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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

I owe my soul to the Ferguson Court


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Inside the Ferguson court. Black people pay fees and fines. White people collect them.






After reading the Department of Justice (DOJ) report on the Ferguson police department, lyrics from an old song “Sixteen Tons” kept going through my head. “Another day older and deeper in debt….I owe my soul to the company store,” and someone needs to do an update with “I owe my soul to the Ferguson Court.”

That lyric references “debt bondage,”and though the original song was talking about coal miners, in my head I envisioned black sharecroppers, who after emancipation lived in debt and suffering under the yoke of white planters.

Browsing the news, I read “This Is What It’s Like To Go To Court In Ferguson, Missouri.”

In an email I noted:

Systemic racism is intersectional-so it covers policing, repression, economics, schooling, housing …

This is what I call urban sharecropping-black rural populations lived in debt to “the company store.” Black urban populations like those in Ferguson now live in debt to the township. Race is never overshadowed.  It is the driving force behind systems of subjugation and control. Missouri was a slave state. Might as well sing Dixie when you think of it.

The harvest in Ferguson is cash. The police are like the overseers and drivers on plantations of old, keeping black folks in line and paying…paying…paying. Sass back, get shot or bit by dog. Can’t pay-go to jail. The boss who profits…well you can figure that out.

Cross-posted from Denise Oliver Velez at Daily Kos


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/ 9 Comments

9 comments

  3. Diana in NoVa

    D. Wilson will never learn his lesson. Don’t suppose he even possesses a conscience. How can these people look at themselves in the mirror every morning and call themselves Christians?

    One can only suppose their outlook is the same as that of the Nazis. I’m sorry to bring that analogy up again, but the Nazi outlook was, “These wretches are subhuman, I am white, blue-eyed, and superior, therefore I can do what I choose.”

    I wish all the African-Americans could move out of that goddamn place and the town economy would collapse.

    My heart aches to think the passage of half a century has brought no real difference to the South. It’s brought improvements to northern Virginia, where I live. Technically, we’re southern, but here interracial marriage is so commonplace no one bats an eyelash. My granddaughter’s elementary school is at least half minority: Korean, Chinese, Japanese, East Indian, Latino, African-American, and Caucasian. Her mother is Chinese and there’s a possibility that half her classes will be taught in Japanese starting in first grade. I’m grateful to live in such a cosmopolitan area, and only wish that everyone in this country could do the same.

    Thanks for the diary, Denise, spot-on and beautifully written, as always.

  4. Portlaw

    this excerpt from the Times is worth another read


    In 2013, for instance, the city finance director wrote: “Court fees are anticipated to rise about 7.5 percent. I did ask the chief if he thought the P.D. could deliver 10 percent increase. He indicated they could try.”

    But budget needs could not explain, let alone justify, the pattern of racism. They merely combined with deep-seated biases throughout Ferguson’s power structure to entrap the city’s black community in a hellish cycle of arrests for minor offenses, fines they could not pay, to crippling financial penalties, loss of drivers licenses, and jail time. All of that meant lost jobs and eviction.

    Not surprisingly, Ferguson’s African-Americans do not see the police as neutral enforcers of the law but as agents of exploitation. No municipality can prosper with that kind of hostility, overt or just below the surface, day in and day out. City officials should grasp this opportunity to take corrective steps. If they don’t, the Justice Department would be wholly justified in taking them to court.

    bold mine

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03…

  5. JanF

    From Charlie Pierce, on how it’s “never about race”:

    Dear Ferguson — While clearing out his office, Attorney General Eric Holder found something that belongs to you. If you don’t mind, he’d like to hand you your ass.

    Among the findings, reviewed by CNN: from 2012 to 2014, 85% of people subject to vehicle stops by Ferguson police were African-American; 90% of those who received citations were black; and 93% of people arrested were black. This while 67% of the Ferguson population is black. In 88% of the cases in which the Ferguson police reported using force, it was against African-Americans. During the period 2012-2014 black drivers were twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during traffic stops, but 26% less likely to be found in possession of contraband. Blacks were disproportionately more likely to be cited for minor infractions: 95% of tickets for “manner of walking in roadway,” essentially jaywalking, were against African-Americans. Also, 94% of all “failure to comply” charges were filed against black people.

    […]

    Imagine that, two or three times a week, an armed police officer decides to involve himself in your life just because you jaywalk, or because you’re walking in the street. Imagine this happening, over and over again, for a decade. Or two. Or five. Imagine that the simple act of asking, “What’s the problem, officer?” is 94 percent more likely to wind up with you in handcuffs in the back of a patrol car. Imagine that the simple act of then asking, “Can you tell me what the problem is, officer?” is 88 percent more likely to get your head cracked, or worse? Imagine this happening in front of your kids, three or four times. Imagine this happening in front of your mother, your preacher, your girlfriend, your wife. Is this a life? Are you free? This may not be a reign of terror, but it damn sure is a reign of unaccountable authoritarian power.

  6. JanF

    The Guardian

    The judge in Ferguson, Missouri, who is accused of fixing traffic tickets for himself and colleagues while inflicting a punishing regime of fines and fees on the city’s residents, also owes more than $170,000 in unpaid taxes.

    Ronald J Brockmeyer, whose court allegedly jailed impoverished defendants unable to pay fines of a few hundred dollars, has a string of outstanding debts to the US government dating back to 2007, according to tax filings obtained by the Guardian from authorities in Missouri.[…]

    Brockmeyer, who has been Ferguson’s municipal court judge for 12 years, serves simultaneously as a prosecutor in two nearby cities and as a private attorney. Legal experts said his potentially conflicting interests illustrate a serious problem in the region’s judicial system. […]

    While Brockmeyer [who reportedly earns $600 per shift as a prosecutor] owes the US government $172,646 in taxes, his court in Ferguson is at the centre of a class-action federal lawsuit that alleges Ferguson repeatedly “imprisoned a human being solely because the person could not afford to make a monetary payment”.

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