Ferguson, Missouri
Today, it’s finally made the mainstream media. But terrible things have been happening in Ferguson, Missouri — a small municipality in St. Louis County — since Saturday afternoon, when 18yo Mike Brown was shot and killed by police. According to multiple witnesses, he was shot multiple times despite being unarmed and having his hands in the air; and the interaction was police-initiated, who aggressively confronted Michael and his friend because they were walking down the middle of the street instead of walking on the sidewalk.
His body was left lying in the street for hours, while police kept everyone, including the youth’s mother, at a distance.
Trudy tweeted:
Please note that Brown’s family has requested that pictures of his body be taken down from the web and not further shared.
In response to the resulting peaceful protest that afternoon, and the peaceful prayer vigil that evening, police responded with a show of force: bringing out dogs (dogs!! police bringing dogs in response to black protesters!!), showing up in riot gear, huge numbers of police cars converging on the area, presenting an extremely aggressive posture that I could only read as deliberately provocative. Later that night, there was some property destruction against local businesses, including a fire at a local gas station. Police responded, and the next day there was some minimal coverage in the media focused on the “looting” (scare quotes because really, it only seems to be called looting when black people do it) rather than the original issue of police killing an unarmed black teen.
Sunday the police finally held a press conference, but still didn’t release the name of the officer involved in the shooting, which they had previously said they would do then. They did, however, describe a scenario that was at odds with witness accounts.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: …
Read the rest, including links to more information and actions you can take, over at Gaudete Theology.
BLT 
I’m glad you posted on this Gaudette, and your posts on your own blog were really good.
Thanks, Kristen. I’m still amazed that these and related/subsequent/ongoing events are not dominating the domestic political discourse and news.
Incidentally, here is a video that includes media interviews of the four eyewitnesses to the shooting, but rearranged so that their accounts proceed through the event in chronological order, rather than showing each person’s account sequentially.