The  Ferguson  Grand Jury's failure to indict was of course depressing but in many ways predictable.  Tme media coverage of the event, especially the protests, have also been predictable--- biased in the sense that they have emphasized the  violent confrontations and largely dismissed  the overwhelmingly peaceful and rasoned protests against  this decision.  Petitions are being cicrulated through  the nation to have the Justice Department act to use the provisions of the Civil Rights law of 1964 to indict and try officer Wilson, for "violating Michael Pbrown's Civil Rights" as the Justice Department has in the past on a number of occasions when prosecutors  the local  criminal justice system refused to act iin a wide variety of cases  where institutional racism was an issue, including the Rodney King beating case which involved police.  I would urge all of us to sign and forward such petitions.   Our readers should also remember that the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act giving the Justice Department the power to take such action was the victory of a longterm campaign to enact Federal anti-lynching legislation at a time when lynching went unpunished, a campaign in which the CPUSA played a leading roile especially in the 1030s and 1940s

Out of that period, I have cut and pasted this poem from Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet and essayist, which  should be written in the skies over Ferguson

Norman Markowitz

Kids Who Die 
by Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

(via Richard Reilly with thanks)