Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. Today, Luke explains what is going to happen in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where a white cop shot and killed an unarmed black teenager.
Yesterday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard in preparation for a grand jury's decision on whether to charge Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson with killing unarmed black teenager Michael Brown four months ago. As someone who lived through race riots in Miami in the 1980s as a result of white police officers escaping punishment for killing unarmed black men, I think Nixon's move means Wilson will not be indicted.
Nixon is making sure law enforcement officials and the National Guard can take up their positions and contain black people from venturing out of Ferguson if things get ugly. The St. Louis suburb's African-American citizens better be ready to have the phone lines cut off, the electricity turned off, and curfews by sundown. Don't be surprised if martial law is declared. Women and children should go stay somewhere else if they can.
If people decide to riot, the police will be ready to bust heads and make sure the only thing blacks burn down is their own neighborhood. Ferguson is a predominantly African-American city, so Nixon knows the cops are outnumbered. He has to make sure the reinforcements get there before the grand jury's decision is revealed.
My advice to the good citizens of Ferguson: Protest peacefully. Don't riot, and prove Nixon wrong. If you riot, the only thing that will burn to the ground is your own community -- your homes and businesses. There is no coming back from that. Miami's predominantly black neighborhood Liberty City has never recovered from the riots in the 1980s. Businesses stayed closed. Store owners were either too afraid to rebuild or the insurance rates were so high they couldn't reopen.
Show Nixon and the rest of the world that black people don't have to loot and pillage when another miscarriage of justice is committed against us.
Tune into Luke on The Andy Slater Show every Tuesday from 2 to 5 p.m. on Miami's Sports Animal, 940 AM.
Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1 and @unclelukesempir.
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