St. Louis Fire Department captain Garon Mosby calls the fires "arson," but despite the shocking string of racist attacks, major media have hardly breathed a word about the fires.
It's a stark contrast with the orgy of media coverage that attended last year's burning of a CVS in Baltimore by protesters, which was a major news lead for several days, and was used to characterize the whole anti-racist movement as violent and out-of-control.
The attacks follow on from last summer's wave of torchings of black churches across the south after the terrorist slaughter at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Black church burnings and bombings have been a favored tactic of white terrorists since the civil war era, a tactic for racists who call for pogroms, genocide or deportation of their fellow citizens.
Last night, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens featured an interview with the pastor of one of the burned churches, who described the arsonists as inept but prolific.
This terrorist violence and the popular and official indifference to it is an important rebuttal to the bizarre idea that racism is a solved problem in America, because of Obama, or because of affirmative action, or because of some other irrelevance.
On October 8th, the first fire was set at the Bethel Non-Denominational Church. Between October 10th and October 14th, three more churches were burned — New Northside Missionary Baptist Church, St. Augustine Catholic Church, and the New Testament Church of Christ. In the early hours of Saturday morning, another fire was set at the New Life Missionary Baptist Church. All 5 churches are within three miles of each other.
Prior to these latest church burnings, black churches were burned across the South following the June 17 killings of 9 people in the racially-inspired act of domestic terrorism at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Those fires raged in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. In that wave of fires, only three were ruled as arson. But as Capt. Mosby told local media, all 5 of these are being investigated as arson.
5 Black Churches in the Ferguson Area Have Burned Since Last Week, Media Shrugs [Ben Forstenzer/US Uncut]
(via Naked Capitalism)
(Image: @STLFireDept)
