ATU On The Ferguson Grand Jury Decision Regarding The Shooting of Michael Brown

ATU On The Ferguson Grand Jury Decision Regarding The Shooting of Michael Brown
http://www.atu.org/media/releases/atu-on-the-ferguson-grand-jury-decision
ATU ON THE FERGUSON GRAND JURY DECISION REGARDING THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL BROWN
Media Contact: David Roscow (202) 537-1645 x25

Washington, DC – Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International President Larry Hanley issued the following statement in reaction to the Ferguson Grand Jury decision on the Michael Brown shooting.
“The civil unrest in the aftermath of the grand jury decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown reflects a much deeper issue that is not being talked about in the media and across the world today.
“It’s not just a race issue; it’s a class issue. The division of our country around the notion that we must choose villains and assess blame is a false choice. This was a tragedy for both Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. We as Americans should not choose sides among them.
“Street confrontations between police and working class people are the product of decisions made every day by the politicians who allow an economy that exploits the poor and has advanced the destruction of the middle class.
“Robert Kennedy addressed these issues on the day after the murder of Dr. King when he said:
‘.. there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
‘Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
‘But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
‘Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.’
“We have to see through the smoke and the tear gas of Ferguson to understand that Mike Brown and so many others who find themselves in conflict with "the law" are people trying to survive in a society that very wealthy people are driving into the economic stone age.”

About ATU
The Amalgamated Transit Union is the largest labor organization representing transit workers in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1892, the ATU today is comprised of over 190,000 members in 253 local unions spread across 47 states and nine provinces, including 3,000 workers at Greyhound Lines, Inc. Composed of bus drivers, light rail operators, maintenance and clerical personnel and other transit and municipal employees, the ATU works to promote transit issues and fights for the interests of its hard-working members.