Aram Zucker-Scharff

coelasquid:

micdotcom:

Days after Michael Brown’s death, Ferguson looks like a war zone

A vigil held for Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager gunned down by Ferguson, Mo., police on Saturday in disputed circumstances, turned into what the media described as a riot on Monday evening.

But while national coverage has focused on the indisputably counterproductive violence and destruction committed by Ferguson residents during a moment of anguish, videos and photos taken from the scene show local police aggravating the situation as well.

Years of tension have reached a boiling point

This whole situation is really cementing the whole “dystopian Sci-Fi is just the shit that happens to everyone else happening to white people” saying, because every day this situation is looking more and more like something you’d expect to see in a Judge Dredd comic before a real modern American town.

“If he thinks the fear of alienating a few closed-minded readers is going to stop me from writing stories that feature and promote characters of diverse backgrounds—including LGBTQ characters, persons of color, and people who belong to ideological or philosophical minorities—he must be out of his mind. I’m a fucking Star Trek writer. Hasn’t he ever heard of IDIC—”Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”?”

– Why we must strive for diversity in SF/F. via.

The Death of Michael Brown and the Search for Justice in Black America:

Deaths like Michael Brown’s tell us we don’t belong here. What, then?

“So Lincoln and Grant may have had their mission-accomplished moment, but ultimately the Confederates won. The real Civil War — the one that stretched from 1861 to 1877 — was the first war the United States lost.”

– Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party.