* 9/11 & The Ferguson Uprising * There is a lot of shock and outrage generated over the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. A young African American man named Mike Brown was gunned down needlessly by an anonymous racist police officer who is presently protected by a racist police department. A community assembles together to demand answers from their public servants and are only answered with rubber bullets and tear gas; journalists who are attempting to document this occurrence are beaten and arrested. Is this what it all has come to? You might ask yourself: What exactly is this, that of which the author is referring to? This is the dark side of the millennial generation that has grown up under the specter of xenophobia, racism, and hyper-patriotism in a post-9/11 paradigm. Most of the law enforcement officers (and not just in Ferguson, but everywhere) who are in their 20s-30s, who are administering this legally sanctioned cruelty--were most likely in middle or high school when 9/11 happened. Most of the law enforcement officers in that same age group, probably served in the military as a result of this traumatic nation wide experience. Most of the law enforcement officers in that age group probably were conditioned into believing that public assembly is a low level form of domestic terrorism; that dissent is not covered by the first amendment, and is a form of treason. This is also the same generation that grew up on the video game Call of Duty; the same generation that grew up watching UFC and programming which glorifies so called alpha-males dehumanizing others on a regular basis; and the same generation that was indoctrinated to fear everything that is different from the mainstream. The Bush Administration era was so traumatizing that the millennial generation exists in a bi-polar flux, moving forward and backwards simultaneously. What is taking place in Ferguson is a microcosm of a much greater conflict. This is not only an organized resistance against systematic racism; this is an existential battle over liberal ideals that were sacrificed for profit in the days after 9/11. With the passage of legislation such as The Patriot-Act; the expansion of the NSA; the marginalization of self autonomy and privacy; the ever expanding gap of income inequality; and the growing presence of an insidious police state not motivated by keeping the peace but increasing the bottom line of the wealthy; it was only matter of time before the public would be pushed into expressing their outrage in a less than diplomatic manner, when pressed. What is taking place in Ferguson now, may seem extraordinary, but it wont be before long that this destructive public outrage will grow when other instances of systematic injustice should occur. The question that is proposed: What can be done about this? As the millennial generation establishes itself in the work force; we cannot allow the post-millennial generations to fall into the same trap that we have found ourselves in. The post 9/11 fear and reactionary philosophy that was professed as standard procedure ought to be rendered as a relic of a bygone era. This philosophy is killing our children, destroying our communities, and holding our entire country (and species as a whole) back from progress. We must be the ones to absolve the past sins of our fathers and mothers. We must be the ones to end this neoconservative philosophy. THE TIME HAS COME TO PUT AN END TO RACISM, AND THE TIME HAS COME TO PUT AN END TO THE POST 9/11 PARADIGM! Should this happen, the death of Michael Brown and countless of others like him will not have been in vain. #Ferguson, #MikeBrown, #HandsUp, #September11th, #MillenialGeneration, #Racism
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:04:49 +0000
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