Continuing their “Monday Mourning” demonstrations, protestors knocked on Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III’s door on Monday, March 16 at 7 a.m. with only one demand – to resign.
“He answered the door, unlike others we have visited,” said Elizabeth Vega, leader of the Artivists who initiated the demonstration. However, she said that the “carpet guy” showed up at the same time, so that might have been the reason he opened the door.
Previously, the protest group has visited the homes of St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger in the early morning hours. At each home, they lay on their doorsteps fake coffins, lists of demands and Black Lives Matter goodie bags with coffee and bags of seeds.
This Monday, however, the group did something a little different. Through a megaphone, they blasted a 10-minute audio recording of Knowles’ interviews with NPR and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, where Knowles talked about the Department of Justice’s damning report on the City of Ferguson’s municipal court and police department. The audio track interspersed Knowles saying that the majority of people in Ferguson don’t believe there’s a racial divide with residents talking about experiences that plainly suggest otherwise.
Knowles asked the protestors to turn off the recording so they could talk, but they refused.
“We’ve been talking for eight months, and he clearly doesn’t get it,” Vega said. “It was more of a time for him to listen. We wanted him to listen to his words contrasted against the words of the people.”
In Knowles’ interviews, Vega pointed out that he described the DOJ as “hostile.” She said she spoke with the mother of a boy who was bitten by a Ferguson police dog and had to go through two surgeries. During an interview with the boy, a DOJ representative had to leave the room because she got too emotional hearing his story, Vega said.
“The level of disconnect to where he can review something like that and say the DOJ is just being ‘hostile,’” she said, “that shows he’s not the one to move the city forward.”
Knowles passed out business cards to the group of about 15 protestors, which included members of the activist group Tribe X, but he was visibly agitated, Vega said.
Normally, the group leaves cardboard fist signs in the elected official’s yard with the names of citizens who have been killed at the hands of police officers. But Knowles asked them not to.
“He told us to put our fists in the trash and not litter his lawn because ‘we like to keep a clean neighborhood here,’” Vega said.
Rather than see their artistic work go in the trash, they took it with them, she said. Now there is a fist and a sign that reads, “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds” at the Michael Brown Jr. memorial site on Canfield Drive.
Among the things that they dropped off was a letter asking for Knowles’ resignation. It stated, “Your disregard of the DOJ report, denial of racial strife, and inability to unify Ferguson are all indicative of the need for change. …The citizens do not want a long drawn-out recall process. If you love Ferguson as you say you do, you would prove it by stepping aside.”
Clueless Kinder
Knowles’ was no match for Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder in the clueless department, though. Kinder actually went on TV to say it is the DOJ, not the Ferguson Police Department or the St. Louis region, that is “racist.” To respond to a detailed 102-page federal investigative report on racist local government practices by saying, in effect, “No – you’re the racist” is about as weak as it gets.
Optional idiocy
Kinder has competition among Missouri Republicans for bankruptcy of thought, morality and imagination. State Rep. Rick Brattin, a Republican who serves as vice chair of the House Corrections Committee, has filed House Bill 1347, which “adds the option of by firing squad to the manner by which the death penalty may be administered.” Good to have options, right? Why not “add the option” of public dismemberment or burning at the stake while we’re going back in time?
Speaking of executions, the State of Missouri snuffed out Cecil Clayton on March 17. Clayton shot Purdy Deputy Christopher Castetter in the forehead and killed him in 1996. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed lower court rulings that Clayton was competent to stand trial and be punished for his crime, though he lost 20 percent of his frontal lobe (8 percent of his entire brain) in a sawmill accident 24 years before the fatal shooting, and family members testified that it damaged his mind and judgment. Attorney General Chris Koster applauded the execution as someone “who has carried a badge” for most of his adult life, though the EYE thinks that must be a badge of shame in this shameful matter.
Opportunistic mongering
Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, either knows a lot more about the March 12 shootings of two police officers outside the Ferguson Police Department – or he is willing to express assumptions about an ongoing criminal investigation in a manner that is entirely inappropriate for someone who serves in the criminal justice system.
“Two more cops shot because of a hatred born in poverty and nurtured by opportunistic hate mongers,” Canterbury wrote of the shootings.
Huh? As a matter of fact, no evidence has been produced that Jeffrey Williams, who has been charged with a number of felonies in connection with the shootings, harbors any hate for the police. According to St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch, Williams claimed he was not shooting at the cops. Williams’ attorney Jerryl Christmas has since said Williams denied he shot anyone and only confessed because he was beaten up by cops. (St. Louis County Police deny that Williams was beaten by police and claim his confession was recorded on audio and video.)
As for Williams’ alleged nurturing by “opportunistic hate mongers,” Lord only knows where, from his home in South Carolina, Canterbury gets this stuff about a young man from St. Louis County he has never met.
The Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression is having none of it.
“Hatred is not born of poverty,” they said in a statement. “There are a lot of well-off bigots and racists in the middle class, upper middle class and wealthy echelons of America. One only has to look at the recent episode with Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity to recognize this.”
Opacity in government
Better Together St. Louis has released a new report on transparency – or, rather, opacity – in St. Louis regional government.
“After more than 130 days” since getting Sunshine Law requests for public records, the report noted, “several St. Louis County municipalities have still failed to fulfill the Sunshine Request. These include Berkeley, Beverly Hills, Clayton, Country Club Hills, Hazelwood, Hillsdale, Kinloch, Lakeshire, Manchester, Pine Lawn, St. Ann, University City and Vinita Park.”
Others dragged their feet and charged high ticket prices: “Bellefontaine Neighbors took 85 days to fulfill the request, at a price of $770.90, while Des Peres took 65 days and charged Better Together $738.50. Pacific took 63 days and charged $1,082.64. Manchester has yet to fulfill the request, but has charged $800 to date. As of today, Better Together’s collection of this data has cost $15,909.30.”
Read the report at www.bettertogetherstl.com/transparency-report.
Fannie Lou Hamer fundraiser
The Fannie Lou Hamer Coalition is hosting a fundraiser 6-7:30 p.m. Friday March 20 at 7717 Natural Bridge Rd. Organizers will also accept a check payable to Fannie Lou Hamer Coalition / PO Box 8442 / Olivette, MO 63132 or online via www.fannielouhamerclub.org.
