Newspaper journalists occasionally say the business of their profession is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” The quote supposedly comes from the late social activist “Mother” Mary Jones. Protestors in Ferguson, Missouri peacefully took over a few minutes of a performance of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to remind the comfortable classes that Black lives matter. Check out the flash mob’s beautiful message from his story from The Grio.

And here is a direct link to the video. One particularly heartless soul can be heard supposedly calling Michael Brown a criminal. We’re supposed to be an advanced, civil society. How ironic that for decades now that civility has been falling apart at the hands of our armed militia.

In my mind, the message is slightly different: Black male lives matter. That facts is getting lost in our society; the lives of Black men are being treated with casual disregard, and anyone who doubts it simply needs to observe the laxity involved in protecting the life of our Black male president.