I’m a hugely text-oriented person, but so much of what happened in Ferguson this week was captured in truly compelling tweeted images that this post will be full of embedded tweets, mostly including images.
Some of those compelling images were side-by-side photos showing photos from the civil rights protests in the 60s:
#WeAreTargets RT @brennamuncy: Someone please remind me what year it is again? #ferguson pic.twitter.com/ZRJ00GRDZG
— Kim Moore (@SoulRevision) August 10, 2014
I was so shocked when I heard the police had brought out dogs that very first day: the imitation of police tactics from the 60s reads to me as a deliberate invocation of the police violence against black protesters then. If the online image made a white woman like me flinch, I can’t imagine the potent effect it must have had on the black people who were there.
That we have not made progress in fifty years, Lord have mercy. #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/mmnu3IEQVN
— Unvirtuous Abbey (@UnvirtuousAbbey) August 14, 2014
See the mirroring, in the postures of the two lines of men? That’s a classic dynamic in mimetic theory, occurring as rivalry escalates. (Frighteningly, the men in the Ferguson picture look more escalated than in the older picture, which seems to have some degree of engagement in the body language going on. The men in the Ferguson picture look like they’re being walls: rigid and immovable.)
The intensive police presence that showed up right away may have been intended to intimidate by an overwhelming show of force, but I read it as designed (consciously or not) to provoke an equally intense response.
Police have brought out the large gear in #Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/2gxUzOvwfy
— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 9, 2014
Police presented such an overwhelmingly aggressive posture that it is frankly amazing to me that there was so little violence in response.
There was one group of people who spent all day in #Ferguson dressed for a riot and prepared to commit violence, it wasn't the protestors.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) August 11, 2014
The people of #Ferguson are not creating chaos, they are reacting to chaos. They are not intiiating threats, they are responding to threats.
— Bun Bee (@theinventher) August 11, 2014
Unbelievably, police presence and posture escalated even further over subsequent nights. This was Wednesday:
The outrageous police actions in #Ferguson last night (via @Slate): http://t.co/5iDn9VzDBw pic.twitter.com/cr0zfcAn37
— The Root (@TheRoot) August 14, 2014
Be aware. What you are seeing, isn't Middle East. This is United States, a War Zone in little city #Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/WG3RD6Ltjt
— αηιs (@theblogpirate) August 14, 2014
But note that the war zone framing is problematic, as Mikki Kendall pointed out:
Framing #Ferguson as a war zone gives the cops license for what they've been doing. Let's not do that
— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) August 14, 2014
This next tweet is talking about scapegoating: the scapegoating of black Americans as the source of crime.
There should be blame AND shame here. #Ferguson #MichaelBrown @KharyP pic.twitter.com/hXWpgy4nRY
— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) August 10, 2014
This picture blew me away:
Police told protesters to get out of street, they instead got on knees and said, "Hands up! Don't shoot!" #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/XFpEsXBwM3
— Ray Downs (@RayDowns) August 13, 2014
The bravery of taking a non-violent, vulnerable posture in response to the present and immediate threat of violence is amazing. I am sincerely in awe of this community, and profoundly grateful for their example.
Furthermore, this is not just any non-violent, vulnerable posture. It is very close to the posture in which, according to some witnesses, Mike Brown was shot to death: fallen to his knees, with his hands up.
This is what I read about in my studies, over and over again. According to mimetic theology, the particular way in which Christians are called to respond to violence and scapegoating is by standing with the victim: literally putting our bodies with the victim’s body. That is what I see in this picture.
The next night, students at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, DC, took up the same posture at their protest:
Such a powerful image from the student of Howard University. #MichaelBrown pic.twitter.com/RsuPS8zAhE
— Benjamin Crump, Esq. (@attorneycrump) August 14, 2014
But remember: these black protesters are not just standing with the victim of Saturday’s shooting. They are themselves potential victims, scapegoat candidates, pharmakos, the handy marginalized population from whom scapegoats are drawn when a mimetic crisis erupts. They are the half-insiders against whom white America (or perhaps, as Persephone Jones suggests, non-black America) regularly, routinely, commits violence, up to and including fatal violence.
At Chicago #nmos14 "every 28 hours a black person is shot down. That's more than at height of civil rights movement." pic.twitter.com/63abP6wIrn
— M Barclay (@mxbarclay) August 14, 2014
All over the country Thursday evening, at the #NMOS14 National Moment of Silence vigils organized by @FeministaJones, people did the same thing. The hands-up posture of surrender goes with the verbal slogan that emerged in Ferguson: Hands up – Don’t Shoot. Together they proclaim vulnerability in the face of violence: I have no weapon. Don’t shoot me.
Union Square #NMOS14 vigil. Someone's holding a sign reading THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVIZED. pic.twitter.com/UBL4GgB7L0
— Melanie (@grammar_girl) August 14, 2014
They held up their arms while holding hands, a further gesture of solidarity, of with-ness, of nonviolent resistance.
"Our arms hurts like it hurts to be killed for the color of our skin in this country." –@MalcolmLondon #NMOS14 pic.twitter.com/TArsCqBfH7
— Suey Park (@suey_park) August 14, 2014
They held up the names of the victims of police shooting, symbolizing the presence of the victims in the midst of the crowd who had come to stand with them and for them:
people holding signs with names of victims of police shootings #NMOS14 pic.twitter.com/RjHT8ISqKz
— Brandon Wall (@Walldo) August 14, 2014
And, conversely, when Captain Johnson from the Missouri Highway Patrol was given command of the policing operation on Thursday, he first changed the presentation of the police officers there
Police presence yesterday in Ferguson versus today in Ferguson. (Photo at left by @AP; at right @mattdpearce.) pic.twitter.com/xsbD3tiKYu
— Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) August 14, 2014
and then put his body with the bodies of the protesters.
'I'm not afraid to be in this crowd … that's why I walk up front' — Capt. Johnson #Ferguson http://t.co/zxFv8UCfIB pic.twitter.com/GTcnDt9osY
— Mashable (@mashable) August 15, 2014
Another paired picture, comparing where the police bodies were on Wednesday and Thursday:
Last night v. tonight in #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/CKp87niWjw
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014
And the result? Peaceful protest. The protest and vigil that the Ferguson community wanted to have in the first place.
Shots from the protest going on right now in front of the #Ferguson Police Dept pic.twitter.com/XZvhASpAiT
— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 15, 2014
I am completely, incomparably stunned. At this time last night I was hiding behind a dumster and choking on tear gas. #furgeson
— Danny Wicentowski (@D_Towski) August 15, 2014
Mimetic theory provides a unifying framework presenting an anthropological understanding of how human beings influence each other, and the particular role of the scapegoat mechanism, in carefully precise language. But it is so compelling because it formalizes an understanding of human beings that is, in some ways, simply common sense.
Oh so you sent the snipers home and everyone calmed down? Who woulda thunk it? #ferguson #everyonethoughtit
— Zerlina Maxwell (@ZerlinaMaxwell) August 15, 2014
We are living in an amazing stage of the ongoing human struggle of choosing between violence and nonviolence. One of the great ironies of it is the frequency with which those who have used, stockpiled, and threaten to unleash vast explosions of violence urge nonviolence on those whom they oppress, this drawing attention to their own hypocrisy.
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