A Ferguson Refresher

Two weeks ago, my social media feeds were rife with news about Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson. Every night, for too many nights, I sat glued to my computer, watching the livestreams of demonstrations, reading the tweets by the activists and journalists on the scene, listening to a broken city that wanted to capture the world’s attention.

We were enraptured: the New Yorker dedicated a cover to it, #iftheygunnedmedown trended on Twitter for days, Lauryn Hill put out a new song dedicated to Ferguson. Though coverage is quieting down, the upheaval is not yet close to resolution. A refresher: Darren Wilson is still in hiding, Eric Holder is investigating the Ferguson police for “routine” racial profiling or excessive force, and public fundraising efforts for Wilson have been shut down, after raising almost half a million dollars, due to the anonymity of each page’s founder.

Want more? Nadia Barhoum at Al Jazeera has a great article comparing the rhetoric of racism in Ferguson and Palestine, and how systematic, state-based racism and prejudices stifle empathy, and Newsweek’s Pema Levy points out that the already racially divisive city had just seen an election drawn almost exactly along racial lines. Ferguson, we’re still with you.