He went to Ferguson to protect the protesters. He got arrested instead

[n2doc]

by Justin Hansford

The thing about jail is there is nothing to do. The novelty wears off after about five minutes. My cell was maybe 10-feet long and 8-feet wide, with a toilet, a faucet, and a sink. On the right was a metal bunk bed, and on the left was a third bed. Everything was made of cold metal. The mattress was thin and hard and worn and musky.

I'd been arrested earlier that day at a Walmart in Maplewood, Missouri, about 10 miles outside of Ferguson. I was there as part of Ferguson October, a historic, inspiring, and exhausting weekend of protests against the killing of Mike Brown and the pattern of racialized police violence that spawned it. I had been engaged in this struggle for months. At this particular moment, though, I wasn't a protester or participant — I was a legal observer. But just like the nationally recognized journalists who have been arrested in Ferguson while fulfilling their professional duties, I found that no tradition of professional courtesy could save me from the urge to squelch political dissent.

I had until then never even seen the inside of a jail cell, not even for a field trip.

I am a law professor who teaches human rights law and race and the law, and I participated in Ferguson October because I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I didn't contribute what I could to this movement taking place 10 minutes from my home. As a legal observer, I was hoping to document (and maybe, by my presence, prevent) police brutality against protesters. Local Walmarts were selected as protest sites to amplify the connection between the killing of John Crawford, which took place at a Walmart in Ohio, and the killing of Mike Brown. Both are case studies in police impunity, the criminalization of black youth, and the logical consequence of the two: police too often feel that instead of simply patrolling black and brown communities, they can go hunting in them, without punishment.

Without warning and before I could think, I was being led away with both hands behind my back.

more

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/24/7033567/ferguson-protest-arrested-michael-brown

[RedCappedBandit]

1. good read