As Ferguson rioters and hoodlums were burning down buildings in their communities, shooting at police officers, looting stores, and pelting CNN reporters with rocks and bottles on Monday evening, the NAACP invoked Trayvon Martin in vowing to fight the “appalling” grand jury decision to not indict officer Darren Wilson.
“Local officials in Ferguson utterly failed in their duties to conduct an open and transparent investigation,” NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks said in a statement. “We will not allow this to be another Sanford, Florida. We will not allow the justice system to let us down once more. Take action today, for Michael, and for all of our sons.”
Before the grand jury’s decision that there was insufficient evidence to charge Wilson in Brown’s death was announced, Brooks called Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D) “presumptuous” for declaring a state of emergency and activating the National Guard. Brooks expressed his displeasure that officials were treating Ferguson as a “security crisis” instead of a “social justice crisis” because “99%” of the demonstrators, he said, were “non-violent.”
“Brothers and sisters, this is a devastating setback in our fight for justice,” Brooks said. “But the grand jury’s decision does not mean a crime was not committed in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9. It does not mean we are done fighting for Michael Brown.”
Brooks said that “we are all filled with frustration, disbelief, and anger over this decision” and then continued to push the false “hands up” narrative, declaring that it is “appalling” that “the officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man with his hands in the air remains free.”
The NAACP, which has compared the Ferguson rioters to Boston Tea Partiers and peaceful civil rights protesters (a comparison that even President Barack Obama has rejected), urged supporters to sign a petition urging the “Department of Justice to complete their federal, criminal civil rights investigation into Michael Brown’s slaying.”
The media, as they did in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s tragic death, tried to exploit Michael Brown’s tragic death to push the false narrative that a racist white police officer gunned down a “gentle giant” who had his “hands up” from behind after Brown merely jaywalked. They did so without any evidence and before surveillance footage showed that Brown was involved in a robbery minutes before, while subsequent autopsies confirmed that Brown was not shot from behind while his hands were up in the air.
After Martin’s death, the media tried to push the narrative that a racist “white Hispanic” shot a black teenager with skittles because he was wearing a hoodie. The media tried to fan the flames of racial division by first falsely describing Zimmerman as “white” and doctoring and editing 9/11 audio to make Zimmerman seem like a racist and falsely claim that Zimmerman uttered a racial epithet. A Florida jury acquitted Zimmerman, while a Ferguson grand jury did not believe there was enough evidence to warrant an indictment of Wilson.
The NAACP, though, vowed to “hold law enforcement officials accountable” and declared that it stood “united with the community and other activists groups” in “demanding that all police officers wear operable body cameras; police departments reflect the diversity of the community that they are serving; and that Congress passes the End Racial Profiling Act.”
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