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One of this morning’s big news stories is the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Antonio Martin by a policeman in Berkeley, Missouri–a place that, the Associated Press tells us helpfully, is “just a few miles from Ferguson.” The Antonio Martin shooting is currently the top story on Google News, and it is being headlined on pretty much every newspaper’s website. But why? What makes this a major news story? The Michael Brown and Eric Garner stories that preceded it, obviously. But what made them worldwide news? Or, to go back in time, what made the Trayvon Martin case a cause célèbre,...

The New York City group that called for “dead cops” in a widely circulated video is most likely– no joke — the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee (TMOC). In a piece outing “The Monsters Who Screamed For Dead Cops,” The Daily Beast’s Jacob Siegel cites a “web of circumstantial ties” to the group. The man who shot the disturbing video — showing marchers chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” — told Siegel that he saw the group marching with signs reading “No Cops, No Prison.” Siegel produces evidence from Instagram that the TMOC marched...

Evidence from photos, video, social-media posts and interviews suggests it was a single group, desperate to ‘turn up the anger’ at otherwise-peaceful protests.A little over a week ago, a group of people marched down the streets of Manhattan and called for police to be killed. But exactly who cried out for violence has been something of a mystery as New York goes through its most tense moment in more than a decade. Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is...

At a peaceful gathering of the Justice League, they condemned the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos, but also wondered why the slaying of citizens by cops doesn’t spark as much outrage.A modest crowd moved East on 110th Street in New York City on Sunday evening. They walked silently, some carrying Anthora cups illuminated by candlesticks, others holding plastic tea lights handed out by protest organizers. A few carried signs: "IMAGINE JUSTICE," "BLACK LIVES MATTER," "CLAIM HUMANITY." But mostly they just walked, their faces somber, their hands shaking as the snow began to fall. The peaceful vigil was somewhat unexpected,...

Rafael Ramos and Wenjin Liu died because of the campaign to vilify police. Even as the events of Ferguson begin to fade, the campaign it helped engender rolls on, with new reports of demonstrations and protests appearing almost daily. Last week Carol Jackson, a federal judge, restricted police tactics against protestors. (This is kind of odd in and of itself. The last thing people want to hear about during the holidays is some hood getting his comeuppance. The same can be said about Sen. Feinstein’s “torture report” -- waterboarding is not likely to play well during the sleigh bell season....

In an upcoming People magazine interview, Barack and Michelle Obama sit down and discuss life as the First Oppressed Couple of the United States. Hoping to shed light and relate to recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, Barack reached into the upstairs White House bedroom of his mind and called upon his famous imaginary son to make an appearance: The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” President Obama said. “It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for...

A network of businesses, public officials and educators are partnering with the Trayvon Martin Foundation to present “Letters to Trayvon” a holistic campaign to address the plight of Black males and police brutality, next February. The campaign, initiated by the Germantown-based small business Mission Inc., has been in its planning stages for about a year and will include a social media component, youth outreach and a culminating fundraising reception, panel discussion, black art showcase and exhibit on Feb. 28. “Letters to Trayvon is a campaign to end the disrespect and racial profiling of black men and boys [and] it’s a...

In the wake of a New York grand jury deciding not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner, racially diverse protests instantly erupted across the nation. White faces could be seen in swelling crowds from NYC and D.C., to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Denver. Their mouths covered with masking tape with the words "I can't breathe" scrawled over it. The righteousness of racial solidarity burning in their eyes as they joined in chanting, "Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!" This is not to say that there were not White allies...

Their sons -- Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner -- have become symbols of a raging national conversation about police brutality and racial injustice. The mothers of these four unarmed black men and boys felled by bullets or excessive police force have no doubt their sons would still be alive if they were white. No question, they say. "I think absolutely my son's race and the color of his skin had a lot to do with why he was shot and killed," Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday. "In all of these cases,...

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, says whites do not understand the protests about the deaths of young black men. CNN's Anderson Cooper cited polls that reveal white people do not view the issue the same way as black people. "It's not happening to them, so they don't quite get it," Fulton told Cooper in an interview that aired Friday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "They don't quite understand. They think that it's a small group of African-Americans that's complaining: 'Oh, what are they complaining about now?'" Cooper asked: "You hear that from people?" "Oh yeah," Fulton said. "The...

With the entire country seeing demonstrations following the Ferguson decision, I’ve had colleagues and business partners ask me my thoughts—not from my perspective as the chairman and CEO of a $55 billion organization—but as a black man in America. You would think my experience as a top executive would be different from a black man who is working in a retail or food-service job to support his family. Yet, he and I both understand the commonality of the black male experience that remains consistent no matter what the economic status or job title. This piece is not to complain about...

What the hell is happening in America? Are some people so threatened by the election of Barack Obama that it's open season on minorities? How did we come to this unequal and disturbing place where a white 18-year-old can carry a gun into a grocery store legally, yet an unarmed black teen is killed for being tall? Or wearing a hoodie? Or playing with a toy gun? Many things have been said about Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and so many others. They were using marijuana. They were selling illegal cigarettes. They were menacing. They robbed someone. And, the...

...When the St. Louis County grand jury, after deliberating over whether to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown Jr., decided not to bring any charges against him, it was the spark that reignited the longstanding anger and simmering distrust of the system among African Americans in Ferguson and across the nation. Their "cup of endurance" had run over. The inconvenient truth is that many African Americans see that decision as further confirmation of their belief that nothing has changed since the Kerner Report of 1968, and that nothing will; a police officer who...

With the recent decisions of no indictment involving the police officers responsible for the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and John Crawford to name a few, America could not be anymore divided in how we analyze these events through our own filters. Current poll data articulates that 65% of minorities believe there is a racial construct within our police and legal system which disproportionately affects minorities while reporting the opposite belief by White Americans at roughly the same percentage. However, I would challenge future pollsters to parse out additional data on party affiliation when polling White Americans because it...

Here’s a look at the future, and probably not that far into it. People will learn two things: 1) That an officer was not indicted for murdering Eric Garner—black, 43, and detained simply for selling single cigarettes—despite the fact that the killing was recorded from start to finish for all of America to see. 2) That an officer was not indicted for killing Michael Brown after Brown had stolen from a store, refused the officer’s request to step aside and perhaps tried to grab his gun, with the officer shooting when Brown repeatedly lunged toward him for some reason, with...

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts every thing you said today.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson And so I will. Not so long ago, right-wing bloggers blasted me for being a liberal sellout for my fierce defense of Trayvon Martin. During George Zimmerman’s trial, my email inbox...

Joe Scarborough is mad as hell and not etc. “Someone needs to tell me why Michael Brown has been chosen as the face of black oppression,” Scarborough said, arguing the left’s martyrdom of Brown mirrored the right’s lionization of George Zimmerman. “There are so many great people to embrace as heroes in the black community, that deciding you’re going to embrace a guy who knocked over a convenience store and then according to a Grand Jury testimony acted in ways that would get my children shot? …That’s your hero? That’s the reason you want to burn down black businesses?…Really? This...

All day people gathered, waiting, daring to hope, that maybe this time black lives would matter. Minutes passed. Then hours. And, as darkness descended on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, the now enormous crowd continued to wait patiently -- trying its best to remain optimistic. Perhaps, despite so many decades of history, black people really could find justice in the American legal system. That such a faith still flickered was, itself, remarkable. Everyone standing outside of the Ferguson police station awaiting news on whether the grand jury would indict police officer Darren Wilson well remembered what happened on February 26,...

Political analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky told AiF.ru what fate awaits city Ferguson after the riots and who is trying to benefit on the death of Michael Brown. November 24th jury indemnify police Darren Wilson, who in August has shot 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown. Acquittal sparked massive protests and riots. The family of the deceased, as well as thousands of protesters, convinced that the slaying was racially motivated entirely and wasn't investigated properly. Is it possible to re-examine the case which is already closed,AiF.ru asked political analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky. Natalia Kozhina, AiF.ru: Dmitry, in your opinion, what are the real sources of...

On Monday night, the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri freed Officer Darren Wilson from the possibility of indictment over his shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown. The prosecutor before the grand jury, Robert McCulloch, explained why the indictment had been rejected: the evidence, both physical and eyewitness, supported Wilson’s case that he had acted in self-defense. McCulloch added pointed criticism of the media that drove the case in the first place, ripping the “insatiable appetite” of social media and “non-stop rumors” driven by it. The initial accounts pushed by social media, McCulloch said, were “filled with speculation and little,...