Originally appeared on The Final Straw

Let’s go back to Ferguson. As I speak protesters in Ferguson MO await the Grand Jury decision in the case of a police officer who killed Mike Brown, and I really don’t know why. This is the same criminal justice system that has justified the genocide of Black people by White government agents for centuries, the same system that hired this pig, handed him a loaded gun and sent him goose stepping into a predominantly Black community in the first place. So now thousands are poised, insisting that the same system somehow validate the life of Mike Brown by prosecuting the very same killer who killed Mike while on the same payroll.

Why?

Why are people appealing to an obviously racist control system for validation? To me this is an extremely sad scenario. It’s like thousands of abused children, traumatized and neglected by a vicious drunken father and even after they realize what a brutal monster he is, they still seek his approval and validation. I don’t get it.

Why does anyone care what a Grand jury thinks? Or the prosecutor? Or a judge? Mike Brown is dead, and to speak of justice for Mike Brown is ridiculous if you’re talking about some stupid piece of paper with a rubber stamp on it telling us what we already know issued by the same institutions that took his life. Justice for Mike Brown would be giving him his life back, something Grand Juries, prosecutors and judges can’t do. So, in terms of justice all of them are irrelevant. Mike Mike is gone, but there’s plenty that can be done to prevent the next police shooting before it happens.

Community leaders would have you believe peaceful protest is the way to go. They invoke the spirit of Dr Martin Luther King, as though they never even got the memo of how well non-violence worked out for him. These so-called community leaders have used this peaceful protest tool an awful lot. They employed peaceful protests after the shootings of Amadou Diallo, and after the shooting of Oscar Grant, but that didn’t stop the shooting of Trayvon Martin. After peaceful protests following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, police killed Mike Mike. So, now community leaders and even Mike Mike’s father are urging non-violence, the very response that led to the death of Mike Mike in the first place, and has led to the police shootings of other Black men since.

How many have to die before you stop urging the same tired tactics that perpetuate bloodshed and death? It should be a crime to urge a community to non-violence while guns are pointed at their heads and their children are exterminated one by one. There might be a time and place for non-violence, but right now, in Ferguson is not it. Violence is the answer, because non-violence failed, again and again and again.

Governor Jay Nixon, a state terrorist has urged peace and said that violence will not be tolerated. What he meant was, violence will not be tolerated unless you’re a trigger happy White cop shooting Black people. Jay Nixon, advocate for non-violence and peace is the same idiot who ordered thousands of soldiers with rifles into the streets of Ferguson. What? Are they gonna distribute rainbows and bunny rabbits? I’ve never seen non-violence come out of the barrel of an assault rifle.

So look, realistically, if we hit the rewind button to the murders of Michael Pipkins or Malice Green and instead of engaging in this non-violence nonsense we took out two pigs for every Black man they assassinated, the genocide would have ceased. Mike Brown would still be alive. Oscar Grant would still be alive. Trayvon Martin would still be alive. If, after the Rodney King verdict, folks in Los Angeles had brought down the county courthouse instead of the poor neighborhoods–if they had, in the words of Rage Against the Machine, rolled down Rodeo with a shotgun–the modern reaction to police violence from the government would be far more wise and enlightened. No doubt.

But in all these scenarios so-called community leaders marched out to urge calm, peace. Courthouses are still standing, cops are still shooting, Black men are still dying. All these missed opportunities. Are we gonna miss another one?

Governor Jay Nixon has already called in the National Guard, so protesters now face the entirety of the state’s repressive capacity. All the fish are right there in one barrel. I bet the state capital is virtually naked. I said, I bet the state capital is virtually naked. A few thousand people rolling into Jefferson City with shotguns and a bullhorn could give Jay Nixon a good sense of how it feels to be Black and unarmed in Ferguson. As the gas ignites someone could use the bullhorn to urge the Governor to remain calm, non-violent.

Let’s make Mike Mike’s death stand for something. Let’s put a stop to police shootings once and for all by putting a stop to the police state. No justice. No peace. Fuck the police.

For …, this is Ohio Governor in Exile Elect Sean Swain in Ohio’s Supermax Facilty. If you’re listening, you are the resistance.