What matters now?

It’s been four months since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by Darren Wilson, 28, a white police officer, after a 90-second daytime encounter in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

Since then, there have been passionate but essentially nonviolent protests and demonstrations of one sort or another almost daily. Participants have been intense young activists, concerned people from all over the St. Louis region and beyond, acolytes of countless interest-group coalitions and clergy members with a communitywide consciousness, all monitored by state and local law-enforcement agencies.

There also have been a few nights of destructive rioting, random looting, organized thievery and arson by locals and outsiders whose priorities have little to do with Brown’s death and even less to do with justice of any sort.

Finally, there was a peculiarly structured months-long probe by a St. Louis County grand jury, which ended Nov. 24 with a decision not to indict Wilson on any criminal charges. Testimony by about 60 witnesses was wildly inconsistent and, physical and forensic evidence notwithstanding, there was no authoritative account of the crucial details of the shooting.

So what matters now?

Not this grand jury. Its members did the work assigned to them by St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch and have gone back to their regular lives. Protesting or arguing about their decision will change nothing.

McCulloch certainly doesn’t matter, at least with respect to Brown’s death. The county prosecutor has rid himself of the case, although perhaps not as deftly as he might have believed he would going in. And there is continuing speculation about whether his handling of the grand jury was a monument to transparency or a transparent ploy to escape official responsibility while still stage-managing the result. 

Either way, debating McCulloch’s approach is more meaningless sport — unless voters decide otherwise the next time he needs their support.

Wilson, who resigned from the Ferguson police force last week, doesn’t matter any more, either. However preposterous were parts of his testimony to the grand jury,  his actions will not be subjected to the adversarial scrutiny of a criminal trial. 

Depending on the results of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into possible civil rights violations.

It’s also possible that Wilson could be penalized financially if Brown’s family pursued and won a lawsuit against him and Ferguson. But that could take years. At this point, Wilson is just a controversial ex-cop.

Michael Brown continues to matter profoundly to his mourning family and friends, to other mothers and fathers who have lost children to violence or who fear they might in the future, and to anyone else who empathizes with the family’s loss.

Beyond that, the hard reality is that the disputes over essential details of Brown’s death are irresolvable, putting the whole truth forever out of reach. Maybe the closest we can come to one truth is a snatch of dialogue writer/director Spike Lee wrote for a character named M.L. in “Do the Right Thing,” his groundbreaking 1989 film: 

“They didn’t have to kill the boy.”

What does matter now is something bigger than Brown, Wilson and McCulloch: the astonishing degree to which Brown’s death has inspired, galvanized and energized outcries against longstanding institutional violations of fairness, decency and dignity in the daily lives of minorities — blacks in particular — and Americans living in and at the precarious edge of poverty. 

The issues have become appallingly familiar over the past four months. Blacks, especially young blacks, die in confrontations with police in greater proportions than whites do. Police forces rarely reflect the racial makeup of the jurisdictions they’re supposed to serve, exacerbating cultural conflicts and misunderstanding. African-Americans are stopped for traffic and vehicular violations disproportionately more often than whites and are searched disproportionately more often when they are stopped.

Many of the municipal courts in the St. Louis region use arrest warrants and compounded fines and penalties as tools of harassment and fundraising, turning cops into collections enforcers and heightening community resentment, distrust,  and antagonism toward police and local government.

So what matters now is that activists of all colors and backgrounds and ages — with a heavy emphasis on young people — focus all this attention and energy on achieving significant change. Because significant change is possible.

It is possible to change police policies and practices in ways that reduce the frequency of civilian injuries and deaths, including those of young people. 

It is possible to increase the percentage of minorities serving in law enforcement, which improves understanding and trust between cops and the people of their communities. 

It is possible to rein in racial profiling in routine traffic stops and lessen the sense of harassment and alienation it fosters. 

It is possible to reform municipal court systems to prevent the exploitation of people who can least afford to lose any of their scant resources and are least able to protect themselves. 

These are the kind of changes that would improve the everyday lives of real people. After all, parents who have to home-tutor their children today, particularly their African-American boys, on how to stay alive in encounters with police, want their kids to be safe now. Struggling working people who get caught today in the scams of municipal courts need relief today.

For example, judging from the age, experience, talent and racial diversity of the 16-member Ferguson Commission appointed by Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, there’s reason to believe it could become a powerful force for change as it investigates issues raised in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. The commission’s introductory meeting earlier this week — rigid and plodding for three hours, raucous and unrestrained for the balance — was a better start than it seemed. Members saw and felt — first-hand — some of the deep-rooted frustration driving people’s anger.

Activists, however, might well ask how much more investigating we need, given the substantial body of studies into and real-world experience with the policing and court issues. Are the people pushing for change supposed to keep up the pressure but also accept that a commission will not move as fast as they’d like? How patient are they supposed to be? How long before change actually happens?

And what about the even bigger picture? Problematic policing and abusive courts are rooted in persistent racism, income and wealth disparities, disappearing low-skilled jobs, inadequate job retraining and poor access to affordable health care, to name a few things. Is fixing the cops and courts supposed to wait until society figures out how to eliminate poverty and racism?

These are tough, fair questions. I don’t know the answers, but I suspect they lie in finding a balance of real and ideal. 

Eric Mink is a freelance writer and editor and teaches film studies at Webster University. He is a former columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Daily News in New York. Contact him at [email protected].