ST. LOUIS, MO, AUGUST 26 (RIA Novosti) – Ferguson residents need to exercise voting rights to ensure political change in the city after the police killing of an unarmed African-American teenager, campaigner Keith Sypes-El told RIA Novosti after the victim’s funeral service.
“Only a small proportion of people in Ferguson come out to vote. If they want to, they can elect the right people into office, who represent the needs of the community and, if that happened, it could swing the politics around,” Sypes-El said.
“But people have lost confidence in the system. People don’t participate in the political process, which means they don’t get to gripe about what happens in the community – they only vote at the national level but not at the local level,” the campaigner added.
Thousands of mourners attended the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church on Monday for a funeral service for Michael Brown shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson as he walked with a friend on the afternoon of August 9.
Following the killing, Ferguson, a downtrodden suburb of St Louis of some 21,000 residents, has been riven by often-violent protests since Michael Brown was shot, killed and left uncovered, bleeding on the tarmac in view of increasingly-upset friends and relatives.
The grand jury is hearing evidence about Brown’s shooting and is expected to decide whether to charge lawman Darren Wilson by mid-October. The inquiry hinges on whether Wilson, 28, fired in self-defense.
