Young Blacks Question Effectiveness of Peaceful Tactics

At an event of mass protest Sunday, young black Americans grew frustrated and angry at an older generation’s peaceful response to the killing of Missouri teenager Michael Brown by officers, exposing a generational divide over how best to confront police racism, brutality and excessive force, The Guardian reports.

Older civil rights leaders hark back to the methods of the civil rights era half a century ago, while some younger people press for more confrontational tactics.

Chris McGreal reports at The Guardian:

The fuse was lit when hundreds of people who came to hear the intellectual and activist Cornel West speak were subjected to speeches by a succession of preachers from the major religions offering essentially the same message about loving one’s fellow man and standing up against injustice. The meeting was billed as being “in the tradition of the civil rights movement” but the tone was in part governed by the venue for the meeting, St Louis University, a Catholic institution.

Some in the audience grew restless and then angered at the series of reverends, imams and rabbis until a small group of activists demanded to speak. They were supported by chants of “let them be heard” and “this is what democracy looks like”, a rallying cry at protests over Brown’s shooting.

Tef Poe, a St Louis rapper and activist for Hands Up United, a campaign group seeking racial justice in Ferguson, took the microphone and noted that the Christian, Jewish and Muslim preachers on the stage were not the people on the street trying to protect people from the police.

“The people who want to break down racism from a philosophical level, y’all didn’t show up,” he said to loud cheers.