James Baldwin wrote:

“The truth which frees black people will also free white people, but this is a truth which white people find very difficult to swallow.”

He was right. On a day when our Department of Justice issued a report full of example of the worst kinds of Jim Crow tactics employed to extort, imprison, subjugate, and even physically hurt the citizens of Ferguson, some feel compelled to ignore all but the traffic fines portion of the report as a bridge to complaining about their state’s practices to squeeze more money out of its citizenry.

There is a time and place for everything. A discussion of Ferguson is not the time to bring up the consequent practices arising from conservative and neoliberal tax policies.

A discussion of Ferguson is that time when we talk about the fact that, in America, we still have pockets where the rule of law doesn’t exist, where the KKK can do what it wants, for years, before it is discovered and stopped.

By the way, the report leaves it to others to make the needed change. The chief of police is still the chief of police. The mayor is still mayor…  and the citizens of Ferguson, whose record was tarnished and money was extorted, they still have their criminal records and are still out hundreds of dollars they could ill-afford to lose.

Think about that…