Would you take the time out of your day and actually picture somebody to be a thug or a drug dealer? Would you stop what you are doing out of your day just to kill an 18 year old boy? Would you kill an African American male for some Shells? That’s the question everybody wants the answer to.

When 18 year old Mike Brown was shot dead six times in Ferguson, Missouri, it shook the world. The neighborhood and the rest of St. Louis, Missouri took action and started riots. The citizens of Ferguson were ready for answers about the rampant racial injustice by Police officers. “No justice, no peace,” the town yelled while protesting up and down the streets of Ferguson.

The riots got out of hand and the people became angry, burning down the Quick Trip, breaking into stores, and stealing things. Let’s ask ourselves: what does stealing and burning down your own things going to do to find answers? It’s not going to help you find answers, all it’s doing is destroying your own stuff. What are you showing the world? Showing them that the white was right about you, you can’t handle the stuff that they provide for you so you destroy it. Now we all don’t know what really happened because we weren’t there but we can put stock in that the witnesses all are saying the same thing: Mike Brown was shot down, unarmed and without motive.

In my opinion I think Mike Brown was an innocent boy, just going about his day before the shooting. It is under current debate that he may have stolen something from the store but that is not probable cause, and does not give anyone the right to shoot him down. Nobody should be a victim to racial injustice and prejudice, especially not by a police officer; somebody who is supposed to protect and serve us.

I talked to Martana Stemmons, a junior at Battle High and she gave me some good thoughtful opinions: “I feel like Ferguson started a movement, a movement because we took action about the situation. We let it happen to people many times so

now we got to stick up for each other .” After reading about the Mike Brown case and looking into the other cases where African American young men were killed by other races, I feel like it’s about time that we took action and did something about it.

I’ve also talked to Mrs. Harris about what happened, and she told me that part of her “is sad that we lost focus, and that a young man was killed and parents are grieving over a loss that was so tragic. No parent should go through that. I do think that there are problems in Ferguson and I do think that discrimination is one of them.”

After speaking with these individuals I can understand that mostly everybody is on the same page. Nobody will ever understand what happened that day when Mike Brown was shot down. Throughout all of the confusion and hearsay, nobody will understand why he was killed and why the officer shot him six times without stopping.

All we can do as people is just voice our opinions.