--- title: Eric Garner, Michael Brown: Desperate Cry for Criminal Justice Reform description: The collusion of police and capitalist structures has prevented meaningful criminal justice reform canonical: https://time.com/3620521/eric-garner-michael-brown-justice/ author: Serene Jones article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-05T17:51:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:48:03.660Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Corporations Are People But People of Color Are Not og:description: The collusion of police and capitalist structures has prevented meaningful criminal justice reform og:url: https://time.com/3620521/eric-garner-michael-brown-justice/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c942954147290db/69876cfacd1bbac43a6f3f8b/459986208.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5184 og:image:height: 2916 og:image:alt: Protest in Oakland After Grand Jury Decision og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Corporations Are People But People of Color Are Not twitter:description: The collusion of police and capitalist structures has prevented meaningful criminal justice reform twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c942954147290db/69876cfacd1bbac43a6f3f8b/459986208.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Corporations Are People But People of Color Are Not > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=341ddfcf-c59a-4a35-b3c6-b74c7a1f9fa5&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 'Am I next?' Ferguson's Protests Through the Eyes of a Teenager [Watch (HLS stream): 'Am I next?' Ferguson's Protests Through the Eyes of a Teenager](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/fStAJZ1s.m3u8) (5:27)  _Published 2014-08-16. TIME followed a teenager as residents of Ferguson, Mo. turned out to protest peacefully on Aug. 16_  by [Serene Jones](https://time.com/author/serene-jones-3/)  ## Serene Jones Dec 5, 2014 5:51 PM UTC  Protestors gather to protest after two grand juries decided not to indict the police officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. and Eric Garner in New York, NY, on December 04, 2014 in Oakland, CA. Protestors gather to protest after two grand juries decided not to indict the police officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. and Eric Garner in New York, NY, on December 04, 2014 in Oakland, CA. Anadolu Agency—Getty Images  by [Serene Jones](https://time.com/author/serene-jones-3/)  ## Serene Jones Dec 5, 2014 5:51 PM UTC If it wasn’t clear before, it is abundantly clear now. We are in the midst of a deeply sinful and systemically broken system, and the collusion of police and capitalist structures has prevented meaningful criminal justice reform from happening. When the announcement came down in Ferguson that there would be no trial for Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown, the police set up camp in a strip mall. Target, ironically, was safe. Thursday night in New York, hundreds of police lined the streets with barricades and batons not to protect the people protesting the non-indictment of the white police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death, but to protect the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center–a phalanx standing guard over one of the high holy symbols of capitalism. Christ is not with the tree. Christ is with the least and the lost. He is with the oppressed. He is with those walking down the street to visit their grandmothers and with those struggling to feed their families by selling cigarettes. “I can’t breathe” could very well have been uttered by Jesus on the cross—Jesus Christ, an oppressed minority under the most powerful government on the planet who was legally put to death by the state. But at least Jesus had a trial. The impunity with which police officers can continue to kill some of the most vulnerable members of society, the latest being Garner, is terrifying. May this be our moment of repentance for a sin that has plagued our nation for over 400 years. At its best, religion teaches us to recognize the humanity in each and every one of us. At its worst, we learn to see people as less than human—as objects or property. In 1857, in a case first brought to court just a few miles from present-day Ferguson, United States Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney found that Dred Scott, as a black man, wasn’t a man at all. Blacks, he wrote, are legally “beings of an inferior order…and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” In his grand jury testimony, Wilson called Brown a “demon,” referring to him not as a “he” but as an “it.” This can be a moment for the scales to fall from the eyes to expose the white idolatry, white privilege, and white brutality that holds our country captive, where white people—myself included—begin to see what people of color see all the time: a criminal justice system that views them not as people, but as objects to be beaten and bullied. And killed without consequence. The highest ideals of our faith insist we never demonize anybody, much less kill that demonized other. We worship a God who made all people in God’s likeness and bestowed each human with the mark of the divine. How far away are we from the steps of the courthouse that declared to Dred Scott and America that people of color are property and objects, not people? We are startlingly close to that dreadful past. Michael Brown and Eric Garner are treated like objects while Christmas trees and Target stores are treated like human beings that need protections and rights. In today’s society it seems that corporations are people but people of color are not. So now we march. Now is the time to build a sturdy and empowering infrastructure for a social movement. The degradation and demeaning of black and brown life must stop. _Rev. Dr. Serene Jones_ _is President of_ [Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York](http://utsnyc.edu/)_, where she also holds the Johnston Family Chair in Religion and Democracy. She is Vice President of the American Academy of Religion, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and author of_ [Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/poptheology/2012/07/trauma-and-grace/)_._ ## Transcript [ NOISE ]. [ MUSIC ] This where we going out here man, it's crazy out here though. Man he shouldn't. He shouldn't have, he didn't deserve to die. I mean he didn't deserve that many shots though. Like you can shoot something in their leg to stop them from running. You can somebody in they leg to stop them from running but you ain't gotta shoot then down bro. Why you gotta shoot him in the head? He ain't even got no gun on him. That's crazy. I feel like they should keep protesting till it's over with. And if it ain't, and if he don't get justice then, that's just what's gonna happen man, we gonna be out here every day until something happen. Come on now let's keep walking. I saw Trayvon Martin, I saw George Zimmer get away with it. Now, now, now its another case now if these police get away with it now I'm telling you man this aint Florida this is St. Louis Missouri. Come on brother. [ MUSIC ] Quit talking bout my R bird. He was so young man. Man, he was gonna go to college like, what if that was me man. If 14 I'm just now going to school and stuff. Like, what if that was me gonna go to college. Like and then the only person in my family, and then I die right before the day the school starts [ MUSIC ] What is that all about, what's that? He was 18, he was too young to die.. What is that though? I dunno what that is, that's them. Lemme ask you something, if it don't make a point then why do it? They put this on here, i'm trying to scrape it off so I can write on it. But that's what i'm saying, why put it on that? When you can go get a piece of paper and put it on that. Mike Mike made a statement in time, you know what i'm saying? And we've got to keep his memory alive by not defacing property. And this is what they want y'all to do. This is defacing property. Look at this, this don't een say nothing no more. When the rain comes it can be washed away. But this right here, will never be washed away. All of these people out here will never be washed away. But I bet if you get out there in the middle of the street they gonna see you because your age. Its all about its just like fighting with your with your mind fight with a pen or a paper or a marker you know what I'm saying make it bigger. In every way, so they could see it. All right. [ MUSIC ] No peace. No peace. Don't shoot. Hands up >> Don't shoot . >> Hands up >> Don't shoot . >> Hands up Don't shoot. Hands. Don't shoot, hands up. Don't shoot, hands. Don't shoot, hands up. This is how we all gotta unite bird, all of us african american. To the night, this what it lead us to me. Everybody holding hands everybody showing love. Everybody saying here to support, that's what going on right now. This what we gotta do to get respect, like. And what's so crazy about it that, ain't nobody hear us until we do ****, until we do stuff like this. Like from the riot, everybody breaking stuff. Didn't nobody trip off of that until everybody started breaking. Though, it was all on BET, CNN. Everyone wasn't worrying about the Michael brown death. You got bigger and better, bigger and other things to worry about than people breaking into these stores. I understand what they did was wrong, but you gotta realize if the law gonna sit there and shoot this man like that, we wouldn't go through none of this. The stores wouldn't have gotten broken into. Broke into, footlocker wouldn't get broke into, this wouldn't get burnt down, if it weren't for them. And this is where we go. 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