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A year after Michael Brown Jr. was fatally shot by a White police officer in Ferguson, Mo., not much has changed.

In the days that followed the one-year anniversary of the teenager’s untimely death, police took to the streets again in militarized gear to confront demonstrators who gathered to protest state violence. In a show that was eerily similar to the smoke-filled roads from August 2014, law enforcement officers arrested protesters, threw tear gas and, in the most fatal of cases, killed another Black teen on the same day Kajieme Powell was killed a year earlier.

But the reaction to justifiable Black frustration wasn’t the only thing that echoed throughout last year. A CNNMoney analysis found that the city was still dolling out tickets and arrest warrants at a disproportionate rate to minorities for minor offenses in an effort by the courts to collect fines for city revenue. Just last week, Ferguson municipal court judge Donald McCullin attempted to remedy that issue, when he ordered the withdrawal of all arrest warrants issued before December 31, 2014.

All of which strengthen activists’ argument that the real state of emergency has nothing to do with protesters, but the government who imposes the order. Just hours after a state of emergency was issued on the anniversary of Brown’s death, protesters smartly adopted the term to show that there is, indeed, an emergency in this nation.

More proof that the state of emergency exists in the Black community? Check out the numbers in this week’s The Retweet with GlobalGrind and NewsOne editor Christina Coleman.

For more episodes of The Retweet, see here. And to see how activists are changing the narrative, check out the #WhichEmergency hashtag.

Photographic Proof Not Much Has Changed In Ferguson Since Michael Brown’s Death
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