No One Would Riot for Less: Ferguson as Jesus' Israel under Roman Occupation

The people of Ferguson live in times comparable to the Palestinians under the Roman Empire where Jesus was born.

A woman's parking ticket in Ferguson, which began as a $151 fine (plus fees), ballooned to more than $1,000 after she failed to appear in court several times. Court records show that she twice attempted to make partial payments of $25 and $50, but the court returned those payments, refusing to accept anything less than payment in full. This woman is now making regular payments on the fine. As of December 2014, over seven years later, despite initially owing a $151 fine and having already paid $550, she still owed $541. She has essentially become an indentured servant.

According to a Department of Justice report, the charge for “Weeds/Tall Grass” is as little as $5 in a neighboring city but, in Ferguson, it ranges from $77 to $102. 21,000 residents have a staggering 16,000 open arrest warrants. That is three out of four of every residents, seventy-six percent. The police brutality is severe. When the small group of rioters began their mayhem during peaceful protests, citizens were met with overwhelming force. The National Guard and police response were criticized, of all people, by the U.S. military.

Tactics of overwhelming force and tricks like the ballooning debt of the first woman, and tall grass citations, are like those of how the Romans used to oppress and trap Palestinians and squeeze their land and resources out of them. Peasants were taxed at extortionate levels (between 30-70% of their income), and people had to borrow money to pay taxes, using their land as collateral. They ended up becoming farmers for absentee landlords, as well as becoming day laborers, beggars, and bandits just to survive. Structural state violence, that is, the exploitation of people within a nation to sustain government, was used to enforce this order of the 95% exploited by the top 5%. As banditry became the only option for many, it also became a crime against the state, treason, punishable by crucifixion. Thus Jesus was posted up on the cross next to two oppressed people who felt forced to become "thugs." Masters expected their slaves and servants to keep their plantations profitable and in good order:
Parables in the Gospel attest to this: "The Wicked Tenants," (Matthew 21:33-41), "the Talents" (Matt 25:14-30) "the Vineyard Workers (Matt 20:1-16)," "the Doorkeepers and the Overseer" (Matt 24:45-51)

What happens when white people become an occupying force, like the Romans?

When white fans of Kentucky State's team lost, they rioted, torching cars. There was no mass outrage, the kind of which we saw post-Ferguson.
When the Black citizens of Ferguson's team lost (a human soul named Michael Brown), despite the fact that Officer Wilson had been a part of a special police force that was so racist and corrupt it had to be disbanded, and has been caught being disrespectful and having disregard for the law in prior interactions with citizens ("put the camera away or I'll put your ass in jail") and exaggerating the police report to make himself look better, they had a greater reason to riot than the Kentucky basketball fans given the systemic racism and extortion by the criminal justice system they were going through.

The Department of Justice showed that the municipal court system of Ferguson was dependent upon the exploitation of Ferguson's citizens for its cash-strapped system. To read e-mails between the police chief and the court system about increasing revenue through tickets, click here for the DOJ report on the Ferguson criminal justice system, and use Ctrl+F to find the key words "revenue" and "safety." The former clearly came at the expense of the latter, the report shows. The municipality literally said out loud to choose money over fair judges:

One 2011 internal report in Ferguson notes that Judge Brockmeyer "does not listen to the testimony, does not review the reports or the criminal history of defendants, and doesn’t let all the pertinent witnesses testify before rendering a verdict.”

The Council member then addressed the concern that “switching judges would/could lead to loss of revenue,” arguing that even if such a switch did “lead to a slight loss, I think it’s more important that cases are being handled properly and fairly.” The City Manager acknowledged mixed reviews of Judge Brockmeyer’s work but urged that the Judge be reappointed, noting that “...it goes without saying the City cannot afford to lose any efficiency in our Courts, nor experience any decrease in our Fines and Forfeitures.”

This is part of a larger epidemic that makes white people into the occupying, exploitative force.  One team of journalists "visited four separate St. Louis-area municipal courts in a span of four nights last week: Pasadena Hills, Jennings, Country Club Hills and St. Ann. Two court sessions took place in municipal buildings, and two took place in residential homes that serve as courtrooms and city hall. In every single court session, the court officials, police officers and lawyers were overwhelmingly white, while the defendants were overwhelmingly black." Blacks have been targeted, and I believe it is because white people believe that they can get away with this extortion if they target people who are Black and/or poor. The whole County of St. Louis is complicit, as I shall explain.

Coliseum on the Basketball Court

An ambitious politician-general named Herod conquered Jewish Palestine in what the historian Josephus called a "butchering" massacre due to the Roman army being so infuriated that they had to fight the Jews for so long. Whole towns were wiped out in this collective punishment akin to Officer Wilson's elite squad of racist police collectively punishing Black people just because a few commit crimes. Herod bribed his way to the top and was crowned King of the Jews by the Romans (he was essentially a Roman puppet) after, Herod went on a spending spree. He build temples and coliseums and dedicated them to Caesar all over Palestine, and they were often made of extravagant white stone and involved humans fighting lions. He also rebuilt the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, but he did not respect it. Like the above courthouses, he chose people to serve important positions (like priests) based on whether or not it served his purposes, not on morality. Many of the priests were just friends of his who were known for their immoral behavior even after becoming a priest.

The Jewish people were not only tithed by the priests to pay for their lifestyle, and taxed by the Romans, but now had a third tax to pay from Herod for all his expensive projects, many of which were not even built in Palestine. Even those that were- such as the Second Temple- were sacrilegious, because Herod had the audacity to place a golden eagle statue above the entrance to the Temple- a symbol of Roman domination and a graven image. Emotions reached a boiling point. Josephus, the historian, states that some of the most revered teacher-lawyer Pharisees encouraged their students to tear down the eagle statue when word got out that Herod was ill. There were mass demonstrations held by Jewish peasants as power transitioned to a new king because, as Josephus states, Herod's taxes had bled the people dry and caused mass poverty. A Roman delegation to Caesar complained that Herod had earned real resentment against the Roman Empire in Palestine.

A 2014 Washington Post expose on St. Louis County's municipal court system shows the insanity: people spending three days in jail for a speeding ticket, courthouses violating the Missouri Constitution, overcrowded courthouses being held instead on basketball court in a school gymnasium, $10 fees being added to every ordinance in order to raise funds to build a new courthouse, fines for giving the middle finger to another driver on the road, and police manually turning yellow blinking lights into red while people were in the middle of the intersection, and then giving them tickets. And it is on the backs of the poor and Black population:

"In 2013, the St. Louis County and City municipal courts acquired more than $61 million in fines and fees. This accounted for almost 50 percent of all fines and fees collected by the municipal courts in the state of Missouri, even though just 22 percent of the state resides in the St. Louis County area. Overall, St. Louis County is 24 percent black and 11 percent of its population lives below the poverty line, but the top 21 municipalities in the area collected one-third of their revenue from court fines and fees. They were 62 percent black on average, with 22 percent of the population living below the poverty line."

Civil rights is just a rumor to them. And the pattern of abuse in enforcing municipal (minor) violations by police has led to an expose by comedian journalist John Oliver on his show Last Week Tonight, showing that this is not just happening in Missouri. Most of the time, the targets are living in low-income reservations- er- neighborhoods of minority folk.

Empires change their name, but their tactics stay the same.

What you can do: Support the ArchCity Defenders, who recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of 11 people who claim that they were locked up, sometimes for up to two weeks, for being too poor to pay their fees. Let's fight this debtor's prison system.

Good news: It's worth it to kick and scream and shout. In late August, 2015, Ferguson announced amnesty on arrest warrants for municipal violations.

The Jewish uprising against the Romans, which resulted in the destruction of the Jews' beloved Second Temple.

The new Roman war-horses protect their cherished modern temples, Walmart and McDonalds

From 1st Century Palestine to Ferguson to modern Palestine, an open air prison. Compare the picture of the destruction of the Second Temple to the following; look closely.