Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Across the nation tension grows as Ferguson, Missouri and black communities across the United States await a Grand Jury decision that might ignite a powder keg. The grand jury will decide whether to indict a white police officer for the shooting death of an unarmed 18-year old African-American Michael Brown. Any community with festering sores of having overzealous police or knows the pangs of racial injustice may be ripe for a day of reckoning.
Many African-American persons identify with what they have seen played out on their TV screens since the death of young Michael Brown.
From Missouri radiating out in all directions, black community leaders everywhere sense with trepidation that the grand jury’s decision concerning officer Darren Wilson may occur anytime within the next few days. Some differ on the time table–but that decision will come. Many are unsure about the aftermath especially in communities with scars and histories of police “overzealousness” and racism.
The boarded up West Side stores and businesses in Ferguson, hardest hit by rioting, stand sentry on the unknown. Tension is everywhere. And that tension has spread to many black communities living in a television age and persons who identify strongly with what is believed to be a profound injustice.
Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri declared a state of emergency. The Missouri National Guard is on alert–the FBI has warned that outside “elements” may create havoc with law enforcement. The Missouri Ku Klux Klan are stirring the cauldron in Ferguson and militant black factions are standing shoulder to shoulder.
The unknown timetable for the Grand Jury decision is a ticking time bomb. Perhaps it will come this weekend when children are out of school. Across the United States TVs in many communities are on night and day. When the decision comes down it may spread like a white light fire.
A day of reckoning? Of unbridled fury? Of fire reaching into the skies and stores being pillaged as far as the eye can see and across many states?
What is the temperature in your community? Are there festering wounds never healed?
Pray for reasonable voices being heard over the outcry and shattering glass. The United States is still a tinderbox.
