ONE YEAR AFTER FERGUSON, CHANGE STILL MUST COME - IN HARLEM COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER - By Rev Jesse L. JACKSON
After three days of peaceful demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown's fatal shooting in Ferguson, Mo., yet another African American man was shot by police there. While the facts are still unclear, the tragedy will surely add to the national protests challenging our racially biased structures of criminal injustice. A week earlier, a young, unarmed man was shoot to death by a police officer in Seneca, S.C. Only this young man was not black, but white. According to CNN, Zachary Hammond was fastally shot while in a Hard-ee's parking lot. he was 19 years old and on a date. The police officer was conducting a drug investigation and claims that he shot Hammond in self-defense when the unarmed teenager drove his car to him. A small amount of marijuana was found in the front passenger compartment. Police said the target of the investigation was not Hammond but his date. An independent autopsy showed, however, that Hammond was shot in the back, contradicting the official story. '' He was a 19 year old, 121 pound kid killed basically for a joint '' family attorney Eric Bland said. CNN reported that if this had been an African-American victim, it would have received national attention. That is true now, but only because an active movement of demonstrators have made it so. In fact, virtually the only protest to Hammond's death were issued by #BlackLivesMatter activists on social media. One year after Michael Brown's fatal shooting in Ferguson, unarmed Black men are still seven times more likely than Whites to die by police gunfire according to a new study by the Washington Post. So far this year, the Post reports, 24 unarmed Black men have been shot and killed by police - once evely nine days. The Post reports that 585 people in total have been shot and killed by police through August 7. (The Guardian database reports 700 have been killed by police). There is no question that African American men are a greatest risk. After the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, national protest have forced reform of the police and of mass incarceration policies onto the national agenda. The names of those who died from police violence - Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Samuel DuBose, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Freddy Gray, Sandra Bland and more are etched in public memory because demonstrators have demanded justice for them. The non-violent protest of demonstrators and the Black church have forced community after community to respond. After Ferguson, and with the spread of cameras that have caught the police in lies, the police are no longer completely immune. In 24 states, reform measures - many focused on requiring body cameras - have been introduced. These are merely the first stirrings of change. But the killings haven't stopped. While African Americans are disproportionate risk from the structural and human biases of our criminal justice system, we should not forget that working and poor people of all races suffer from police excessive use of force. Police kill more Whites than Blacks. Of the 700 killings it has recorded, the Guardian reports that 340 were White, 179 Black and 101 Hispanic.
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