# 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".