#BlackLivesMatter: a #Ferguson reading and action list

From @CoonKingdom on Twitter

I am outraged and heartbroken, although sadly not surprised, by last night’s announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted for killing an unarmed black teenager. I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said more eloquently by other people, so here is a roundup of the most important things I’ve read.

There will be protests around the country tonight; please, please consider going if you at all can. I’ll be at the one in Boston. It’s incredibly necessary to stand up and speak out: to say that this is not ok, and it will never be ok.

Autostraddle has a good overview of the situation, including links to places to donate and an open letter from the Ferguson protesters. You can also donate to the Ferguson library, which is open to children today while the schools are closed. And you can sign petitions to ban racial profiling by police, require Ferguson and St. Louis county and city police to wear body cameras, and secure justice for Mike Brown.

–Hey, step back with the riot-shaming.
–Smashy smashy: nine historical triumphs to make you rethink property destruction.
-The response of the police force in Ferguson has been egregious, from tear-gassing a group carrying an unconscious woman to hampering aerial news coverage by having the FAA issue a no-fly zone. This satirical news story from The Onion is too close to the truth for comfort: Heavy police presence in Ferguson to ensure residents adequately provoked.
–For Tamir, who was stolen.
–Teaching our sons to be afraid is not the answer to cops who shoot children.
–Why Ferguson has been in a state of emergency for years.
–Michael Brown’s family: “ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera.”
–Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s about white rage against progress.
-Some of the most insightful commentary I’ve read has been on Twitter. Read this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. I’ll try to put a Storify summary at some point; in the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter, where I’ve been retweeting as much as I can.