Insurrection

Soooo....Philly fans will have to explain to me why they just paid St. Louis for the honor of Bradford. A similar player to Foles, but more injuries, older, higher salary and they gave St. Louis picks AND Foles? I assumed this was a deal to allow them to move up (i.e. if the got picks or had someone in mind to send Bradford to) or a straight swap, but you don't give picks away if that is the case.

I get trading McCoy and even letting Maclin leave. They weren't his guys and you can argue about whether they are worth what they are about paid (and whether you want to invest that much into two guys who play a devalued position and a receiver who is very good, but not elite). Like with Miami, Suh may be worth his price but is he worth the clogged cap space when you want to retain other guys down the line? I don't know if I would have done one or both, but I can understand it.

But the Bradford trade...? It's baffling.

Okay, I'm a St. Louis fan....and even I do not understand what the hell we just got away with (and we got 3 first rounders out of DC for RGIII).

We didn't even give up the 10th pick, we just have this elaborate set up for conditional and additional picks. I can understand Bradford being reunited with Pat Shurmur, his original OC, and he would probably do well in Kelly's system, but that's conditional on having A) An awesome Offensive Line, B) A great running corps, C) Receivers.

I don't know about A (for the record the Rams are 10 years in on trying to find that), but they traded B (McCoy) to Buffalo (leaving Darren Sproles), and Maclin just went to Kansas City to reunite with Andy Reid leaving a receiving corps of Riley Cooper, Jordan Matthews, Brent Celek, and Zach Ertz.

...yeah. That happened.

If Bradford turns into what he was supposed to be, I won't be surprised, but he's more injury prone then Foles and still has like $13 million owed to him a year, while Foles has $1.25 million a year. The problem Foles has is that he goes to a team that has no offensive line. 

So this has a 50/50 chance of working out, but if it does for the Rams? Then Les Snead is magic. (Seriously how do we still have the 10th overall pick?)

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Now onto other news.

Jimmy Graham has been sent to the Seahawks. Is this the start of a firesale or something else?

http://www.nfl.com/n...my-graham-trade

Darrelle Revis wins a Superbowl with the Patriots, goes back to the Jets for 70 million, (39 guaranteed)

http://www.nfl.com/n...o-terms-on-deal

Ravens trade Ngata to the Lions for 4th and 5th rounders. Lose Torrey Smith to the 49ers for $40 million. 

Frank Gore had cold feet with the Eagles, signs with the Colts.

And suddenly the NFL is an 11-month long event with this craziness...

*goes back to playing Deliverance on a banjo*

It was so much to read and I haven't finished it all yet, but wow from what I've read you've made some valid points. And yes, you're right about the Nat Turner rebellion, and I absolutely agree that violence won't solve everything, but neither will peaceful protests. I just wish there was a clear way, you know? Because to be completely honest with the Rodney King case, those riots broke out yet here we are today. 

 

Like I've said before, the situation really frustrates me because it's so personal for many people of color living in America. 

 

Once I finish reading this all I'll probably edit this with a response. But so far you've made some reasonable points that are worth considering. 

 

Edit: Okay I read it all and there's nothing to refute really. You've hit every nail on the point when it comes to the "violence" debate.   You actually helped me see things in a different light. I won't lie, I've become very influenced by some of the...."unpopular" teachings that came out of the Civil Rights Movement. They really consumed me once Ferguson happened, that I may have kind of lost touch. It's just the constant rage and helplessness as a black person in America, the fact that our own country makes us feel lesser than a human sometimes? That feeling can really change the way you think. But what you've written is very logical, and the truth is that deep down I really don't want violence. But I just don't have hope that people are actually going to talk with their money. :(  

 

Now if you get more violent then you'll wind up making those type of people look more reasonable. 

 

That's what stood out to me the most ^. But it's like what you said, we are not a people who gives up hope. So I'll try my best to keep positive about this situation. 

That feeling that you have unfortunately has been something passed down from generation to generation in this country, so there's nothing people can blame about you feeling angry about it. Yeah, simply protesting down the street isn't going to solve things, it's going to take disruptions in people's everyday lives to make a difference, but that can be non-violent. While it's good to have hope you can't wait around for it to simply happen at the same time, so no matter how big or how small an impact it is, it's important to make a difference. 

There will be moments that make you feel angry or emotional in the future. Here I'll give you one that makes me annoyed that just happened: The Police Officer's Association for Condemning Rams players for Holding up their hands in Solidarity for Ferguson.

Quite honestly whoever thought that was a smart PR move to condemn the Rams knowing that eventually they were going to recognize it was a complete numbskull. Your statement is all over the news and making it harder to resolve the situation between the community and cops. Nice going.

(This is my favorite Sports Guy over at the Post-Dispatch and he had a pretty good response to that: http://www.stltoday....ff61a4c4aa.html

Hopefully that puts more people in the seats cause there's plenty when you're team hasn't had a .500+ record in 10 years.)

That's just one example, but you can't let that anger, rage, or helplessness consume you because it's not healthy. Sometimes the easiest way to have an impact is by creating dialogue or having a conversation. That gets the wheels moving. That's why it's more important to fight for something than against something. Because we're not just people who don't give up hope, we're people that just don't plain give up in general when faced with a challenge. That's important to remember as well.

Glad I could help though! =D

 

Honestly, I believe the best thing that peaceful protesting does is boycotting. Money can be heard. But our government just waits for everything to calm down and just acts as if nothing ever happened afterwards. I mean, the Rodney King case was over 20 years ago. It's the same thing every year. Peaceful protesting has gotten us nowhere with this specific issue. 

 

But I also don't want people to get hurt? Seriously, the whole Ferguson situation really frustrates me....

Ultimately the key to influence in this country is wealth, target people's wallets and ultimately you'll be heard.

And it's understandable to be frustrated by this issue, my Grandmother lives in a neighboring town next to Ferguson, I live at most 20 minutes from there and have had backup plans to places because Protests have shut down the highways I need to take. They shut down the malls and shopping centers around my house earlier this week. So people know what's going on and they're equally if not more frustrated because of the history of this area and Missouri that exists.

But violence ultimately isn't going to be the answer to everything, neither are simple non-violent protests. What's prevalent in your argument before about America having a history of violence is true, but also there are other metrics that need to be looked at because not everything is going to just simply work.

When it comes to the Boston Tea Party, the main thing about it was the actual destruction of property which was an act of violence, but the thing that made it successful was not the actual destruction of the tea in the harbor itself, it was how people used it. Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty took it and spun it into a message of "taxation without representation" making it appealing to other people in the colonies, so when the backlash eventually came from the British it led to the colonies creating the First Continental Congress and then Lexington and Concord happened. If they had simply destroyed the tea and done nothing else then we wouldn't be talking about this right now. People learned how to use the symbolism of the thing and made it into something larger.

As for Nat Turner, in history it's complicated because of the influence of the Second Great Awakening on his actions, but the actual positive impact that the slave rebellion created is debatable. The backlash however from the slaveowners and the whites in the South is important to note here because after his rebellion failed the pro-slavery elements of the state managed to use the fear that long existed in the region since French aristocrats fleeing the Hatian Revolution arrived. It left a long lasting negative impact on the African-American community since it basically made slavery a totalitarian system in the South. Most of the African-American population was made illiterate in Virginia until after the Civil War was over because of it, they also couldn't have their own religious services anymore and were made to learn a white pro-slavery version in its place. Why we even remember Nat Turner isn't because of his rebellion as much as the Backlash that came afterward, that was the real impact of it. I'm not arguing why it shouldn't have happened, because eventually something like that was going to happen in the South, but the violence that the Southern states conveyed in response that became part of the series of events that eventually led to the Civil War. It was because of how bad the other side acted in response to Turner that got the attention of people that would support him as a martyr. 

Now that I've gotten out of the way let's talk about why things are more difficult if they get violent because of Ferguson. It's going to be because the two issues that I brought up in the examples of the Boston Tea Party and Nat Turner. How is the issue going to be spun for the majority of people? What will the backlash to it be if any were to exist?

Our society has a problem with how we interpret events because of Selective Exposure, that people want to see and hear things from a position that they already agree with and not from any other angle. Major news outlets and internet news sites contribute to this, but the internet also plays a role in being a double edged sword. Not everything you see or read is true and people don't take the time to source or proofread the information that they collect or see because they aren't Media Literate. So they just assume something is real until it isn't or isn't real until it is. It's harder to convince someone who has already made their mind up than someone who hasn't, that's just life.

The second problem we have as a society is Instant Gratification, we want everything right now and we're not going to wait until we get it. No one is going to sit around and wait for something to happen and if it doesn't happen right away they aren't going to stick around very long either. Things like the issues that are in play in Ferguson are not going to be solved in a night, week, month, year or even several years. People are going to have to be ready to go for the long haul in order to get what they ultimately want and know when and when not to go for something and in this day and age you're going to have to remind them every chance you get that the problem still exists otherwise they slip back into the normal hegemony of things.

The third problem, and this wasn't as big of a problem in the Civil Rights movement, Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII, Progressive Era, and other parts of our history. We have a serious leadership vacuum going on right now on all sides. There's no accountability and there's no one taking a stand and putting themselves on the mantle of responsibility that stands out as a figurehead or someone to rally behind and who can convey and bring the message or results to people that need it. Why did Occupy Wall Street fail? Because they had no clear message, they had no way of conveying that message, there's was no leadership because they wanted to do the "everyone is a leader!" crap. Hell at least the Socialists in the early 20th Century had Eugene Debbs. The reason the Republican Party is at the mercy of the loudest and more extreme members of their party is because they don't have credible leadership that knows how to control and focus the mob. Reagan knew when to put his members in their place if need be and work with the other side to get things done in the 80s. 

The fact is we are more polarized because we allowed ourselves to become more polarized. That's why the political scales tip and swing so violently now.  

The problem with the evolution of civil rights in this country is because every generation has a cycle of improvement and regression that keeps going until eventually things change. The triumph of emancipation in the Civil War was followed by the failure of Reconstruction, the way things are now the Civil Rights movement probably had the same thing happen to it. A period of great stride and improvement that led to the end of social inequality is stuck in turmoil with the still lingering sins of economic and judicial inequality. Really when you think about it, once the leaders in the 60's were assassinated or out of the picture, they pretty much disappeared from the public eye in the 70's and 80's. Those issues are now in a confluence of the other issues that plague our society, you can't solve one without the other and you can't talk about one without the other. Whoever the coined the term "Post-Racial America" after Obama's election must be mocked a lot these days. 

So let's go back to issue of why more violence in here would be less productive. It's because we're divided the way we are and the way things are made up. So here in St. Louis County it's completely understandable why you would be angry over Darren Wilson not getting indicted. The man's previous force was from a neighboring department in Jennings, where years earlier the department had been disbanded over evidence of racial discrimination and profiling. The county police once had a supervisor in 2009-2010 that declared "Black days" where they would specifically target Blacks on highways & the black officer who reported him got taunted by the department. There's a place called "The Divide" that uses a street that separates black neighborhoods that experienced white flight and economic loss when the manufacturing base went overseas from the affluent suburbs and businesses in South and West County. Bob McCulloch, the County Prosecutor, is not only heavily favorable to law enforcement (and presumed biased because his police officer father was shot by an African-American man wanted for kidnapping), but has also been in his job since 1991. Nixon, the now Governor of Missouri, was elected Attorney General on an included platform of ending the practice of busing in kids from the city that had no access to good schools, to the better schools in the county. Missouri is also state that is shading a deeper color of red and then you throw in the affiliations of people with certain political parties. Those are just the examples for local reasons, add in a mix of the nation split for various reasons between whites and blacks and the past few years of major cases of young African-Americans being killed by people who get off with so much as a slap on the wrist, then yeah, people are going to get really mad about it. 

That's what the probable view of a local protestor looks like. Now this is a look at what someone that's probably a local Darren Wilson supporter sees. They most likely live in South County, where it's almost a completely different world that you step into. Every day on the local news you see a story talking about a shooting, a robbery, a drug bust, or an arrest in North County, Downtown, or East St. Louis and usually the suspect is black. You have a lower unemployment rate than in the entire state while African-American males age 18-24 have a near 50 percent unemployment rate in the same county and are also not doing well in school. People don't recognize that this is because of the White Flight and State and Local policies that their parents and grandparents generation enacted, they just see them committing crimes, not going to school and getting killed or arrested. You even hear a story about something going on in Chicago of "black-on-black" crime. You hear about young minority kids playing knockout games with innocent people and you're more likely to know someone who is a cop that has had to deal with the issues coming from the areas where crime occurs. So you hear about Mike Brown, and your gut instinct is to trust the police because you know them and you trust them better than others. You want to look at it from the facts put out and you see it from the POV of people you trust, the people on the news channel you watch and law enforcement officials. So you catch details that they say, "aspiring rapper", "marijuana use", and that he attacked the officer first. That's going to click into your head of all the things that you see on the news and know about the difference between your part of town and that part of town. Then you see people robbing and looting local stores and shops that are local mom & pop businesses because a kid you don't think is as innocent as people portray him to be got himself killed, yelling that if they don't get the cop who did this put on death row they'll keep doing what they're doing. Then you see that Mike Brown is pushing an employee out of the way after grabbing a bunch of cigarillos without paying at the time. That only confirms to you that Mike Brown isn't the gentile giant that people made him out to believe. Then all these national voices, polarizing figures like Al Sharpton come to town, the same lawyer for Trayvon Martin's family is in town, all begin pushing the same line you hear before from them. Then the cops back off one night in August, and there's looting being broadcasted all over the world and the police didn't do anything about it. Then drug cases are dropped because Darren Wilson is the officer involved and he's forced into hiding from an angry mob. And finally when there are no charges, there's footage of Michael Brown's stepfather yelling "Burn this b*tch down!" and Ferguson, Dellwood and other cities are being burned by what appears to be their own communities over the apparent lack of evidence to prosecute.

Now, which one of these two people do you think voted in more elections? Scary to think about, right? Now if you get more violent then you'll wind up making those type of people look more reasonable.

To allow ourselves to be governed by rage, the allowance of violence will only seek to drive people into the deepest parts of their ignorance. To confirm what they already believe to be true and to make them more confident in telling others that they are right by the proof of what was done. It will only make those voices louder and more influential and push them to try put everything back to a sort of status quo from before. All it will do is bring more arrests, more violence and more backlash economically to their own community and at the ballot box when it should be trying to make schools better, make wages and standard of living better, reform the judicial systems and law enforcement, and do something where people aren't afraid to send their kids off or fear walking around at night. That's what people should be aiming for, but to become more violent only gives those looking to bring violence a reason to do so. MLK said that rioting is the language of the unheard but he also said nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Violence will only inflame ignorance and rage, that'll make the backlash much harder and the hole much deeper to get out of when the dust settles. People will only use violence as an excuse to cause more pain.

(Which is why you'll probably hear about this on the news in a couple of days, whether you want to or not, by people trying to spin their arguments. http://www.stltoday....91f666084.html)

That's just my opinion, but I could see why that you would feel how violence would work. People pay more attention to something when things are burning to the ground instead of how to prevent a fire in the first place. Luckily the majority of people around here are reasonable people with a strong sense of helping a neighbor in need. That's why everyone there's a lot of charity and support initiatives going on here right now at the same time as other things in town. You don't hear about that on cable news, but its there.

Really the big issue for me is that we live in a time where everyone thinks their own opinion is absolute gospel because of selective exposure, people are too impatient to become involved for the long haul and the lack of quality leadership that could properly navigate and create a common goal, well-supported argument no longer exists because of either a lack of participation or unwillingness to get involved. And you can either stand up or do something about it or just accept it. Thinking about that can be really, really depressing. 

The good news is that we're Americans and we have the ability to change things if we work hard enough and want it enough because the right of self-determination is part of the big thing of what makes us special. So just to say, "Injustice is everywhere! Everything sucks!" is fine, the ability to speak your mind is also a part of your basic rights as an American, but don't give up on trying to fix it after saying it. Giving up isn't one of our traits. Yes, things seem hopeless; they seem awful and terrible and feel like nothing is working, that doesn't mean it'll always be that way. Eventually things will get better, it may not be tomorrow, it may not be the next year or the next 10, but things will get better if people believe that they will get better. That's why our history is filled with optimists as well. So yeah, this sucks. It's going to probably suck for awhile, but eventually it won't, because what's the point in believing it doesn't?

Okay, wow that turned out to be waaaaaaaaaay longer than I thought.

 

I can't imagine the Feds having any better evidence. If they were holding on to something that changed the nature of the case then I am pissed if I am McCullough (or a citizen  for that matter) because that means either they hung him out to dry (if it favorable to the State) or potentially set him up him to walk right into a Brady violation (if it is favorable to the defense). Brady wouldn't be applicable until after the indictment, but withholding that would be still be setting up local prosecutors to fail. It would be inexcusable for the feds to have such info and not make contact with local authorities. So what the State court present is likely what the feds have in terms of evidence.

 

Many municipal courts and justice of the peaces have that reputation, but because the stakes are so low in individual cases they don't get called on it. 

 

EDIT: Now that I think about, there is one other change that may happen (country wide). The mandatory use of body camera's. It's more than just buying the camera itself, so small, poorer departments will be slower to adapt, but regardless of what you think of this case it something good to have. It does have limitations (I had a resisting arrest case with one, but when the resisting started they were so close all you saw was the camera jerking around (but the audio did work), which wasn't that helpful), but it's desirable for both parties. It protects defendants from lying cops and it protects cops against lying defendants. 

That's why I think it's unlikely the Feds would have something extra, but you never know.

As for the body cameras I know that Michael Brown's family is advocating for a law that makes it mandatory for departments to have officers be wearing body cameras. The trouble with body cameras are the limitations: battery life, memory capacity, reliance in the field, etc. At this point the pros of them definitely outweigh the cons on that. Lately departments like Ferguson have been getting body cameras that have been either donated or funded through private enterprise, but it's not going to be the same for every area.

Still it's not going to be the long term fix for the area and the poorer departments/municipalities are going to have trouble meeting those needs. I definitely know that's the case for East St. Louis in Illinois (Personally I don't think the government in Springfield knows that they need to find a way to do so or that they just gave up).

 

 

The downside the examining trial is that the decision rests in the hands of a single decision maker who may be more concerned about public perception of themselves (as the identity and decision would be known) that the evidence. The idea of grand jury secrecy is minimize such constraints It's advantage is obvious a more rigorous cross examination process and that it's public. The transcript is there for any to read, but as someone who has done both trial and appellate work, I can attest there are some things that a cold record cannot convey. 

 

Personally, I'd probably elect the GJ, especially if your judges are selected the same way as mine (via election--where the judge may be more concerned about re-election than anything else).

 

 

 

 

No idea what the family will do, but I bet Justice does what they did with Zimmerman....makes noise about investigating, but mostly just sitting on it until they can quietly discard it without notice. I dislike this approach because it just endlessly leaves people twisting in the wind, which is wrong. Given the failure here, I don't see why Justice would think its odds are better especially when they have the additional element of having to prove he intentionally deprived him of his civil rights. This case is not going to suddenly improve there. If they do anything, it will be, as you say, with the department as a whole, but I'd be really surprised if they went after Wilson specifically. 

 

 

 

When it comes to the law and cops here, it's considered friendly towards law enforcement because of 563.046's rules regarding "use of force". (For the most part MO Law goes beyond Tennessee v. Garner if I remember correctly.)

 

While not impossible, it's not the easiest thing to get elected to that position if all law enforcement hates your guts.

Yeah. I know that a lot of people do not want to hear this, but Darren Wilson is probably going to avoid jail time in Federal and State court based on they way things currently are now. If the Justice Department can present something as stronger evidence in their case that we don't know about as the public then that might change.

What's more likely to happen is Federal action against both the St. Louis County Police and the Ferguson Police Department. In that situation there has been past behavior and evidence of racial discrimination that could cause them to clean house. That would be a welcomed change around here. The other thing that could be reformed is a municipal court system that's basically been used less as a court and more as a source of government revenue. That's been something that's been getting a lot of buzz lately since the elections earlier in the month. With the riots and looting earlier in the week though, call it or think them what you will, but the job of actually healing the community has been made much, much harder because of them.