Rodney, Trayvon and Michael
by digby
I did a little meditation on Ferguson for Salon this morning. As I watched the broadcast last night and listened to the rambling statement of the prosecutor, it reminded me of an earlier incident:
I remember the night the Rodney King video first surfaced on Los Angeles television like it was yesterday. In those days you didn’t see videos of police beatings unless a news camera happened to catch it — video cameras were bulky items that people didn’t carry around with them. That footage of those police beating a man mercilessly, grainy and distant as it was, sent a shock wave though this city and in a very short period that shock wave was felt around the world. But at the time I think that most of white America probably either thought that this man must have “deserved” what he got or, if they were appalled by what they saw, believed the justice system could not ignore such vivid evidence and would have to punish these officers. Black America knew better, of course, but they too held out hope that the video proved what they had been saying for years.
We all know how that turned out.
It was one of those stunning events that makes you question some of your basic assumptions. I thought we had decided as a society that we were not going to allow the police to beat suspects senseless. Yes, people had complained about it and I knew that it happened. The streets of L.A. were hardly peaceful. But I thought that by the end of the 20th century if the police were caught doing it red-handed there was simply no way they could be exonerated.
The day the verdict came back everyone in my office gathered around the TV in shock. And as we looked outside the windows of our high rise building over the next few days we watched plumes of smoke all over South LA multiply by the hour until the mayor finally told everyone to go home and stay there as the city came under Martial Law. I watched Reginald Denny get beaten mercilessly on live TV. The 7-11 on the corner of an apartment I lived in for years was burned to the ground. It felt like L.A. was coming apart.
It didn’t.
But it didn’t exactly come together either…
The police trial in the Rodney King case was thought to be a slam dunk — and when it came back not guilty this city exploded. There was, obviously, a lot of pent-up rage that could no longer be contained. I think people thought if you can’t even convict officers of abuse with a video tape showing the abuse then what’s the point?
The Trayvon Martin case was initially like the Brown case— they didn’t even arrest George Zimmerman at first. But the prosecutors wisely decided to indict him and hold a trial to sort out the evidence in public and let the system work to best of its ability (which isn’t all that great, but it’s better than nothing.) Trayvon’s parents deserved that. Certainly any unarmed citizen who is gunned down deserves that. When the verdict came down, a lot of people weren’t happy. But they at least knew that the system hadn’t been rigged by a prosecutor who didn’t want to prosecute. It’s not much, but it’s something that both Rodney King and the Martin family got, as unsatisfying as it was.
Michael Brown’s family and the community of Ferguson didn’t even get that much.
We’re going backwards, people.
.