Stop Night Protests in Ferguson and Start Recalling City Leaders [View all]

[Little Star]

Energy spent squaring off against an incompetent police force is better directed at the city's power structure. Protest by day, collect signatures by night.

So long as nightly street protests continue in Ferguson, Missouri, where police and violent agitators alike use the cover of darkness to perpetrate unjustified aggression, the likelihood of additional casualties increases. The mayhem puts at risk peaceful protesters, whose frustration at local authorities is fully justified, as well as many good police officers who'd rather be anywhere else. Some have asked the majority of residents with peaceful intentions to call off protests and vigils after dark. The request is understandable—as is the refusal of outraged citizens who feel a moral and civic obligation to persist in their activism. Well-intentioned people on both sides feel they cannot in good conscience back down, yet they are unable to control the bad elements in their midst.

It is a perilous moment—and politics offers one way forward.

In The Guardian, Gary Younge, who sympathizes with the protesters in Ferguson, observes that the highly charged scene there attracts "opportunists, macho-men and thrill-seekers as well as the righteously indignant and politically militant." (The military atmosphere created by police helps attract the thrill-seekers.) He adds that Ferguson is "a mostly black town under curfew in which the entire political power structure is white," and that some riot because doing so is "the crudest tool for those who have few options. By definition, they are chaotic. Rich people don’t riot because they have other forms of influence. Riots are a class act."

One can imagine how some Ferguson residents would conclude that they have no form of influence except taking to the streets each night. Yet given the passionate mobilization that is taking place each day, it is realistic to imagine the protesters successfully ousting the whole leadership structure of the city. Even observers who are critical of the street activism following Michael Brown's killing agree that Ferguson's leaders have been egregiously incompetent in their response. They've clearly lost the confidence of the people they represent, and only in part because, as the New York Times puts it, "Although about two-thirds of Ferguson residents are black, its mayor and five of its six City Council members are white. Only three of the town’s 53 police officers are black."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/in-ferguson-stop-the-nighttime-protestsand-start-the-recall-drive/378736/