ferguson and the black lives matter movement. that s next. of those. one? are you kidding? we ll end up eating like thirty. wanna split that? ughhhh.no, so much fat. don t fight your instincts. with each each for 150 calories or less try our chocolatey brownies, tangy lemon bars, and new creamy cheesecakes. fiber one. go on, have one.
this is not the first time bernie sanders and other presidential candidates have faced black lives matters protesters while campaigning. what do we make of this particular interaction? i know what my table makes of it. joining me from ferguson, missouri, is st. louis native artist and co-founder of hands up united. nice to have you. can you talk to me about the direct action strategy here, the idea of interrupting and sort of what value that has and what kind of action that is? well, i believe that on a certain level, when we say black lives matter there s still a demographic of the country of the world of this society that doesn t hear us, they don t understand us. so at this point in time, at this particular point we re at in history, disruption is so valuable to the movement, it s so valuable to having our voices heard. essentially you re looking at a community of people that remains voiceless, unless someone does something over the top like
practices against impoverished people but the movements have been met with mixed results. their call for front-facing cameras was answered last year in september when ferguson officers began wearing them on their uniforms and president obama partially addressed critiques of police militarization when he announced a policy in may to end some of the transfers of combat gear to local law enforcement. changes in the makeup of the ferguson police department have fallen far short of the more representative police force. according to the associated press the department increased the number of african-american officers from three out of 50 to five. including the interim chief. those still living in the community where michael brown died say they haven t seen much difference in their day-to-day interactions with the police. the new york times reports people in ferguson s african-american neighborhoods say the police still treat residents suspiciously, still bark questions, still make arrests
selling author and subjected to brutal physical violence in an effort to access the most basic rights of citizenship. it s no wonder a man as accomplished as president obama still stands in awe when in the presence of john lewis but sustaining the struggle can exact an emotional, physical and spiritual cost from activists. joining my panel in new york is khan day berry, executive director of the million hoodies movement for justice and joining me from ferguson is dr. robinson, licensed clinical psychologist and president of the st. louis chapter of the association of black psychologists. dr. robinson, maybe i can begin with you. you ve been with us from the beginning days there. how would you assess the community s mental health movement? it s been difficult.
that s not to say that officers are signed up for that job, but if we re only now getting the first federal documents that say there s a cleptocratic component to what some law enforcement are doing, we re only figuring out what got put in place 150 years ago. the economic piece, alderman, part of what s happened is we ve heard officials there in ferguson say look, doj, we d be happy to put this in place but it will bankrupt our city. the way that we form revenue is by giving three, four, five tickets for every stop and actually rejecting the consent decr decree. exactly. so it is about this system in place, and the system right now relies upon revenue generated by basically a system of taxation by citation of poor people and that system has to be transformed and remodeled and so for cities the size of ferguson, even smaller in the st. louis region, that means looking at