Police point to a demonstrator who has his arms raised before arresting him on 19 August in Ferguson. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesLast week, a brutal midday sun beat down on Ferguson, Missouri, and brought it slowly to the boil. The temperature has barely fallen since.
Before the apocalyptic scenes of troops, teargas and “less lethal” bullets turned this town of just 21,000 into an international spectacle, a man who gave his name as HB quietly sprinkled Remy Martin cognac on the spot on the residential side road where his young friend Michael Brown had been shot dead on 9 August. Six bullets from a policeman’s pistol meant that Brown, who was 18, would never grow old enough to drink his favourite brandy in a bar. “We are in so much pain,” HB told me. “We’ve got to tear shit up. And it ain’t going to stop until we get some kind of justice. We need to stop these white cops.”
His threat might have been easily dismissed that sunny afternoon as the idle talk of the grieving and vengeful. But more than a week later, just about the only thing clear through the fog of noxious gas clouding Ferguson’s streets is the burning, implacable rage of Brown’s peers against the police and their political masters in this northern suburb of St Louis.
