Ferguson and the Path to Reparations by Charles Bane, Jr.

Ferguson and the Path to Reparationsby Charles Bane, Jr. | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
On May 11, 1960, agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, in a daring and secret raid, captured Adolph Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann was the high ranking Nazi most responsible for the extermination of six million Jews, and all thirty members of the team sent to capture him alive and bring him to Israel for trial, were willing to place their lives in jeopardy to accomplish their mission. After his trial for war crimes, he was hanged. Eichmann had told one of his Israeli guards that he missed his sons. When the guard reminded him that he was directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of children, Eichmann looked at him blankly, then said, "But they were Jews."--"The Hardest Thing I've Ever Had To Do."
On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson emptied his revolver into an unarmed Michael Brown on a street in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown's death followed a pattern of fatalities among Black males at the hands of police officers. Darren Wilson received financial reward from the majority community that mirrors the bounty paid for runaway slaves.
What is most remarkable about the aftermath of Brown's death is that it has served to highlight to other nations that African Americans are not protected by American law and that Black communities, themselves the remnant descendants of the Mid- Atlantic Holocaust are an ongoing target of ethnic cleansing that violates international law.
These violations are manifest in the historic relationship between the United States government's complicity or inability to reverse the campaign. An African American President, and Attorney General were powerless before its force. But the events in Ferguson were noted by the governments and press of Great Britain, China, Germany, Egypt, Spain and others, all of whom have seats in the United Nations.
As outlined by Ta- Nehisi-Coates in "The Case For Reparations" in The Atlantic in June, 2104, there is precedent for reparations paid to whole Peoples, as was paid to survivors of the Holocaust by Germany for a moral debt that is equal to the debt owed to Black America by a nation which built its foundation of wealth on the backs of African slave labor.
On December 6, 2005, the General Assembly of the United Nations formally adopted basic principles and guidelines for remedy and reparations for victims of gross violations of international human rights law. These compensations are all- encompassing and further require a public apology to People who have been systematically wronged, and memorials and tributes paid to their victims. Michael Brown is deserving of this.
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Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them."  Creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.