region and our state as members of the ferguson commission. they bring to the table a rich diversity of life experience and points of views. while they are clearly a diverse group, they are united by the shared passion to promote understanding, to hasten healing, to ensure equal opportunities in education and employment and to safeguard the civil rights of all of our citizens. missouri governor jay nixon picked those people in the wake of the police shooting of michael brown in ferguson. he asked them to go beyond that case and look at the structural problems in policing crime and pvrt. today the commission released its report. it s worth looking at why the commission was different in the first place. from the very day of governor nixon s announcement, it didn t actually look like a beltway commission of retirees or hacks, the usual grouping of people who are so decades-deep into the status quo that they are the least likely people to challenge the root causes of anything.
they bring to the table a rich diversity of life experience and points of views. while they are clearly a diverse group, they are united by the shared passion to promote understanding, to hasten healing, to ensure equal opportunities in education and employment and to safeguard the civil rights of all of our citizens. missouri governor jay nixon picked those 16 people in the wake of the police shooting of michael brown in ferguson. he asked them to go beyond that case and look at the structural problems in policing crime and poverty. today the commission released its report. it s worth looking at why the commission was different in the first place. from the very day of governor nixon s announcement, it didn t actually look like a beltway commission of retirees or hacks, the usual grouping of people who are so decades-deep into the status quo that they are the least likely people to challenge the root causes of anything. this was different. and that may partly be because
commission when we first started, the attorney general sued 13 municipalities that were acting out. was there a lot of discord and disagreement on the commission or not? several times here and there there was disagreement, you know. some people didn t believe that this should have been a recommendation, some people believed that this shouldn t have been a recommendation. at the end of the day we had to remember this wasn t about us. we wasn t called here to have a rasheen aldridge commission or a tracy blackmon commission. this was the ferguson commission that had to find solutions for the people. so at the end of the day we had to remember this wasn t about us. we made it happen. it s been difficult, but we have came a long way. we pushed through. and with the support of all the community, thousands of volunteer hours, we got a very healthy and people s recommendation, i believe.
normally punished by jailtime, that is to say the government didn t intend for people to go to jail for them end up being jail time offenses. talk about how that s started to happen locally in ferguson. there has been a lot of work without this ferguson commission because we understand also as a commission this isn t the end all be all solution of change, but a lot of recommendations that have been put forward have been solutions and change and calling outs that people in the community have been asking for for a long time. this recent past year we ve seen a huge change in the way the municipal courts are ran and the way that they are also handling people. but we still have a long way to go. yeah. but the attention that has been raised around it and the changes that have changed around senate bill 5 and actually digging deep in even the commission when we first started, the attorney general sued 13 municipalities that were acting out.
joining us now tonight for an interview, the committee organizer and activist and one of the commissioners on the ferguson commission. thanks for being here tonight. thanks for having me. in your view what s the most important thing coming out of this report that you worked on? i think the most important thing that is coming out of this report i mean, there are several things, as you know, as we look back on what happened on august 9th, the death of michael brown and the police reactions and the way the police have responded to communities for so long. we have the commission has looked and seen that it s bigger than just that. and we understand that it s bigger than just police violence. this is we re talking issues that have been embedded in our communities for too long. issues that have been embedded in communities across this nation that continues to not see is the same opportunity and not see the same resources that there are in other communities.