with the protestors in Ferguson. What I saw and experienced there was astonishing and enraging. Every night there are strong, young, and radical voices engaging in nonviolent, but militant, civil disobedience. They’ve organized in groups such as Lost Voices, who have slept out on the streets and protested nightly since Mike Brown was murdered. They’re critiquing not just the police state, but also patriarchy and white supremacy in an attempt to take back their community for themselves.

Friday night, we arrived in Saint Louis around 9 p.m. and immediately started marching to the Ferguson police station, following a candlelight vigil. The march was loud, focused, angry, but not violent. We were stopped momentarily by a few police checkpoints, but kept marching through. Once we reached the police station, we were greeted by a group of about 400 other protesters, and together we marched to the police barricade shouting chants such as, “No justice! No peace!” and “Mike Brown means we’ve got to fight back!” I stood together with others, arms locked, as we provided a barrier between the police and the peaceful protest. When we were finished there, we marched back to West Florissant Street, chanting all along the way, as police in helicopters beamed down on us.

Keeping Ferguson Alive - Cornel West

Here is a video from Wed. night at Union Theological Seminary in New York City  about Ferguson.

All the speakers are good.  It gets very interesting at about 31 minutes in.  Cornel is about 45 minutes in.

There was a great meeting at Union Theological last night in NY featuring Cornel West and others including student who went to Ferguson. 

Here is a link to the video.  http://bit.ly/FL10214
It is 2 hours but is a good program to share with other activists. All of the DSA'ers that were there thought it was excellent.

Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement

Charles Cobb     September 18, 2014

The Washington Post

The protests in Ferguson, Missouri mirrored images from the Civil Rights Movement 50 years earlier. But that’s where the similarities ended.

Many images that came out of Ferguson, Mo., last month looked like scenes from Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960s: the gun-wielding police officers, the sign-carrying protesters and the chants demanding equal treatment and human dignity. But that’s where the similarities ended.


For all the righteous indignation it inspired, the Ferguson turmoil has become the latest in a series of flash-in-the-pan causes that peter out without inspiring lasting movements for racial justice. As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi during the ’60s, what I learned was the importance of organizing at the grass-roots and how even small actions at this level can have national impact. That is why I cannot help but notice that many black leaders, in their efforts to drive change, are ignoring some of the great lessons of the Southern Freedom Movement.

Michael Brown, Ferguson, and Opportunity in the U.S.

Justice for Michael Brown: Community Control of Police and Equality for All

Statement by the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee, August 21, 2014

Democratic Socialists of America calls for a full federal civil rights investigation into the killing of Michael Brown and an end to the militarization of local police forces. The action of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department exemplifies the dangers to the lives of ordinary Americans, particularly people of color, posed by overly aggressive, heavily armed police forces.

Over the past thirty years, federal, state and local government have abandoned commitments to fighting poverty and unemployment, conditions that disproportionately limit the life opportunities of young persons of color. Most low income youth only encounter the state as a repressive force that relegates them to a life within the prison-industrial complex, even for the most minor and non-violent of drug-related offenses. These activities rarely lead white youth to be arrested, let alone imprisoned.

In the case of Ferguson, Missouri, police-mandated media blackouts and the pervasive detainment, harassment and arrest of journalists cloud public understanding of the ongoing crisis. The constant barrage of tear gas canisters into crowds, backyards and neighborhood streets in recent days has further hampered a full understanding of the situation on the ground.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Talks Police Brutality with Bill Fletcher, Jr.