Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson indicated this week that they are “pursuing” an investigation into whether comments made by Michael Brown’s stepfather Louis Head (shown here in the white cap) should be charged for his inciting a riot for his response to the news that there would be no indictment of Officer Darren White. While I certainly do not condone the language, I have long been a critic of such “violent speech” prosecutions and I believe that such charges would violate his free speech rights and ignore the mitigating factor of a family member in a highly emotional position that night. Warning: profane words are contained in the story below and the videotape.
After the news of the grand jury decision, Head started to scream “Burn this motherfucker down! Burn this bitch down!” Looting and arson broke out soon after the decision of the grand jury.
In addition to police chief, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder told Fox News that it sounds like Head was trying to incite a riot.
After the grand jury’s decision was announced, 12 commercial buildings in Ferguson were destroyed by fire and there were well over 100 arrests at St. Louis-area.
I do not believe that Head’s comments would satisfy the standard established by the Supreme Court in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio as advocating imminent violence. Violent speech is protected under the Constitution absent such a threat of imminent violence. I have previously written about the dangerous line of criminalizing speech. I currently have a case going before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on this issue in United States v. Al-Timimi.
Adding to the constitutional concerns raised by the threatened prosecution of Head is that fact that he was a grieving family member expressing widely shared anger at the news of the decision. He had just jumped up to hold his wife who was sobbing after the news. I doubt anyone seriously believes that it was Head who triggered the rioting, looting, and arson. Those crimes occurred at the time of the incident and were widely anticipated by law enforcement personnel. Head has apologized for his outburst and said that he was wrong to call for violence.
Source: CBS
I would like to see some of the burned out store owners sue Jay Nixon for being asleep at the wheel. The National Guard was on duty and at his Command. He knew well in advance of the Grand Jury No True Bill coming up. All they had to do is post a few guardsmen with rifles aimed at the arsonists in front of 25 buildings or so and all of those buildings would not have been burned. Impeach Jay Nixon!
Nixon: Pull Out Now, Like Your Father Should Have.
That last one was a bumper sticker in 1972.
Burn, baby Burn! morphed into Learn Baby Learn. Check this out from Wikipedia:
Nathaniel “Magnificent” Montague (born 1928), is an American R&B disc jockey notable not only for the soul music records he helped promote on KGFJ Los Angeles and WWRL New York City, but whose trademark catch-phrase, “Burn, baby! Burn!” became the rallying cry of the 1965 Watts riots. Following criticism that his trademark phrase had inadvertently stirred up rioters, Montague advocated non-violence and urged young listeners to pursue their educations, coining the new phrase “Learn, baby! Learn!”
Semi-retired by the mid-1970s, Montague relocated to Palm Springs, California, where he was instrumental in the launch of easy listening KPLM, today a successful country music station. His was the first radio station construction permit issued to an African-American in four decades.
We also need to protect police from unlawful thugs whom set out to harm them.
http://www.truthandaction.org/virginia-cop-kidnapped-killed-4-blacks-wheres-outrage/
Correction/clarification: I said … No small thing is that the black85+% city residents elected a white mayor for the first time since 1974, a guy with credentials like being the CEO and COO of Detroit Medical Center…a university affiliated facility.
happypappies….No, I don’t think there was just a dozen people, but I do think the media exposure, from the lights and cameras to the transmitted coverage, made a negative difference. I been in the middle (lived there and drove to work daily through it) of a far worse riot (42 reported dead, many more unreported) many years ago (Detroit 1967) where we did not have so much coverage…other than of the flaming sky visuals. Detroit has taken over 40 years, plus a bankruptcy, to even begin a recovery. And it still has more areas of dysfunction that progress, although the city core is improving daily due to investors who think like I do…but have a lot more money. 🙂 No small thing is that the 85+% city residents elected a white mayor for the first time since 1974, a guy with credentials like being the CEO and COO of Detroit Medical Center…a university affiliated facility. Fortunately the local media has NOT made the race of the new mayor an issue…probably since the last black one is now serving 28 years in a federal penitentiary. Even ghetto folks eventually figure out where the problem is and do something about it….now voting for character versus skin color, as MLK famously said. Otherwise, very little media attention is paid to the city core’s progress…but it is there, and my professional (finance) daughter now lives there quite happily….in an environment that seems to have almost all ethnicities and races represented in the growing community. She’s one with her mothers beauty and in fact is an involuntary “cougar” with mostly early 30 somethings trying to date her even at 42 years of age. She has my outlook and has made a much bigger impact and success with it than I have.
However, I do agree with you about the dysfunctional family and I was tempted to cite that fact when I wrote my comment…e.g.,Michael Brown didn’t exactly have a normal up bringing by ordinary standards. Nor a mother with a clean record either. Poor examples all round. Many people just do not understand what having parents separate casually, fight regularly, sometimes both abandoning a kid to grandma or worse, has on a kid’s head. My first wife was an orphan refugee in two wars (WWII and Korean) and although a beautiful woman with a lovely disposition 90% of the time, she has a quirk to this day: she just has to continuously prove to those closest to her that she does NOT need them by doing things that are absurd. It finally drove me nuts…either shoot myself or separate and divorce ( took nothing but my clothes…gave her all other assets including her house which appreciated 5:1 by the time she sold it). Never-the-less I and my family were part of her wedding party when she remarried years later…and that guy got the same treatment…then died of a hemorrhagic stroke at age 52. To this day she has this irritating and depressing quirk…I understand why, but not how to remedy it. I was over optimistic to think I could.
I am also of the opinion that making that incident all about cops versus black kids is to miss the deeper problems mentioned above and the fact that the vast majority of black youth deaths are caused by other black youths, not police. I don’t see how you can fix one thing without the other. And I do not know how to fix the other overall dysfunctional part.
As we have viewed and discussed Ferguson and NYC, there were 12 murders in Newark NJ over a weekend and no coverage of any of them. We focus on the wrong things IMO….however YMMV…I’m hardly the be all and end of sociology. My experience by coincidence has been living as a minority in nearly every place I’ve lived, here and over seas…and the positive things done, to include hiring disadvantage youth or providing them with simple support has worked for me, even just providing baseballs, gloves and bats (and joining them in their play…gun laid down undisturbed) to foreign national kids I served around when they showed an interest using a tennis ball and a broom handle …but I am not any kind of guru. At times I struggle to keep a positive attitude, Particularly about big government (which I was part of for a long time) and about media with salacious appetites.
Hey there Aridog — I think things up North are different than things are in the Midwest although I suppose Detroit can be considered the upper midwest however, that being said please realize that many of the black people from St. Louis in the 1970’s and our transition was not as rocky as yours because our town was never as broke as yours see cut and paste from the liberal Huffington Post and a resident of Spanish Lake (right nect to McCluer High School line he was lucky) – Even today while portions of North County look like a suburban version of the East Side of Detroit and vacant house and unkept properties are common most of Spanish Lake and the rest of North County is still in good condition. People are maintaining their properties and driving through the neighborhoods you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were in south or north county. The vast-majority of the new homeowners are African-American.
I am not sure I am getting through to you. Your neighborhood is different, You guys have a lot of digging out to do and Ferguson was a beautiful little Greek business downtown very cute. Quaint. Small. Just because there were African Americans don’t mean we didn’t get along. We did. Now we aren’t even gonna be able to tell ethnic jokes any more for 20 years (lol) Remember – They booed Jesse Jackson off the stage last August when he was asking for money. These people that are residents are real. There is always a scamming and criminal element. But you will find that in every walk of life and you should not pass out benefits to them just because of their skin color. Jim Crow is over. It has been for some time
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/umar-lee/spanish-lake_b_5507408.html
This guy is right – people did leave at first because of the black element. But I didn’t not ever. And I lost my children over it. They hate me and they won’t admit why. All the fights I have on here with Rafflaw because he goes too far and I have actually lost my family over this racial hatred, My Children went to an all black school in 1984 and they hate me for it. I called them on this at the beginning of these riots in August because only one left will speak to me and he started talking weird stuff about you have no power over me and I don’t have to let you see any pictures…….Hate is a terrible thing.
If you think there were just a dozen people waiting around there you were sadly misinformed
Aridog – I am oh so very sorry you feel this way but I think you should do some study on the family history. Number one. No one is sure that Louis Head is even married to Lesley McSpadden. Number Two, you seem to have conveniently forgotten the family spat where they beat up the Granny regarding the 1400.00 of the T-Shirts for Michael Brown even though they were Granny’s intellectual property as Michael lived with Granny.
This is not your close knit normal family. They did not get close knit until after the murder unfortunately until it became gainful to all of those involved. At the risk of repeating myself over and over again, a young man was murdered on the 25th that testified truthfully -DeAndre Joshua who was Dorian Johnson’s friend. Yes, he ws shot and burned to death yards from where MIchael Brown was shot. and I am heartily sick of hearing about him. He was strangling that store owner you know.
happypappies….normally I’d agree with you (believe it or not 🙂 ) …however, in my opinion, had Mr head not been under light and camera coverage, his remarks would have been moot. I get his anger, however misdirected. Without the media coverage of his wife’s grief ( a mother who lost a son) and his reaction was more to blame than anything he said…he remarks were local, maybe a dozen people heard him, but on television news he reached far more (not just by TV but by cell phones as well) …whose fault, his or the media? I don’t like what he proposed, but I don’t believe it had much impact sans media fascination. I’ve been through, on site and in the midst, of a “burn baby burn” episode in Detroit (1967) and doubt Mr head had similar impact. However, I could be wrong?
I don’t doubt the media have a serious challenge…cover the salacious or not, etc. Unfortunately, the salacious attracts the coverage, not reality. I am very unsure we can change this, given the motives of the media. I am more than tickled that Fox news is among the leaders of the doubting of the NYC Garner verdict…I am sure this perplexes the talking heads at MSNBC.
I think we have a misunderstanding of what a “fact” is in reality. Strictly defined, it is an incontrovertible physical point of evidence (no matter what “side” you take).
Example: the distribution of the shell casings in the Wilson vs Brown case. That finding is NOT in dispute. The “fired from 35 feet” or more statement by Dr Badden is NOT a fact, as the physical evidence does not support the statement (casing do NOT fly forward, but to the side…and I can prove that) …it is merely an opinion based upon ignoring the physical evidence recorded at the scene. In short, an opinion, based upon pathology, allegedly, requiring conjecture, not evidence. Dr Badden does not usually do this, so I am puzzled by his remarks about 35 feet, etc. As someone who has fired at men from ranges further and closer, as well as weekly range practice on stationary targets, I know he is mistaken or quoted out of context. I am inclined to think the latter…as Dr Badden is a well respected pathologist.
His comment, as extracted and quoted, is NOT a “fact”,… however, the physical evidence of the casing locations is (are) a fact(s).
Much is said about tolerance and intolerance. Fifty years ago when Selma and Birmingham were front and center there was a new reckoning in America. A large number of white people began to criticize the White Bigots and indeed sicked the feds on them to shut them down. Over time we have this culture and assemblage of Black Bigots. Same strokes for different folks. The likes of Farrakan and AL Qaeda Sharptone have been tolerated like white America tolerated the Klan until fifty years ago. Now there will be a new departure and the BBs will no longer be tolerated. The American politics will take on the issues of welfare cheats and burn baby burn. The new killing in NYC by the cop with the Italian name of the great big guy by choking him to death shows that the goodie two shoes in NYC who have been throwing rocks at Ferguson can now throw some rocks at home. I hope they burn Big AL’s neighborhood. Serve him right. Yorkies need to wake up. If you live in NYC you need to know that your itShay does stink. I hope some of the condensation which has been thrown at Ferguson will come home to NYC to roost.
Paul. Everyone claims the market on “facts”. For instance when you claim something is a fact, I automatically do my own research and often find that your “fact” was indeed fiction.
Inga – I find so many of your ‘facts’ are fictions.
Jet, mine were die hard Republicans. 🙂
Yes Jettexas, there ARE some facts that can be disputed, but there is a plethora of others that cannot be. A politician could say that it was a fact that he had the authority to go around Congress, other’s would say that was not factual. Legal scholars could argue about it for years. So how could we stop politicians from spewing “facts” that are ambiguous? There are not always things things are clearly black and white, there are many shades of gray.
Inga – a fact is a fact. It either is a fact or it isn’t a fact. No sometimes people make up ‘facts’ but they are not really facts. And facts are different from opinions.
You would like my parents, they are die hard Democrats. 😉
Their not MY facts. It is an action that cannot be disputed. When a politician states their service in the military and then we find out that he in FACT did not serve, he should put his money where his mouth is and be liable for telling a lie.
Well! I’m glad we can find an area of agreement Jettexas. I’ll ask my brother if he heard of your dad and his book.
Jettexas, again, your facts may not be factual to me or others, nor mine to you. We all get our facts from sources, I don’t trust yours and you don’t trust mine, hence my question about who is the arbiter of truth? Since we are not part of the NSA or some alphabet agency we must sift through many many many “facts” to get to anything even resembling truth and even then there most likely
won’t be a meeting of the minds on what is factual.
Not only should the Step father be charged for inciting a riot, the likes of Sharpton, Holder and the faux Pres did their fair share in helping it along. Heck, the Pres must have a crises to take advantage of, so Sharpton and Holder only did their best to help him. However, our dear leader led the way in making sure there was a big crises created. FOR THE RECORD, I AM DARN TIRED OF THE RACE CARD BEING PLAYED.
Good for your daughter and we sure do appreciate your families service to this country! Your brother has probably heard of my father’s book Mercy Warriors.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XE5FLbE5L.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81vLcNi53yL.jpg
FACT:
1.
a : thing done: as a obsolete : feat
b : crime
c : archaic : action
2.
: archaic : performance, doing
3
: the quality of being actual : actuality
4
a : something that has actual existence
b : an actual occurrence
5
: a piece of information presented as having objective reality — in fact
: in truth
See fact defined for English-language learners »
See fact defined for kids »
Examples of FACT
Rapid electronic communication is now a fact.
The book is filled with interesting facts and figures.
He did it, and that’s a fact.
Origin of FACT:
Latin factum, from neuter of factus, past participle of facere
First Known Use: 15th century.
Does that help clear up what a fact is?