I was 8 years old in 1964 when I heard Dr. Martin Luther King speak on TV and even then I could tell that he was bigger than life and that he spoke moral truths. Fast Forward 50 years later and we have an absolute fraudster and charlatan in the form of “Rev” Al Sharpton (who is even beginning to steal phraseology and cadence from the late Dr. King) as the new head of the “civil rights” movement. Sharpton as the evil heir to King however has stirred up much trouble or tragedy in the past with such disgraceful events such as the Tawana Brawley case, the Crown Heights riots and murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, Freddie’s Fashion Mart fire and the death of 7 people, the defamation of the Duke Lacrosse college kids and recently the racially and distorted case of the Trayvon Martin death with the consequential forced into hiding of Robert Zimmerman because of threats to his life.
Now Sharpton, Jackson and Farrakhan are at it again with the current Ferguson case. Ferguson, a town outside of St. Louis, Mo., has a population of 21,000, 2/3 of which is African American. In the past it was mainly white and the police force is a reflection of its past with only 3 of the 53 police officers being black - the rest white. This didn’t seem right or seem equitable to the inhabitants but here’s how Ferguson mayor, Jaimes Knowles, explains it.”We hire everyone that we can get. There's also the problem that a lot of young African-American people don't want to go into law enforcement. They already have this disconnect with law enforcement, so if we find people who want to go into law enforcement who are African-American we’re all over it because we want them to help us bridge the gap.” The other major factor which fed the tension was the matter of traffic stops in Ferguson which were twice as likely to result in arrests for blacks than for whites. However the unfortunate reality is that blacks as a group in general, commit a disproportionate number of crimes to their population, as in homicide - 49% of which is committed by blacks while they comprise only 13% of the population.
That being the backdrop, the recent case of policeman Darren Wilson shooting death of the “unarmed” but 6’4” 290 pound 18 year old Michael Brown, sparked upheaval in Ferguson. At first we heard from witnesses, most notably friend, Dorian Johnson, of the deceased Brown, who in fact was with Brown at the time of the shooting, that Brown was shot in the back then turned around and begged for his life as the policeman kept shooting him - killing him like an animal. Reports emerged later from different sources (to be sorted out by our legal system) that Brown had grievously injured officer Wilson by breaking his orbital eye socket and wrestled with him, even to momentarily obtain the officer’s gun which had actually discharged in the car. There is audio tape of a conversation of a bystander shortly after the shooting corroborating that Brown was actually charging back to the officer as the officer was shooting. This version of the story, however, didn’t seem to make much of a difference in the Sharpton/Jesse Jackson led chaos in the protests in Ferguson to detract from the theme of purported police brutality which explained the case.
The pattern is clear by now. The fraudulent civil rights hucksters don’t want to wait for the legal system to proceed because by then the real facts will emerge and will interfere with the manufactured “facts” which favor the cause to protest. This strategy seems to win even though in retrospect the created “facts”of the movement’s martyrs no longer fit the real and established facts. Trayvon Martin was not the innocent kid with Skittles and Grape drink - rather he was the gun toting thug lamenting that there wasn’t enough blood drawn from his latest victim as per his phone texts and Facebook page and as established in the trial, pounded Zimmerman’s head on the concrete before being shot. The current martyr, Michael Brown, of whom our President at first said (again inserting himself in a racial case that he knew nothing about) that we should keep his memory alive, was subsequently shown on a video committing a strong armed robbery, as he steals a box of cigars and when confronted by the store clerk, pushes him away and threatens more violence when the clerk approaches him again. In this video we see with Brown, his friend Dorian Johnson, also stealing cigars but putting them back when confronted by the clerk. As it turns out, this media star witness, Dorian Johnson, has a warrant for his arrest from 2011 for stealing a package from a porch and repeatedly lying to the police as to his real age and identity. Oops!
Toward the peak of the protests in Ferguson there were over 80 arrests, 53 of which were from the city of St. Louis, about 20 of which were from out-of-state and only 4 were from the town of Ferguson. 30 businesses were either looted or torched and
11,000 children were kept home from school due to the chaos and danger on the streets. Additionally, of course, businesses in the whole area lost lots of revenue due to closures. The St. Louis County Executive has already applied for a federal bailout of the Ferguson businesses that were destroyed. Even though most businesses are covered by insurance, premiums after such big claims, sky rocket for the whole area as we saw here in NY City after 9/11. Sometimes it can take years for businesses in an area after rioting, looting and arsons to recover. Besides the challenge of rebuilding, businesses lose a capital reserve from the revenue disruption and the area loses its reputation to attract customers and bank funding. On top of all this, a black lawyer’s association is suing, as a class action suit, the Ferguson police department for intimidating the protesters with a militarized police presence. What? The police didn’t hurt even one protester!
A convenience store, by the name of QuikTrip was looted and torched (brought on by a false rumor that it was the store that videotaped the Brown robbery) and despite that, Ferguson State Senator, Maria Chappelle-Nadal who was instrumental in staging daytime protests said of QuikTrip that that was the people’s Tahrir Square. She also said that if the police officer is not convicted then what happened in Ferguson up to now will look like a picnic. The Missouri governor as well called for a "vigorous prosecution" of the police officer before an indictment was even established. US Attorney General, Eric Holder, (who once said that Americans are cowards because we are too afraid to talk about race and that those who criticize him or our president are racists) descended on the town with the assurance that since he is black he understands the mistrust that the town has toward the police. He did not speak or reassure the Ferguson police that he will seek justice for them. Holder explained that a federal probe of civil rights violations of this case is warranted because of the issues of civil rights that predate the shooting of Michael Brown. Tying collective inequities with the actions of an individual is clearly a distortion of justice for officer Darren Wilson. Missouri US Congressman Lacy Clay, also stated that there will be no peace until a conviction is arrived at. Missouri State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed is circulating a petition to remove St. Louis County Prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, from prosecuting the case if there is an indictment, because some of McCulloch's family members were police officers and that his father, who was also a police officer was killed by a black man in 1964. Senator Roy Blunt said that there will be rioting if McCulloch is not removed as prosecutor - all this despite the fact that McCulloch has been reelected and served in his position since 1991.
What is obvious is that the Ferguson African-American community feels very short-shrifted and persecuted. The tricky part is to decipher who is short-shrifting and picking on them. The conventional wisdom which prevails today is that society is racist as it has been in slavery and Jim Crow days. It follows therefore, that the white establishment (or “sell-out” blacks) are denying blacks proper education, employment and equity within the criminal justice system. The more nuanced explanation is that the Liberal establishment in conjunction with the “grievance industry” black leadership is impeding blacks success in education by forcing their children to attend failing public schools, practicing lax criminal justice so that criminals roam and rule the streets of black ghettos (such as Chicago’s South Side and Detroit Michigan the way they used to control Harlem and BedStuy here in NYC), government offering hand outs to single mothers which discourages the father’s presence in the home, taking vocational training out of the public schools because Liberals believe that everyone has to go to college - these are the real enemies of the lower income black families. In 2010, according to FBI statistics, a total of 2,720 blacks were killed by 2,450 who were also blacks (90% black on black). These victims never turn into martyrs because it doesn’t serve the cause of our current “civil rights” leaders.
What is in short supply are the leaders who will finally and steadfastly align with those in government, civic life and spiritual leadership who understand these forces and causations and join them to educate the masses who believe in the false messiahs. I say it is imperative that Jewish leadership once again take a front seat as they once did when forming the NAACP and show a new direction for the 21st century. The vacuum in legitimate black leadership, political sobriety and true civic awareness and concern, is extremely dangerous because the fraudsters and criminals are looking to fill that vacuum and when they do, everyone suffers. The devastation can happen anywhere in the country. I’m sure Al Sharpton has a lot of frequent flyer miles and if G-d forbid something goes wrong in a town near you Al Sharpton and his goons may pay you a visit and that’s one show you wouldn’t want to see for free. It’s time we really focus our attention on what can be done to avert this.
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