No real change in US unless Americans elect right people: Activist

A journalist and activist in Wisconsin says there will not be any real change in the United States unless people get a chance to elect “right” leaders to power.

Koerri Washington made the remarks in an interview with Pres TV on Thursday while commenting on demonstrations prompted by the US Justice Department’s failure to indict white police officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown.

“This whole situation has been going on for almost over nine months now. In my opinion, it feels like that a lot of energy has been spent on this situation by protesters,” Washington said.

“There are a lot of other things that have taken place as we have noticed. [US Attorney General] Eric Holder, this whole time, he’s been under fire for operation ‘Fast and Furious’ for supplying drugs and firearms to the cartels of Mexico and other individuals,” he added.

“None of this is being talked about because Eric Holder seemed to be spearheading this ‘movement’, trying to get ‘justice’ for minorities in Ferguson,” he noted.

Washington said that “there are inequalities, there are things we need to do, that people have been outside [of system] for a long time and clearly we are not going to get any change that way.”

“The only way I see getting real change is to get the right legislatures in power, weed the people out that are not helping us. The current administration… is definitely not there to help us,” he observed.
Police brutality as well as the racial profiling of minorities by US law enforcement agencies has become a major concern in the United States.

The police killing of Brown and several other unarmed African American men during the past summer sparked a national debate on race and led to months of street protests across the country over police harassment and mistreatment of minorities.

There is also widespread racial disparity in the US criminal justice system. According to a study by the Sentencing Project research group, one in three black males are likely to be sentenced to prison sometime during their life. The figure for white men is one in 17.