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<span class="submitted"><b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blackagendareport.com/node/14644">http://blackagendareport.com/node/14644</a></small></small></b><br>
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<h2>Holder’s Final Betraying Kiss to the People of Ferguson:
The Wholesale Abandonment of Decency</h2>
<h3>by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo,
and Kevin Berends</h3>
<p>All week the DOJ has been floating trial balloons
throughout the media that former Ferguson police officer
Darren Wilson will not be brought up on any charges for his
slaying of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown – despite 16
eyewitnesses who said that Brown was surrendering with his
hands up when he was summarily executed by Wilson; despite
the glaring abuse of the grand jury process by St. Louis
District Attorney Robert McCullough and despite Michael
Brown's 4th Amendment protections against the excessive use
of force.</p>
<p>There is no "very high bar" that needs to be met to
establish the case that Wilson intentionally violated
Michael's civil rights as Holder cynically asserted during
his recent diatribe at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
The Black Attorney General never even mentioned Brown’s
right to protection from excessive force or Eric Garner’s
protection from being strangled by police, his right to duty
of care rather than his slave patrol police assailants'
refusing to administer life saving CPR. Both incidents
demonstrate the broader, reckless disregard for people who
look like Michael and Eric that is rampant in the US. The
echoes of slavery still reverberate through Ferguson and
Brooklyn and Cleveland and Oakland and all the other
race-toxic communities nationwide.</p>
<p>President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder see
nothing wrong with any of this. If they did, they are
empowered to act. Yet the only things they have done
proactively about the issues of police brutality and
fraudulent grand juries are the establishment of a useless <a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/18/president-obama-announces-task-force-21st-century-policing"
target="_blank">Task Force on 21st Century Policing</a> <span
class="print-footnote">[1]</span>, headed by – of all
people – <a
href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/08/dc-paid-26m-to-private-lawyers-in-mass-arrest-case.html"
target="_blank">Charles Ramsey</a> <span
class="print-footnote">[2]</span>, who as Chief of Police
in Washington, DC unleashed a police onslaught against
unarmed civilian demonstrators who were practicing their
constitutional right of peaceful assembly that cost the
District millions in damages awarded in a class action suit.
On top of that, they now toss us the cynical bone of hollow
promises that they will add investigating the Ferguson
police department to the mountain of investigations that
they have already promised into the deaths of Trayvon
Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and so on ad nauseam.</p>
<p>And so today, in advance of the Justice Department's
official announcement that there will be no charges brought
against Darren Wilson we must declare our victory such as it
is. Unlike the investigation into George Zimmerman's hunting
Travyon Martin for sport – February 26, 2015 will mark the
3rd year with still no DOJ ruling – the effort of common
American citizens under the banner of the Hands Up Coalition
DC (consisting of nearly 40 organizations) has forced the
Department of Justice to hastily spew its no-finding without
the usual delaying tactic of waiting years before slipping
some half-measure to the press out the back door late on a
Friday afternoon.</p>
<p>This time – and only because for three months we have stood
sentry at the doors of the DOJ and in the streets across the
country – we smoked them out. They had to reach a decision
in the Brown case. But this free pass that is about to be
granted Darren Wilson is a bitter rebuke to Michael Brown's
family given Mr. Holder's solemn public promise to stand
with them. Holder's breach of promise to them stands
alongside the oath he violates every day that passes without
his prosecuting the highest public officials who designed,
implemented and oversee a systemic regime of torture. The
brutalizing of African Americans and the torture of
prisoners are one and the same. </p>
<p>Sadly, the families of John Crawford III, Tamir Rice, Eric
Garner and all the other victims around the country must let
go of any illusions that DOJ is in their corner.</p>
<p>“St. Louis District Attorney Robert McCullough stacked the
jury, he manipulated witnesses – in some cases with people
he knew to be lying. He allowed no adversarial cross
examination and then presented the findings as though they
were arrived at justly," said Kymone Freeman, Program
Director for We Act Radio. "He stalled for three full months
– while decent people were getting beaten, shot, pepper
sprayed, sound bombed and tear gassed – when he could have
accomplished all he had to do in a single day's work by
acknowledging that 16 people said Michael Brown's hands were
up when he was murdered. It was not up to Bob McCullough to
decide guilt or innocence in this case. It was up to him to
let a jury decide. But that would have included Michael
Brown's peers and McCullough couldn't risk exposing one of
his goons to a fair trial."</p>
<p>A recent <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/justice-department-ferguson-civil-rights-darren-wilson.html?%2520r=o"
target="_blank">New York Times</a> <span
class="print-footnote">[3]</span> article did not even
mention the gross misuse of the Grand Jury system by St.
Louis DA McCullough.</p>
<p>The Department of Justice could have intervened for any one
of those egregious acts, but did not. "The Obama
administration has innocent American blood on its hands. The
entire process is gangrenous. Despite their promises to
Michael Brown's family, the Ferguson community and the
country, neither the president nor the attorney general have
the moral courage to do what is right," said <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/10/22/meet-an-at-large-d-c-council-candidate-eugene-puryear/"
target="_blank">Eugene Puryear</a> <span
class="print-footnote">[4]</span> of #DC Ferguson and
ANSWER Coalition National Organizer.</p>
<p>After holding their hands and looking Michael Brown’s
grieving parents in the eye while assuring them that the US
Department of Justice would stand with the people of
Ferguson, let AG Eric Holder stand once again in front of
cameras, in Ferguson, with Michael Brown's parents beside
him and tell the country that his Department of Justice will
not indict Darren Wilson. Give Eric Holder the photo op of
telling Michael's parents to their face that Darren Wilson’s
assassination of their son was a “good kill” protected by
the US Constitution. Let Mr. Holder tell the Ferguson
community that the DOJ is only investigating how it can
improve the vile, nearly all-white Ferguson police force.
Let him face the righteous wrath of all those betrayed by
the Obama administration's complicity in the murder of
Michael Brown.</p>
<p>Going forward it is now time to consider new tactics and
strategies. </p>
<p>The system that once forbade Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and his compatriots from crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge
has morphed, expanded and grown so sophisticated that it now
accommodates “peaceful demonstrations” with police escorting
protesters from die-ins to “shutting shit down.” This isn't
respecting our constitutional right to petition the
government for redress of grievance. No. This is appeasement
and patronizing. </p>
<p>I don't recall the history lessons about Martin, Biko,
Garvey and Nkrumah holding die-ins in the street. Or of
Malcolm reveling afterwards about standing in front of the
Department of Justice month after month while the folks
inside went about business as usual and sided with yet
another white cop who had blatantly murdered an unarmed
black civilian. And I must have missed the section on Fidel
or Che settling for a special Presidential U.S. Commission
to look into whether or not there should have been changes
made in the way the government did business in Cuba. Nope.
The current post-Ferguson uprisings are most certainly NOT
our grandparents' civil rights movement—or comparable to any
other revolutionary movement. Not by a long shot.</p>
<p>Yet to the casual observer the guys with the machine guns
and helmets and personnel carriers and tasers at their
disposal scored a victory. They had the better team, the
better infrastructure, messaging and message distribution
with eager partners in the legacy media to drive it home. To
be clear – the president is the epitome of the guy with the
guns, as LBJ demonstrated in Selma when he dispatched the
National Guard. Were the president equal to his rhetoric he
would stand his ground. He has both the authority and
capacity. Yet he and his attorney general have gone missing
on this one, while newly-wed Darren Wilson enjoys the
privacy of his sanctuary with impunity while his supporters
bloat his bank account.</p>
<p>The police, the police unions and the highest officials in
government are laughing at our gullibility, our
congeniality, our embarrassing willingness to criticize
"brutal police" while those same police facilitate our
blocking the streets in downtown America – in areas not even
remotely connected to the decision makers – while those
whose support we need are sitting in the clogged traffic we
created, maybe on their way to pick up their children from
daycare or to see their dying mother and are chafing at the
theater being played out at their expense in the streets.</p>
<p>We don't see any businesses doing that as a way to attract
and retain customers. </p>
<p>But a discerning eye sees that in the long arc of Justice
we have scored victories, too. By participating in shut
downs and marches and vigils and workshops and strategic
conversations we have enjoyed a sense of power, the healing
of fellowship and the kindling of a new belief that the
promised land is within reach. And we have learned some
valuable lessons: We now know what to expect from the Obama
administration – nothing. We now know what to expect from
the president's commission on policing – nothing. We now
know that the police have been instructed to tolerate our
fitful outbursts as a way for us to blow off steam, to
diffuse the energy that builds every time the slave patrols
collect another bounty. We have by now seen the only real
policy the government has to offer – waiting us out until
the storm blows over. That's it.</p>
<p>Both sides can only claim partial victories. But riding out
the storm is just as ineffective for them as our docile,
symbolic protesting is for us. And with every innocent
fallen black citizen the platitudes served up by the
administration about a brighter tomorrow ring more hollow
still. When history presented Eric Holder his Rosa Parks
moment, he retreated to the back of the bus. And when
righteousness tapped Barack Obama on the shoulder with his
Lester Maddox moment, he sidled up to the white folks with
the ax handles. Mercifully, Eric Holder is about to ride
into the sunset of mediocrity where untold wealth via
obscene honoraria, book deals and other million dollar
opportunities await. May his opulent future be plagued with
remorse and shame.</p>
<p>Unlike the President's lame assertion that torture and
racism occurred in the past and we need to move forward, may
we remind ourselves that ALL punishable crimes get committed
in the past and adjudicated in the present. No one can be
convicted for a crime they may commit, only those they have
committed. If there is no justice for police-murdered
civilians there can be no peace. And if there is no justice
for war criminals – beginning with the President and applied
equally throughout the chain of command – there can be no
peace.</p>
<p>This is next to war. When our vaunted past revolutionary
leaders confronted their oppressors they didn't shrug, "Give
me liberty, or give me the remote."</p>
<p>Then why do we?</p>
<h5>Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A
Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at
the EPA, that is available through amazon.com. Dr.
Coleman-Adebayo worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the
whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered
vanadium mine workers. Marsha's successful lawsuit led to
the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and
whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of
Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of
2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and
Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet, serves on the
Advisory Board of ExposeFacts.com., and coordinates the
DC-based Hands-Up Coalition (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.handsupcoalitiondc.com">www.handsupcoalitiondc.com</a>)
Contact Marsha at: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:MarshaCAdebayo@blackagendareport.com">MarshaCAdebayo@blackagendareport.com</a> and
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.marshacoleman-adebayo.com">www.marshacoleman-adebayo.com</a></h5>
<h5>Kevin Berends is Director of Communication for
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.nofearinstitute.org">www.nofearinstitute.org</a>, co-founder and first executive
editor of Lake Affect Magazine and producer of the
independent television program 'Streetlevel.' Kevin can be
contacted at: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:info@handsupcoalitiondc.com">info@handsupcoalitiondc.com</a> </h5>
<p>Watch the Hands Up Coalition-DC and Witness Against Torture
demonstration </p>
at the Department of Justice and occupation of DC Police
Station:
<a
href="https://www.popularresistance.org/coffins-brought-to-dc-police-to-protest-police-killings/"
target="_blank">https://www.popularresistance.org/coffins-brought-to-dc-police-to-protest-police-killings/</a>
<span class="print-footnote">[5]</span> <span
class="print-footnote">[6]</span> </div>
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<p><strong>Links:</strong><br>
[1]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/18/president-obama-announces-task-force-21st-century-policing">http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/18/president-obama-announces-task-force-21st-century-policing</a><br>
[2]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/08/dc-paid-26m-to-private-lawyers-in-mass-arrest-case.html">http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/08/dc-paid-26m-to-private-lawyers-in-mass-arrest-case.html</a><br>
[3]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/justice-department-ferguson-civil-rights-darren-wilson.html?%2520r=o">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/justice-department-ferguson-civil-rights-darren-wilson.html?%2520r=o</a><br>
[4]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/10/22/meet-an-at-large-d-c-council-candidate-eugene-puryear/">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/wp/2014/10/22/meet-an-at-large-d-c-council-candidate-eugene-puryear/</a><br>
[5]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.popularresistance.org/coffins-brought-to-dc-police-to-protest-police-killings/">https://www.popularresistance.org/coffins-brought-to-dc-police-to-protest-police-killings/</a><br>
[6]
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