capitalism and its handmaiden rule of law predicated upon injustice...,

RT |  The lack of civil rights, the lack of equality, the ‘ghettoization’, the institutionalization of racism are fundamental and making what is called ‘America in the 21st century'.

RT: What impact could this shooting have on police reforms that were supposed to take place in Ferguson?

Eric Draitser: It’s going to have a significant impact on everything that is happening in Ferguson. I think first and foremost we should begin with the impact that it’s going to have on the on-going protest movement, on the ongoing calls for justice, and it is not simply reform of the Ferguson Police Department, but calling attention to the institutionalized racism that exists both within that institution as well as within the larger institutions in Missouri and in the US. Of course this will delegitimize those protests, it will delegitimize that movement or at least that is the attempt that is going to be made. We have a very clear precedent here in New York City in the aftermath of the non-indictment of the killers of Eric Garner. When we had a massive protest movement developing in New York, you had a very similar incident in which two police officers were attacked and that incident was then used to attack the protesters, that is to say to attack them in the media, attack them in public relations, and we can expect a very similar outcome here. It’s very unfortunate because of all of the information that has come out about the racism, about the brutality and the other impacts that it was having in Ferguson itself. 

RT: The recent wave of resignations in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting was supposed to ease tensions. Does it look like they've had the reverse effect?

 

ED: They were certainly meant to present the illusion of changes, cosmetic changes, but again, I don’t think that anything was really addressing the criminal nature of the police department there. And certainly it is not easing tensions. We should come back to the facts in this case. We have corroborated accounts, that is to say corroborated by multiple eye-witnesses that the shots that were fired - which the mainstream media is attempting to allege came from the protesters - actually came from some distance behind them. 

The question then becomes exactly who is benefitting from this, and who might have perpetrated such an attack, naturally an investigation is what is really called for. But the larger question is: does anybody really expect justice and fairness from the Ferguson Police Department as if they would be the once investigating this incident. What might need to be called for a some kind of a special investigation possibly even a special prosecutor, special investigator, something along those lines, because the reality is, the situation in Ferguson is a volatile one and it … really addresses many of the most fundamental questions in the US regarding racism, social justice, institutionalization of the brutality, militarization of police. All of these issues that many of us have been talking for quite a long time; all of them come to the fore in the recent developments.