Reconciliation with Protesting Citizens? WATCHING AMERICA post

Time.com: Demetrus Washington joins other demonstrators protesting 

the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. 

on Aug. 14, 2014. Scott Olson—Getty Images

As a citizen of the United States, a senior citizen, I am still appalled at the shocking degree of INEQUALITY in America. The police in ANY capitalist society will defend the private property of the rich with pit bull loyalty and brutality. The black people here-living in so called SLUMS- correctly perceive the cops as THE MAN, the ENEMY. But why are they over-represented in the U.S. military? Why should young black people fight and die to extend this very same unjust system-falsely called DEMOCRACY- to foreign lands like Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Afghanistan?

In Iraq the Abu Ghraib prison atrocity best represents both the foreign and domestic policies of the American ruling class. To die and degrade yourself for THEM?

Who speaks for black Americans today? Phony Democrats? My guess is that young black people here will soon be listening again to the militant voice of Malcolm X, assassinated almost a half century ago (Feb. 1965): "Show me a capitalist", Malcolm said, "and I'll show you a bloodsucker",

The Democrats should at least return to the real liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the great president elected in 1932 to deal with a nation devastated by the Great Depression.

(published in Tokyo Shimbun (Japan) on November 29, 2014, translated from Japanese by Maisha Kuniyuki)