"In Ferguson, Black Town, White Power"

[applegrove]

In Ferguson, Black Town, White Power

By JEFF SMITH at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/opinion/in-ferguson-black-town-white-power.html?ref=opinion&_r=2

"SNIP........................

Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate.

With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were of black people — despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites.

By contrast, consider the city: After decades of methodically building political power, blacks in St. Louis City elected a black mayor in 1993 and black aldermen or alderwomen in nearly half the city’s wards, and hold two of three seats on the powerful Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which must approve all city contracts. Well-established churches, Democratic ward organizations and other civic institutions mobilize voters in black wards. But because blacks have reached the suburbs in significant numbers only over the past 15 years or so, fewer suburban black communities have deeply ingrained civic organizations.

That helps explain why majority-black Ferguson has a virtually all-white power structure: a white mayor; a school board with six white members and one Hispanic, which recently suspended a highly regarded young black superintendent who then resigned; a City Council with just one black member; and a 6 percent black police force.

.........................SNIP"

[msongs]

1. so let us hope this situation will be quickly reversed in the next election across the USA nt

[yeoman6987]

2. What are the politics of the city?

I know the Governor is Democrat but is Ferguson Republican? The voters can make the changes easily.

[msongs]

3. per Maddow show 12% voter turnout in the last election. Black majority town, white majority

government

[pstokely]

4. STL county goes Blue

can't find a results by precinct map

[Cha]

5. Yeah, that would end well.. Freaking time bomb waiting to Happen!

Wow. It just keeps getting worse and worse.

thank you, apple~ Here's to Big Change in Ferguson, MO

[Cha]

6. K