In a highly controversial move that's widely been pegged as an alarming miscarriage of justice, a jury in Ferguson, Missouri, failed to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer responsible for the August 9 killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black male.
There are only two people who know exactly what took place on Aug. 9 at around noon, and one of them is dead. But while the precise details of what transpired between Wilson and Brown may be murky, the implications of Wilson using deadly force are not. Across the country, Brown's death served as a sobering reminder that racial discrimination is alive and well, and that police violence is disproportionately directed at underrepresented minorities, especially black males.
To be clear, Wilson has not publicly said anything explicitly racist throughout this whole ordeal. But it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see his intolerance come through. After the jury's decision, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch decided to make public an interview between police administrators and Wilson immediately following the shooting. In recounting the incident, Wilson described Brown as a Hulk-like "grunting" giant who resembled a "demon." As Vox contributor Lauren Williams points out, this is a clear example of Wilson displaying implicit discrimination – that is, capitalizing on the racist stereotype of black males' physical size. A CNN legal analyst has dismissed Brown's police interview as "fanciful and not credible."
Still, a jury decided not to pursue charges against Wilson. But while the jury made its decision – the process behind which is outlined here – that doesn't mean the issue simply goes away. Far from it.
From The Streets Of Ferguson To Twitter, Protests And Activism Abound
In the wake of the jury's decision, the response was immediate and widespread. Understandably, the largest-scale and most visible protests took place in Ferguson itself, where people began demonstrating in the street after the news broke. According to ABC, more than 12 buildings were set fire to in the hours after the news, and over 60 people were arrested. But the protests don't stop at Ferguson – they've also been spreading across the nation and the cybersphere. According to NBC News, demonstrators in San Francisco forced a highway to shut down. In New York City, they blocked a tunnel.
The message couldn't be clearer: Until racial disparities in criminal justice are addressed, the voices of the oppressed – and their allies – will be heard. To that end, protesters have been holding up signs and badges with phrases like, "A badge is not a license to kill," and, "We will not be silent." And folks on Twitter are being just as vocal.
According to NBC, by 11 p.m. on Nov. 24, Twitter users had tweeted more than 3.5 million times regarding Ferguson. Around the time Bob McCullough announced the grand jury's decisions, there were more than 52,000 tweets about Ferguson going out per minute. A map detailing how these tweets were geographically dispersed shows that the bulk came from the eastern United States. With the exception of swaths of users from select areas in California, Washington and Oregon, there was very little Ferguson-related Twitter activity in the central and western states.
Here are what some notable Twitter users had to say about the news:
- Pharrell Williams: "I'm heartbroken over the news of no indictment in Ferguson. Let's all pray for peace."
- Kathy Griffin: "No indictment, really????"
- Orlando Jones: "Some things in life are sad, but not surprising.
As protests continue, it's clear that the jury's failure to indict Wilson was hardly the final word in the Brown case.
