In the country that we live in today, we are dealing with a lot of racial tension that is slowly but shortly tearing our country apart. If we keep at this pace, we will be very well on the track towards the era of the civil war where we were fighting and even killing American citizens.  There are many media outlets that are consistently posting information about these tensions, and Tim Dickinson is a political correspondent and editor for the Rolling Stone Magazine who addresses a lot of political topics all the way from the election to everyday issues in America. Upon looking up Dickinson’s name on Rolling Stone’s website, articles that pertained to this previous issues with the presidential election popped up, but Dickinson also wrote about the Ferguson riots 2014.  This tension is shown through the killing of Michael Brown that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri in the year 2014. Brown was shot and killed by a police officer for allegedly being armed and reaching for his weapon, while in conflict with the police officer. The killing sparked riots that eventually led to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement. The visual motif that has a lot of importance to me is the racial tension issues occurring in America that are running through several parts of this country, and they can clearly be seen through Tim Dickinson’ article in the Rolling Stone called “Ferguson, Uncensored”.

In Dickinson’s article there are many pictures that clearly show the impact of the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” movement and the first picture is the one where the African American man is standing in the middle of the group of protestors and he has his hands in the air. This picture is very influential to the situation that arose in Ferguson as it truly shows the despair on so many people’s faces as they all mourned the death of Michael Brown, and begin to protest the violent acts surrounding the situation. This picture displays a medium shot as the subject’s entire upper torso is in the shot and you can still see background. The picture is solely focused on the man in the middle of the photo with the background subjects faded out, which also shows the importance in what that man is trying to convey in peaceful movements of trying go against the police in the actions that they committed. This man is being very brave in protesting, and he is dealing with the situation in a very good way, rather than being violent and making the situation much worse.

Another picture in Dickinson’s article that shows the importance of the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” movement is the one of the woman walking down the street with her hands up as she is approached by a group of armed soldiers. This shows all of the commotion that was surrounding the neighborhoods near Ferguson around the time of the shooting. Innocent people were being portrayed as protestors and they could no longer go about their daily lives without being approached by police force. This image taken was a long over the shoulder shot, and it looks like we are a bystander who is taking in the events happening in Ferguson. This picture can be portrayed in many ways and one is that the police are very frustrated with the situation occurring and therefore they are automatically assuming that everyone on the streets is a violent protestor that needs to be checked which obviously was not the case over those few weeks in Ferguson. Another way is that the police are simply doing their job in trying to overcome many of the violent protests in order to protect the city of Ferguson.

The “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” visual motif that I chose was very significant to what is occurring in the United States at the moment, and it flows perfectly with what Tim Dickinson talks about in his article. I believe that every person has their own view on this situation and that is perfectly okay, but I do believe that the issues I brought up will definitely convince certain people to rethink their opinions on this matter. This visual motif of the civil rights tension between races in the country relates to the title of the work, due to the fact that they are both dealing with the movements that were occurring in Ferguson, Missouri at the time that Michael Brown was shot and killed. Lastly this motif does work with many other aspects of this work because all the pictures in Dickinson’s article related to this movement of trying to get justice for African Americans who were killed by the police, and there are so many other sources where other visual aids can be found that are both for and against the Black Lives Matter movement. While there a an array of situations that have come about from this initial shooting in Ferguson, I believe that the police have been very unfairly treated in the past two  years, and in many of these cases, officers were simply defending themselves and not deliberately trying to kill another human being.

Overall, there are many opinions that have come out of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and the disagreement between Americans about whether the police or the protestors are the ones who are in the wrong in many of these cases of murder, is what is driving our country apart. While the majority of the acts done by the police were truly unjust, there were times that the police were looking out for their own safety, and for that I am on the side of the police in that they were acting out of self-defense and not malicious intent. The media is a very big outlet for portraying what is actually going on in these situations and many of times the media falsely portrays what is actually going on. Now all of these acts have driven our country to the point where all cops are now considered to be the bad guy and this is very far from the truth. All people need to come to the realization that not all people are perfect and we have to start to all work together to make this country the great country it once was.