Today's Action In Campus Martius [Ferguson/Eric Garner Protest]

[Bham1982]

From my reading of the posts above, I can see that the concerted effort to smear Michael Brown's life and turn him into a thug succeeded.

Michael Brown was very successful in living a thug lifestyle. He didn't need anyone's help.

1. Maybe he did rob the store, maybe he shoplifted, maybe he did neither.

There's no "maybe". We have a robbery and assault on video.

2. He was not stopped for shoplifting or robbery. He was stopped for walking in the street.

We know this is false. The officer indicated he thought he was the robber, and in fact had just been given Michael Brown's description over the radio.

3. Right here, something different could have happened. The officer could have politely asked him to get off the street. That is not what happened.

Irrelevent and absurd. "Michael would have turned his life around that very minute, if just asked 'please'. He only attacked the officer because the officer didn't use the magic word."

4. Michael Brown could have meekly gotten off the street. That is not what happened.

True

5. If witnesses are correct, how Michael Brown entered the police car is not completely clear.

Sorta true, but all but 2 witnesses essentially corroborate the officers' series of events. No witnesses corroborate the claimed "hands up don't shoot" narrative.

6. Michael Brown had good points that have been completely steamrolled by the police and media efforts to smear him and turn him into a thug. Does anyone remember that he was days from his first day at college when shot? He had plans for a productive future.

All false. Michael Brown was deified as a "gentle giant" when the media knew about his criminal record. His parents were violent felons and not even raising him, yet also deified as innocent. Hell, they even spoke before the UN, which is something Monty Python or the Onion couldn't have come up with. The "hands up don't shoot" meme continues to this day, even though it has been discarded as fiction.

7. Michael Brown had no criminal record.

False. Michael Brown had a sealed juvenile criminal record.

He seems to have been an ordinary kid who made some bad decisions that day, one to mouth off to a police officer with a scary attitude.

I don't know any "ordinary kids" who have sealed criminal records, who rob and assault, and then who attack police officers. Do you?

Why are practically the only victims of police violence those who are engaging in violence and extensive criminal activity themselves? If there is a strong racial element to police procedures then the disparate impact should be present irrespective of criminal activity.

Again, if the protestors want change, they need to specify what they want changed in the arrest procedures, and in the grand jury procedures. Absent that, it's nonsense, and will be ignored by 90% of Americans. No one would have heard of Ferguson if Michael Brown were Hispanic, Asian or White, you need the "secret formula" of black victim, white officer, and then you get the racial charlatans.

"Hands up don't shoot" when it's a lie, "Black lives matter" when the ones protesting don't care about the hundreds of thousands of black lives lost to violence, only the .005% lost to white police officers, and "water is a human right" when it has nothing to do with Ferguson. That's the message.