Posted on 08/19/2014 7:37:57 PM PDT by markomalley
After Michael Brown's death, left-wing activists, pundits, and the mainstream press have been blasting and maligning Ferguson's "white power structure," likening the city to a town in the Jim Crow South. They have lamented that though the city is nearly 70% black, "five of Ferguson’s six city council members are white" and "six of the local school board’s seven members are white." Ferguson's mayor, James Knowles, is also white. Even worse to the mainstream press and left-wing activists is that he's a Republican.
But in trying to further the narrative that the "white power structure" was somehow imposed on Ferguson's black residents, few have overtly made the point that Ferguson's black residents could have easily voted out these officials. And they did not. Knowles, who was first elected in 2011, actually ran unopposed in 2013.
According to an MSNBC report, local African-American leaders conceded that "blacks across the region simply haven’t participated in city elections." They are right. According to a Washington Post analysis, an estimated 6% of blacks and 17% of whites turned out for the 2013 municipal elections in the township, which are held in spring in odd-numbered years. In contrast, during the 2012 presidential election, 54% of blacks and 55% of whites turned out in November.
In the 2011 mayoral election, Knowles was first elected with 46% of the vote. He got 695 votes, Pearce Neikirk received 459, and incumbent Steven Wegert received 338. The New York Times noted that Knowles even "noted his disappointment with the turnout – about 12 percent – in the most recent mayoral election during a City Council meeting in April." Left-wing activists have asserted that since turnout is lower in odd-numbered years, Ferguson's elections perpetuate the "white power structure."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
What good did black mayors in big cities do for the average black person? How’s Detroit working out?
Maybe the ballots were in cursive.
Sounds like an all-clown circus there.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is ultra white. Blue eyes and all.
nearly 70% black
Can only mean one thing to whites ........ MOVE!
If you live violent crime, stay. You can’t deny this as fact.
Most didn’t vote? Good. I hope they never vote.
Ferguson used to be whiter therefore the white representatives. They haven’t been replaced yet.
Well if they did vote, then they’d have black representation just for the sake of being black. Sort of like what’s occupying our white house. Doesn’t mean they’re qualified or even give one hoot about you. They’re just black. There’s no racism here, right?
Yeah but the ones who voted multiple times more than made up for them.
Hey they can have Ray Ray Nagin, he loves chocolate cities...oh..wait..he`s going to prison.
He is the first white mayor of Detroit in how many decades?
LOL! Good one.
They vote when they are paid to vote, and that’s in Democrat presidential elections.
“left-wing activists, pundits, and the mainstream press have been blasting and maligning Ferguson’s “white power structure,””
Ok get rid of the “white power structure”. And at the same time all the government benefits (theft of tax payer money) that comes from it and flow to the aggrieved people in Ferguson.
I’m in.
Let them stand on their own economically.
You reap what you sow. I think that is in the Bible; correct me if I am wrong.
'Twenty-two percent of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7 percent receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3 percent, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole.
“Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”
Exacerbating the problem, the report says, are "a number of operational procedures that make it even more difficult for defendants to navigate the courts." A Ferguson court employee reported, for example, that “the bench routinely starts hearing cases 30 minutes before the appointed time and then locks the doors to the building as early as five minutes after the official hour, a practice that could easily lead a defendant arriving even slightly late to receive an additional charge for failure to appear.”'
Huh? I had to do a double-take and read that again.
What is the world does 'odd-numbered-years' have to do with elections?
ROFL
I’m talking about previous mayors.
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