Ferguson Local Politics

I want to live in a world where everyone is three years old and has no clue what color a persons skin is.  We just play together and laugh and love one another.  One of us gets a boo-boo we run to get help from a medically trained three year old that applies a kiss and a boo-baid.  If we are hungry we run to the kitchen with our shoes untied and our pants falling off our butts to fix up a bowl of cereal and milk and dream of the toys promised on the back of the box.  We can live in a world full of hugs when we know our friend is hurting and maybe even cry with them to ease the pain.  That isn't reality but Ferguson, Missouri is.

Ferguson, Missouri is in deep pain right now.  The community is stressed out from all the violence from protestors, the police, state police, and now the National Guard "Protection".  My wife and I live just a few miles west of this little town and we have been there many a weekend buying produce at the farmers market.  We love the town.  We love the people.  This small town that has so much potential is being torn apart and it doesn't need to happen.

This pain that the community is feeling can be fixed long term.  It takes the community to heal itself.  My numbers may be wrong but you can tell me the right numbers in the comments below.  Ferguson is a community with a population of 22,000 people and 70% of the people are black.  51 of the 53 police officers are white.  That's 96%.  The Mayor is white.  The city council is 5 white people and 1 black person.  That's 80% representation at the local level for 30% of the people.

Ferguson needs to be organized to get the vote out for their own local leaders.  Ferguson needs a few people in the community that are black to stand up and run for political office.  A business owner, a school teacher, a single mom, a guy that works construction, a lawyer... Whoever.   It is your town.  Who is better at leading it?  The people in charge now or one of your own people? 

Back in the day when the Irish were persecuted for just being here in America we found a way to beat the bastards that were putting us all down.  We elected our own to public office in every capacity possible.  Local, state, and federal offices.  It didn't happen over night but one of our own was Speaker of the House for forty years and we elected President Kennedy.  We elected his little brother, the Liberal Lion Teddy for decades.

Can the racial policing problems in Ferguson be fixed?  Yes it can.  If you elect a black mayor that hires the new Chief of Police.  If you elect a city council that is black that decides and votes on the percentages of police officers that need to be black change can happen.  Some white guys just might lose their jobs as police officers but the community needs to be policed by people that are put there by the people they elected.

Might it be needed to call for a special election in Ferguson?  If the people are not truly represented, then maybe that is a probability.  Either way you need to organize, Ferguson.  Your community needs to elect a new Mayor and a new City Council.  Most of all you NEED TO VOTE!  That is just step one.

This is my protest for the people of Ferguson.  Let's move forward!  Change can only happen if you take the steps needed to make it so.

Papamoka     

French and British Diseases

Somewhere between a million and two and a half million French people took to the streets across the country today to protest their government’s handling of the economy, bringing much of the country shuddering to a halt. From Britain, a country where Thatcher broke the backs of the unions twenty five years ago and presided over a decade of public rioting in the process, the French tendency to protest, riot and strike at the slightest encouragement can sometimes seem ridiculous, sometimes perplexing, sometimes inspiring and sometimes worrisome. Two years ago, most Brits would probably have looked with some condescension at the “French disease”. A year ago the French would have responded by looking back with equal condescension at the collapse of the “Anglo-Saxon” capitalist model. Now, perhaps, the signs finally are indisputable that we’re all on the same side in this crisis.

Of course, each country’s vulnerabilities are different. The French are benefiting from a stronger currency than the nose-diving pound, though this naturally has an attendant impact on export competitiveness. Unemployment in France is likely to reach ten percent pretty soon. The country remains dominated by a system of education and high office-holding that is even more elitist than the Oxbridge model in Britain or the Ivy League in the US. Tight employment regulations mean that job creation has been and remains a problem. Yet these latest anti-Sarkozy protests are just the most recent indication that a generations-long hostility to attempts to open the market shows no sign of disappearing soon. As far as I can tell, employment deregulation is considered by most French people to be nothing more than an a cynical excuse to pay people less, employ them in worse jobs, and fire them sooner. Personally, this argument would make more sense to me if France – hit far less directly than Britain by the housing market or the financial crash – were not already haemorrhaging jobs.

In Britain, unemployment is lower – just over six percent – though it’s climbing fast, and to be honest it’s hard to trust the figures as so many people are reclassified by the government in different ways so as to get them down. And rising unemployment in Britain, as the eighties showed, brings its own forms of conflict and hostility over here. Whilst the French were indulging their national pastime today, the darker face of Britain showed itself too, as hundreds of workers at oil refineries in the North of England walked out after a construction contract was awarded to an Italian firm employing foreign workers.

It’s hard not to sympathise with workers who watch jobs get handed to outsiders instead of their own communities. Just as it’s hard not to sympathise with workers in France who are looking at redundancies, or deflationary pay settlements, or hours and benefits cuts. But we’re in a global economy now, and that means free movement of capital and labour, people creating jobs in other places if your country isn’t competitive, and bringing workers from other places to your country if it makes sense to do so.

Whatever the way out of this crisis turns out to be – and, as I say, it seems pretty certain that the path will be a little different in each country – there’s no doubt that we won’t find our way out unless we all start to realise we’re all in this together.

Alex Goodall
Papamoka’s European Contributor
From A Swift Blow to the Head