In 2004, Sean Bailey recalls, he was driving through the streets of St. Louis County en route to a party, when he saw a familiar black-and-white car out of the corner of his eye. He reached for his phone to warn the friend he was following to slow down, but it was too late; the cop blared his siren and pulled up behind him. Bailey, who had a warrant stemming from a failure to appear in court for unpaid traffic tickets, felt a familiar pang of anxiety. He knew exactly what was going to happen next.
When a community issues arrest warrants for more offenses than it has residents, something's deeply wrong.
The last round of voter restrictions came after the 2010 Republican wave, when new GOP majorities passed voter identification laws and slashed ballot access in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Now, three months after the 2014 Republican wave, another class of state lawmakers are prepping another assault on voting rights under the same guise of “uniformity” and “ballot integrity.”
The grand jury has made its decision. Darren Wilson is no longer a police officer. The protests, in Ferguson, Missouri, at least, are starting to die down.
Hundreds of protesters in Missouri have a begun a week-long long march organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a move designed to inspire the spirit of the civil rights movement of 1950s and 60s, following a grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown.
Ferguson is ground zero for all Americans who are interested in a vision of social justice that transcends anything we have ever achieved.
An indictment of the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown would not prove that black lives matter in America.
More than 3,000 Ferguson residents have registered since August 9. In a new development that many activists believe could spark a political shift, voter registration in St. Louis County has soared since August 9, the day that unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by Officer Darren Wilson, an election official said on Thursday.