# Ferguson: A Racial State of Emergency in America

Sara (L) and Dennis Happel shop for a gun at Metro Shooting Supplies on November 12, 2014 in Bridgeton, Missouri. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

What do you want to bet if this were a photo Bertha (L) and Bubba Washington shopping for a gun in Ferguson, Missouri they wouldn't make it out of the store alive?

The picture above is a direct result of the fear mongering  promoted by government officials as fearful residents await a grand jury's decision on whether to indict #Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black teen, #MikeBrown.

 Between shoot-to-kill police, the KKK,  and trigger-happy vigilantes (see picture above), and a militarized police force,  unarmed people, and sympathetic, peaceful, protesters are sitting ducks! Then, once they're murdered, all the killers have to say is, "I feared for my life!"

 We hold our breaths. We wait for the explosion. Of police weapons – of their tear gas canisters, their stinging rubber bullets, their hundreds of thousands of dollars of new artillery, that will be brought out to intimidate citizens. We wait, reminded that we are unprepared, because one can never prepare to accept violence to our personhood.

Government officials are talking about protecting citizens and businesses from angry black folks, but who is going to protect angry black folks from angry, armed to the teeth white folks with government issued, taxpayer funded, weapons of mass destruction at their disposal?  Ain't black folks citizens too?  Don't black folks  have the right to protest without white folks arming up like they are getting ready to put down a slave revolt?  I'm beginning to think they really do hate us for our freedoms.

"I am fighting so that we have the luxury of simply living".

Just because we're black doesn't mean we are stoopid

The prevailing thought in Rightwingdom is black folks riot when they don't get their way.  In this case, getting their way was the arrest of 9 mm toting, self appointed neighborhood watch Captain George Zimmerman, in connection with the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen.   The fact this was accomplished nonviolently is lost on those itching for a race war.

For the record, black folks will not tarnish the memory of Trayvon Martin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other's by resorting to violence if the justice system let's us down again.  It's not like black folks have a document history of violence and retaliation against white folks.  Besides, it would be stoopid to bring a knife to a gunfight.

Today's Must Read with commentary
Justice and Trayvon Martin:  Where was Left in Alabama the Informed.  Involved.  Progressive blog of record?  Other than an  explanation in plain English of what "stand your ground" means by the resident righty/legal contributor there was not a mumbling word said about Trayvon Martin.  Inquiring minds want to know why?

Wednesday’s decision by Florida Special Prosecutor Angela Corey to charge George Zimmerman with second-degree murder in connection with February’s fatal shooting ofTrayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teenager, raises numerous troubling questions. Among the least considered, but perhaps most vexing: In the quest for justice in this case, were progressive and other well-meaning white people?