2005-02-01

The destruction in Ferguson MO, 2014

Let us not forget what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014.
The shooting of Michael Brown has received enormous, I think it is fair to say
(his autopsy report the pathologists hired by the Brown family
was the lead story on page 1 of the New York Times the day it was released),
while the destruction looting of Ferguson businesses
seems to have received less media attention.
Here are a few articles, posts and photos
that remind us of those aspects of the aftermath,
which occurred in advance of a full report on what caused the Ferguson police officer
to fatally shoot Mr. Brown.

2014-08-11-stlamerican-Quiktrip
West Florissant explodes in protest of police shooting, more than 30 arrests
St. Louis American, 2014-08-11

2014-08-11-fox2now-quiktrip-sprayed-with-graffiti-set-on-fire-during-overnight-looting-near-ferguson
“Snitches Get Stitches” message spray painted on burned-out QuikTrip
by Roche Madden,
fox2now.com, 2014-08-11

[Note: this web page contains at least three videos concerning the situation.
The videos are well worth watching.]




ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – An employee who was working the Quik Trip that was looted and burned told a terrifying story of survival. The 18 year old man didn’t want to be identified but he did say, “Terrifying very, very, terrifying. Madden says: tell me what was going through your mind. Worker: I thought I was going to die tonight, I really thought I was going to die tonight.

His mother added, “I’m very thankful that he’s alright.”

The worker said he was at the register when the looters rushed the store. He and his two fellow workers locked themselves in a back room. One signaled the company’s alarm system. They got a phone call telling them to stay put, that the police were on the way. But after ten or twenty minutes they decided it was best to escape, fortunately before the fire started.

The workers said, “One of the employees said we can get a way out of here and so we grabbed jackets to cover our uniform and we ran out of there, out the back door.”

He said when he got outside he could see the looters keeping police at bay. He was glad he did not stay put and he was told to do, “If we would have stayed put we would have died.”

Nearby homeowners were also scared. Deanel Trout doesn’t live far away, “We loaded our weapons we didn’t know what was going to happen it was total chaos last night.”

Leonette Hiliard posted a sign apologizing for the destruction asking that Quik Trip reopen. Hilliard said, “We’re angry what happened to Michael Brown we want justice for him we want an investigation but we know this isn’t going to solve anything this isn’t going to represent who Michael was and our values as a community.”

The QT worker said he thought Ferguson was a nice place. He said, “I thought it was peaceful until last night, everybody pretty much flipped out.”

People who live in Ferguson insisted that the looting and fire were caused by outsiders taking advantage of a tragic situation.


2014-08-12-fox2now-new-video-of-burning-ferguson-quiktrip-shows-police-and-protesters
New video of burning Ferguson QuikTrip shows police and protesters
by Joe Millitzer
fox2now.com, 2014-08-12

[Contains a 3m36s 720p HD video of the destruction.

FERGUSON, MO (KTVI) – New video of the QuikTrip the convenience mart on West Florissant has surfaced. The gas station was set on fire on Sunday night during the looting that followed a protest vigil for Michael Brown.

An 18-year-old employee of the store who did not want to be identified told FOX 2 on Monday that, “I thought I was going to die, I really thought I was going to die.”

In this new video you can see a line of police standing in riot gear near the gas pumps. Smoke and flames from the store rises behind them. Protesters toss stones and yell for justice into the night.

[Here it is as a YouTube embed:]




2014-08-29-thegatewaypundit-quiktrip-has-no-plans-to-rebuild-in-ferguson-despite-threats
Despite Threats – QuikTrip Has No Plans To Rebuild in #Ferguson
Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, August 29, 2014, 10:23 AM











2014-09-24-KSDK-ferguson-businesses-target-violence-unrest
Ferguson businesses targeted in latest round of unrest
Mike Rush, KSDK
KSDK 2014-09-24

FERGUSON, Mo. -

Business owners said they're convinced the surge in violence Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning was retaliation.

A memorial to Michael Brown caught fire, and while it remains under investigation, some are convinced it was set intentionally.

Beauty Town on West Florissant has a sign outside stating it's back, but it's hurting.

Tuesday night was the third time someone broke into it.
The windows, just replaced, are broken again and the violence spread beyond West Florissant Avenue.

At the Whistle Stop Restaurant, a running hose soaks the deck to drown out the smell of gasoline and keep the deck wet in case there's a replay of last night.

"We saw in surveillance camera, two individuals come up and pour gasoline down," said General Manager Steve Doerr.
Authorities put out a fire in a trash can before it could spread.

"It's just angry people, and they exactly know where to direct that anger and so, you know, unfortunately we took that blow I guess," Doerr said.

At Ferguson Super Service, a tow company, the owner said somebody threw three Molotov cocktails made out of liquor bottles and beer bottles through a window. The cocktails never did go off but they did damage a car and the owner dsif this is the fifth time his place has been vandalized since Michael Brown was shot.

The business owners and managers we spoke to have no doubt, they believe the violence is retaliation for the fire at one of Michael Brown's memorials on Canfield Drive where he was shot.

...













After The 2014-11-24 Nonindictment



CNN video of the looting of the Ferguson Market & Liquor Store
on 2014-11-24

Embed:


Looting of the Dellwood Market in Dellwood
Embed:


2014-11-25-WP-photos-Ferguson-destruction
The volume of a protest:
Documenting the quiet aftermath of protests in Ferguson and the U.S

by Nicole Crowder
Washington Post, 2014-11-25


A gas station burns on the night a Missouri grand jury decided to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson over the shooting death of Michael Brown. (Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency)


A Ferguson restaurant burns after it was set on fire when protesters rioted following the grand jury’s decision. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)


A Ferguson firefighter surveys rubble at a strip mall that was set on fire when rioting erupted following the grand jury announcement in Ferguson, Mo. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)






2014-11-24-Louis-Head-stepfather-of-Michael-Brown-Burn-this-bitch-down
CNN video from Buzz Sourse
CNN video from LoadedNow12
video focusing on Brown's mother from Telegraph.co.uk

I have a comment.
If the testimony of Officer Wilson is true,
which I happen to believe is the most likely case,
then Michael Brown was not "her baby" but a
six foot four inch, two-hundred-ninety pound cigar-stealing, convenience-store-clerk-intimidating, police-officer-assaulting, gun-grabbing thug
who gave Officer Wilson every good reason to fear for his life.

And as to the "Revolutionary Communist Party" and their agenda,
I am very familiar with that viewpoint,
similar as it is to the views of
the Brandeis University (which I attended circa 1970,
and at which Herbert "Mao, Marx and Marcuse" Marcuse taught) SDS.
Indeed, a fellow graduate student was a member of the SDS,
and made every effort to infect others with their misguided ideology.
That viewpoint is utterly worthless.
Those creeps would tell any lie to obtain the America-harming results they desire.
It is truly shocking to me
how that viewpoint has spread to so many in the media.
What is happening now, claiming that the killing of Michael Brown
was an unjustified act of racism,
is right out of the 1970-vintage SDS playbook.

On the other hand,
I must admit that the decision on 2014-12-03 of a New York grand jury
not to make some sort of indictment for the death of Eric Garner
seems wrong.
Based on the video I have seen of the engagement,
Mr. Garner did nothing to justify such excessive use of force,
force which ultimately resulted in his loss of life,
despite his clearly audible statement that "I can't breathe".
Why was it necessary to use such force merely to effect the arrest?
At least a charge of reckless endangerment seems appropriate.
I agree with the protestors in this case.



2014-11-25-WP-ferguson-takes-stock-after-rage-over-grand-jury-decision
After a night of violence in Ferguson, Nixon moves to prevent more destruction
By Chico Harlan, Wesley Lowery and Jerry Markon
Washington Post, 2014-11-25



FERGUSON, Mo. —

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon vowed to crack down Tuesday on “criminals” he said
had unleashed a night of violence here on Monday,
pouring in more than 2,200 National Guard troops
amid criticism that he had not done enough to quell the rioting.

[Why on earth does this story put the word "criminals" in quotes?
Who else would carry out the destruction, arson, vandalism, and looting
in Ferguson?
It seems to me that only a true dirtbag would fail to acknowledge that
the criminal acts carried out in Ferguson after the announcement were just that.
Destroying a beauty shop? I call that domestic terrorism.

I realize that the reporters want to make it clear that they are quoting Gov. Nixon,
but why would they be unwilling to, in their own voice,
explicitly state that criminal acts are indeed criminal acts.
Sure, reasonable people can disagree over
whether Officer Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown,
but also reasonable people should see that
there really is reasonable disagreement over the issue.]


2014-11-25-WP-ferguson-decision-and-its-aftermath-more-a-media-event-than-organic-moment
Ferguson violence broke the mold in three ways — one of which is just unfolding now
By Marc Fisher and Wesley Lowery
Washington Post, 2014-11-25

...

What occurred Monday night — and may continue in the days ahead — is rioting as planned event, so pervasively predicted, so extensively prepared for as to obscure the power and meaning of the protests.

A news media obsessed with predicting the next step, a security apparatus equipped to put down almost any uprising, and a political power structure apparently seeking to head off violence by predicting it have combined to produce an unprecedented sense of inevitability, reducing what has historically been an explosion of frustration to a kind of staged performance.

...

[Maybe so, but nothing should absolve
the criminals who carried out
their acts of destruction, arson, vandalism, and looting
from total and complete responsibility for their criminal acts.
The preparation of the government for the possibility of criminal acts
does not justify the carrying out of the acts for which the government had prepared.]


...

Communities around the nation regularly take to the streets to protest police shootings of unarmed black men; in Ferguson’s case, the anger and frustration that turned protests violent was born of a larger sense of disenfranchisement, a pervasive belief that some people — blacks, low-end workers, the unemployed — can’t get a break, can’t wedge a foot in the door.

[Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's always the standard protest line.
But how come 11 million illegal immigrants flocked to America,
viewing it as a land of opportunity?
How come all those Hispanics found jobs and opportunity in America,
even with in many cases not knowing English and with little education,
but so many blacks cannot?
Just look at the construction sites all around Washington,
filled with Hispanic workers putting in an honest day's labor for an honest day's pay.]


...

In Ferguson, signs of change quickly followed the riots.
The city decided in September to set up a citizen review board
to monitor its police department,
and the City Council moved to scrap a system in which
court fines were used to fund a significant chunk of Ferguson’s budget.

[Glad to hear Ferguson is not trying to balance its budget
on the backs of the poor.
That did seem like a real injustice,
one worthy of protest.]


...

“We have made a national assumption that some black people, disappointed with the grand jury’s decision, will react with violence and mayhem,” wrote Bob Lonsberry on the conservative Free Republic site. That “deeply troubling” assumption “puts some black people in a unique category of people who have opted out of the social contract. That should bother us. . . . America does not trust black people to respond to a legal decision peacefully, and that is the result of either a horrific stereotype about black people, or horrific conduct by black people. Either way, we’ve got a problem.”

[Yes, and the destruction that followed in Ferguson
sadly is precisely the stereotype being manifested in reality.]


...










2015

2015-01-31-NYT-as-ferguson-looks-to-rebuild-archivists-move-to-preserve-what-was-lost
As Ferguson Looks to Rebuild, Archivists Move to Preserve What Was Lost
By MITCH SMITH
New York Times, 2015-01-31

[The emphasis in the second paragraph is added by
the author of the current blog.]


DELLWOOD, Mo. —

Amid the ashes and the shards of glass,
Juanita Morris found remnants of her life before Nov. 24.
There was the foam mannequin head that once showcased hats,
now charred from the fire.
A leopard-print blouse still clung to a melted hanger.
And the sewing machine she used for alterations
lay buried and crumpled in the wreckage of her store,
Fashions R Boutique.

It has been more than two months since
some protesters reacted violently to
a St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson,
the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old.
Ms. Morris’s store was just blocks from where Mr. Brown died in nearby Ferguson.
Like many of the shops along West Florissant Avenue,
the boutique was burned after the grand jury announcement
and remains a pile of rubble.
Police are still investigating.

[Why are the people who carried out
the wanton destruction that occurred after the non-indictment of Officer Wilson
described as "protestors"?
More accurate would be:
thugs, looters, vandals, arsonists, animals, swine, and terrorists.
Why does the New York Times eschew such more accurate terminology?
Because its ownership, management, and reporters are, fundamentally, dirtbags,
eager to excuse any act of violence by blacks,
while they ignore the root causes of acts of violence committed
in protest of actions of Israel and the U.S. in the Islamic world,
passing such acts off as being due to the occasional poverty of those who commit the acts.
Like Osama bin Laden was poor.
Or Ayman al-Zawahiri was uneducated.]


...

On Thursday morning, Ms. Morris and a group from the Missouri History Museum
climbed over an orange mesh fence and combed through the relics of her once-thriving boutique.
Ms. Morris, who in happier days
sold dresses, handbags and women’s clothing accessories here,
watched as historians examined a half-melted keyboard
and plucked blue and yellow shoes from the burned mess.

[Random acts of violence,
against people who had no apparent connection with
whatever grievances, however legitimate, that some blacks might have had.
How typical of black behavior.]


Gwen Moore, a curator [of Urban Landscape and Community] at the museum who even before Mr. Brown’s death
had been developing an exhibit on
St. Louis’s role in the Civil Rights Movement, said
preserving reminders of Ferguson was important to understanding
the modern legacy of longstanding racial injustices.
The protests here after Mr. Brown’s death in August helped set off
a national conversation about race and policing.

[Again, note the attempt of the PC scuzoids to excuse the acts of wanton destruction.]

...

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