Photography by DJ Wilson
The writer's sons in front of the busted gate
Darren Wilson needs to come fix the gate on my back fence. Or maybe St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch could do it. Or Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for Michael Brown’s family, might be able to put it back on its hinges. Gov. Jay Nixon? Probably not, if it were up to Jay, he’d never answer the question about who was in charge of fixing it, or he might provide the lumber and nails, but never deploy them.
One thing's certain: The deadbeat who busted the gate won’t fix it.
Such is urban life. Often, bad stuff happens, blame is hard to assign, misunderstanding abounds, and final resolution is unlikely. Restitution? Justice? Oh, please. Fix what you can, make the best of it, move on.
On Monday night, when the St. Louis County grand jury no-billed Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, hundreds of protestors gathered at Arsenal and Grand near Tower Grove Park. Just three doors west, somebody kicked down my backyard gate, ran through my gangway, and dropped a red plastic box with dozens of newly filled, stapled-and-bagged prescriptions. (No, we did not open any bag to search for Percodan or Percocet. Get thee behind me, Satan.)
Nearby MoKaBe’s coffee house had been proclaimed, on Facebook no less, as a “safe space” for those displeased with the grand jury. That is not to be confused with the medieval distinction of “sanctuary,” as that was bestowed, via Facebook, to St. John’s Episcopal Church, a half of a block away. I'm not sure what “safe space” means, other than a political welcome mat. MoKaBe’s did draw a crowd.
Those who walked south from the shutdown of Interstate 44 to Grand and Arsenal blocked traffic, chanted slogans, confronted city police, and generally attempted to disrupt the status quo. Later, there would be tear gas.
Before all of that, a bit after 10 p.m., The Medicine Shoppe pharmacy at Hartford Street and Grand Avenue was burglarized in front of plenty of witnesses. The glass front door and a window were smashed. Drugs were stolen.
By my misfortune, the brigand who grabbed that batch of drugs ran down the alley behind Mekong Restaurant, and either the thief or someone chasing the thief busted down my gate. My two neighbors, one on each side, had conflicting testimonies about what happened. Eye witnesses can disagree, it seems. Somehow, a red pick-up truck was involved. They did agree the gate was knocked down.
The person who ran with the drugs either accidentally dropped them or intentionally dumped them in the gangway. The mayhem was not nearly finished. As the night wore on, a window on a car parked in back of my house was shattered. Nothing was stolen.
The wooden gate was old, but it was about 6 feet tall and worked just fine before it was flattened. Until it is fixed, my dogs, Diego and Pablo, will only be let out under supervision. As anyone with dogs knows, that is a drag for you and the dogs.
The anticipation for the grand jury decision had reached Waiting for Godot proportions by this past Monday, November 24. Most people under the delusion that they were “in the know” believed the long-awaited news would be released the previous day or the previous Sunday.
A media guest for my Monday night, 30-minute, unpaid radio gig on KDHX 88.1 FM said he would come on “after Ferguson.” With the impending announcement that night, he was going to be working. A last-minute, fill-in guest was needed to satisfy my dozens of listeners. Remarkably, Todd Swanstrom stepped into the breach. We recorded the show at 6 p.m., before word of the grand jury decision was made public. Swanstrom, a political-science professor and author of several books on economic segregation, was loquacious and logical per usual. His first on-air words:
“We, as a metropolitan area, should thank the protestors. The protesters have improved our civic vision. I don’t think people saw the extent and the depth of the exploitation and disrespect of this whole system as it raises municipal revenues through traffic stops and court fees, which essentially tries to balance the budgets of these small municipalities, many of which are fiscally stressed, on the backs of the poorest citizens, and that usually means minorities.”
Let the record reflect that Swanstrom said this before all hell broke loose. The show was recorded two hours before the announcement and many hours before Little Caesar’s Pizza, Juanita’s Fashion R Botique, Sam’s Meat Market, and other stores were either looted, burned, or both in and around Ferguson. Yet Swanstrom was talking about protesters, not arsonists or thieves.
As the Des Lee Endowed Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Policy at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, it’s Swanstrom’s gig to ponder such political and social problems. Swanstrom broke down the diagnosis and the treatment.
Ferguson gets 25 percent of its annual budget from traffic stops and court fees, just below the 30 percent maximum. Some municipalities get about half of their revenues from such fines, Swanstrom says. Lowering that maximum to 20 percent could be achieved through state legislation. There is a move afoot to do that.
While the killing of Michael Brown has drawn most of the attention, Swanstrom says 17 other county municipalities have higher poverty rates than Ferguson. It’s about poverty and class, not just race, contends Swanstrom, co-author of the book Place Matters.
“It’s the interaction of race and class, it’s not race or class," he says. "It’s that interaction where the historically disadvantaged African-American population—which in the age of Jim Crowe was not able to purchase homes in good neighborhoods or get good jobs—is behind socioeconomically. Then they get discriminated against by the way this works out on the ground with these little fragmented municipalities in north St. Louis County.”
The national trend of the haves and have-nots, which is at its worst since the Gilded Age of the 1870s, is made worse in St. Louis County by the crazy quilt of 90 municipalities, 50-odd police departments, and 24 school districts.
“We as a society are moving toward two societies: one rich and one poor, living in separate parts of our metropolitan areas," he says. "That is a serious problem. You take that economic segregation, then overlay it with municipal boundaries on top of that. Then not only do you have a problem neighborhood, you have a problem municipality.”
When a reporter from the French newspaper Le Monde interviewed Swanstrom about Ferguson, the reporter was aghast to learn there are 25 school districts in St. Louis County. In France, the public education system is nationally run, with no equivalent to the United States' version of the local school district.
“If we, as a region, had more equal development and more equal communities where poverty was more spread out, we would as a region be stronger immediately, the schools would perform better, there would be better health outcomes," says Swanstrom. "All of that would happen without the expenditure of a single dollar.”
Media plays a role, Swanstrom claims, by presenting a binary narrative: white and black. “The media has framed this almost in totally racial terms,” he says. Describing the situation as an African-American community being oppressed by a Caucasian community is too simplistic and not productive, he says.
“I would argue that at the very least, the white community in Ferguson is far from being the main enemy of the African-American community in Ferguson. Actually, they live in the same geography, and they share a lot in common. They should be getting together with other suburbs to fight the battle to get more resources to make their community better.”
Before Ferguson—and parts of Dellwood—burned Monday, the expectation of the grand jury action was reminiscent of bracing for a tornado, getting ready for Mardi Gras, and dreading Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1999. It turned out to fit only one of those three expectations.
It was a tornado in that it was a disaster. Nobody was killed, but much property was destroyed or stolen for no good reason. Communal fear and distrust got a steroidal boost. It was not like Mardi Gras, even though a good number of the people in the streets seemed to show up because it was a trending scene, verified by their hand-held screens. It was like the pope’s visit in that it was anticipated for far too long and many people stayed home in hibernation. Unlike the Pope’s visit, it was not uneventful or poorly attended.
After Swanstrom’s radio primer on sociopolitical pathology, it was back to the front porch to watch the protestors and police do an elongated stand-off at Grand and Arsenal. It was well past 1 a.m., time for tear gas. Earlier the smell wafted into the house, but this was the first time a whole billowy cloud hit from behind.
The aptly named tear gas makes you cry, irritates your throat, and makes breathing difficult. It's no mystery why it’s used, though the effects wear off. After getting three doses of it over 30 minutes, it didn't seem so scary. After splashing cold water in your face and a drink, it fades.
The police seemed to outnumber the protesters, and they certainly had an armament advantage. Yet if policemen are in a fair fight, they have made a mistake. Their taxpayer-financed job is to minimize property damage, prevent injuries, and protect the First Amendment. On Monday night at Grand and Arsenal, that was achieved: There were a few broken windows, some theft, no fires, and no serious injuries. People had a chance to vent.
The Medicine Shoppe personnel were grateful for the return of dozens of prescriptions, and as they opened the box, they started to sort through them. They took my name, address, and phone number, as the police had done Monday night.
Meanwhile, there's a gate and a car window to fix.
The wheels of justice grind slowly, if they grind at all.
