There is a lot to process in this brief report, enough that it warranted a reading list post, not a simple reblog/share.
I am glad the National Guard is withdrawing. Unless their presence was to rein in the out-of-control police who were harassing the protesters and raiding their safe spaces (and we all know they didn’t do that), having the National Guard there only made things worse for the protesters.
The police are still arresting people for “failure to disperse”, i.e. for exercising their right to peacefully assemble and protest. The overwhelming majority of the people arrested in Ferguson were arrested for that reason.
I am not surprised St. Louis county prosecutor McCulloch refuses to recuse himself from the case in spite of his close ties to the police force responsible for Brown’s death. The fact that he refers to concerns over his involvement as a “distraction” lets me know he is too close to things to effectively see all sides. This is why the governor needs to take him off the case. The NAACP has started a petition to that effect, which I signed as soon as I saw it.