so that was in motion. both sides getting money, michael. >> robert ray reporting live in ferguson. there is a live shot back inside the temple where michael brown will be laid to rest stay with us on al jazeera america for more coverage of michael brown's funeral. >> a changing community, a new majority, and a power structure still in the hands of an old guard. it's "inside story." >> hello, i'm ray suarez .

from rhode island to chicago, illinois . : the in some places the old guard rigs the games. engineers it's continued grip on power. in the south those techniques were hanging on were made illegal by the voting rights acts. in others places its nothing more complicated than the habit of power and the benefits of incumbency. things can lumber along that way for a long time, but then when something goes wrong the people in charge have few links and little support in the agreed majority population. the latest object lesson in political science and socia socialology have been on your tv

screen for a week and a half in missouri. >> reporter: after ten days of unrest people are focusing on the future, specifically how to make ferguson's institutions look more like ferguson. the city's population is two-thirds african-american. but ferguson's mayor all but one mayor of the city council, all but one member of the school board and 50 of its 53 police officers are white. that's one of the reasons why an incident like michael brown's death can be so difficult for a city like ferguson to deal with. >> it's really not unusual when there is a shooting of this kind. >> how did we get here? lots of reasons. one thing is clear. over the course of a generation ferguson changed but it's institutions didn't. in 1980 the city was 85% white. it's government stayed that way even as ferguson became mostly

african-american. the city's mayor acknowledges that that may be part of the problem. >> we have been listening to the protesters for the lack of african-americans in our police force and others police force, and want a buy in in our community by being residents in the community and serving in the police force. >> reporter: a prominent example of a generational demographic shift, an issue that can be seen around the country. in places like inglewood, california, to fulton county, georgia, things change but their structures don't. they say part of the problem people need to get involved making their numbers felt and their voices heard. you 2058 have got to start voting and showing up.

12% i turnout is an insult to your children. among african-americans it was just 6%. and if there is something that everyone seems to agree on the issues that ferguson has brought into focus will not be solved quickly or easily. >> this problem existed long before we were here. and it will exist long after we're gone. the question is what are we going to do to change it while we are here and have a chance to change it. >> really, a small city where it's 70% black. the police chief, much of the school board is white. how does that happen, and how has that played in the alienation and rage seen on the

streets of ferguson. joining us for that conversation, our guests. >> leslie, let me start with you. you've seen this up close. you grew up in and around ferguson. you watched the changes. how do you explain it? >> i think part and parcel the problem is as an african-american community we don't get involved. you couple that with a power structure that doesn't play fairly, then you have the end result of what we have today. >> but how come over the years--because this has existed for a long time. the community has been changing for decades.

how lon how come after previous incidents there was not the impetus to say, okay, that's enough, i'm going to run for school board. i'm going to run for mayor, for city council, wouldn't you have an inside track to office if you made an appeal to the black community? >> you know, funny you should ask that. i recently ran for office and i was not successful, but i think the problem is for far too long we as an african-american community we have been asleep at the wheel. it has taken a tragedy like the michael brown incident has waken people up. what the reverend al sharpton has said is true. we need to become aware and be need to be consistent. what they don't show up for are the midterm elections or in this case the municipality of ferguson, those are elections

are held in april. so we have to be consistent. we have to be present, and we have to be vigilant about voting every time there is an opportunity to do so. >> when a community changes, change at different rates. if you come out of the academy you're going to be on the streets of a town as a cop for 20 years, but the mayor has to run for re-election every four years. >> sure, there is a number of different factors driving the slow training in institutions. across the united states in city council blackhawks are grossly under represented. only 4% of city council members nationwide are african-american. why does it move so slowly in a place like ferguson and in other places? you have a bunch of inertia. you have the existing power

structure who have no desire to change things. then you've got a system that's fairly rigged against minorities. so in ferguson, and in most municipalities in the united states, the elections don't coincide the presidential races. so you get low turn out and it's emphasi especially skewed turnout. and we can blame african-americans for that, but the underlying think is that blacks are not unique or different. turn out is a function of soci socio-economic status. poor blacks and poor whites are less likely to turn out and vote. we need to make the system easier.

>> this miss mash is seen in a lot of places. what kind of city do you get out of that system? >> when you have a dynamic way which turn out is low, but white turn out is 2-1 to black turn out. you're going to have the city council, the mayor, they're going to basically maintain power. the system that those whites want in power will maintain in power. it's important to note that it's not just a racial dynamic here. this is actually a party dynamic. the young white mayor is white but he's also republican. the city council is primarily a white republican city council even though african-americans tend to vote democrat. what you have is that one institutional rule, having the elections being off years and it's going to basically maintain political power for whites.

>> if you're a homeowner, a taxpayer, someone who works and lives in that community, if the garbage gets picked up, and nuisance calls get answered by the cops, is there a problem? is there by definition a problem when you end up with that mismatch? >> that research suggests that at least with african-americans, african-americans tend to get a lot better quality of a range of resources when people like them are actually in charge. like the political representatives tend to be more response sive. the police departments tend to be more integrated and we tend to have less incidents like this and a wide range of other services. just thinking about this case. if the mayor, for example, was african-american or the police department had more african-american officers, we can imagine this case even if michael brown was still killed we could imagine this case going

a very, very different way than what it did. >> when we look at ferguson in particular, have people just bailed out on the idea that this government works for them? that these local institutions governor with their own consent? >> when you look at the make up, they'll start to feel he's infranchised about the system, and it's true what other people have said, lower socio-economic standards. when you have so much stacked up against you. you have lack of employment, lack of resources, lack of educational opportunities, so you're concentrating on those things and the lack there have, the voting tends to be the last thing on your mind. as a by-product of that this is the result that you have.

>> does time eventually take care of this? we're sweating this. we're talking about the effects of it. in five years, ten years, 15 years, do the demographics of weight of change handle this? >> especially given the incident that we've seen there will be change in ferguson. but the larger picture is that across the nation as i mentioned minorities are under represented. so we can look at the black case. we can look at the latino who is now make up 15% of our population at the local level they make up 2% of all city council members and even a smaller percentage of mayors. there will be change, but we have to enact sort of some set of larger reforms if we expect to have equal representation. >> we're look at race, politics and power. we'll take a short break.

when we come back we'll ask if different americans see local government in different ways as having a different purpose in their own lives. stay with us. that's inside story.

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the day plus so much more. >> we begin with the growing controversy. >> answers to the questions no one else will ask. >> real perspective, consider this on al jazeera america >> in the south there were just two members, that's right. two members of the house of representatives. today there are 43 members of the house. we're talking about power, race and change on inside story, i'm wondering whether when you look at these communities often in a suburbs and the way they change, is there a different expectation of what local government is for on the part of perhaps young

black families and the older white families that have been there from an earlier time. >> yes, that's a great question. i think perception is a local government probably do differ by race. and if you just think about it, kind of historically african-americans d to the extent they needed things from government have tended to think about the national government because the national government is the thing that we've looked to traditionalcally to protect our rights and local governments, the minutia of local government is something that we often either not quiet--we either ignore or we just don't think of it as being--being involved in our lives directly. whereas whites probably tend to have a very different relationship. local government is something that they can see every day. if you think about the decisions that local governments make

about contracts, about what type of curriculum schools uses that's something that whites tend to be more connected to, i guess i would say. >> so that feeling of neglect that you sometimes hear about, there is less ownership? less feeling that city hall really listens to me? >> yes, that's why so the question you asked before the break was really important about time. time just moves on. that's why it's not necessarily about time. it's actually about developing institutions and actually creating kind of a political movement to reorient people, black people in this case, towards local government to make them understand that it matters. wrong we have to make them understand, in this case they know now that local government matters, but it's creating the institutions to get them to cease power to make government work for them.

>> before the break you mentioned growing latino populations. in some places like in southern california they have come in conflict not in older white populations, previous white populations but entrenched black where they're used to sending people into politics. >> it's difficult to set up a change in power even after demographics have shifted dramatically. in addition there is an at some level some apathy but they don't

participate at lower levels. and in national elections african-americans are reasonbly close and on par with whites in terms of participation. there is a case if we set up institutions correctly we can get black participation, and then lots of other things should follow from that. >> a lot of americans watching this program may not be too familiar with the recent history of the st. louis metropolitan area. is there a heavily racialized geography to , and are there places where one group or another is the overwhelming population and has it always been that way? >> for the most part it has always been that way. we're divided in st. louis city, and then st. louis country. the great divider is del mar avenue, and when you come to st. louis county it is predominantly african-american

to a great extent as much as st. louis city. st. louis city used to be republicans. and then with the political shift it turned democrats. so municipalities you'll have upwards of 65% african-american in population. >> let's talk about the big city to the south and east, has st. louis will had these kinds of politics, these kinds ofens counters because of the difficulty in changing power structures in the place even as the population was changing ? >> yes, that is actually true. st. louis city is 52% in minority population. the current mayor has been there at least the last four election cycles. we have there in the city

several elected offices and it's the unspoken rule that certain of them are to be held by non-african-americans and certain of those offices to be held by african-americans. but at a 52% population you would think as a voting power they could control whoever their candidate of choice would be for any office in the elected office of the city of st. louis. >> we have to take another short break. when we come back we'll take a look at the situation in ferguson, missouri, and how things might move forward from here. when cities experience the aftermath in the killing of michael brown can it be the catalyst for political change? stay with us. >> i'm ali velshi, the news has become this thing where you talk to experts about people, and al jazeera has really tried to talk to people, about their stories. we are not meant to be your first choice for entertainment.

we are ment to be your first choice for the news.

>> welcome back to inside story on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. can elected governments that are racially andet and ethnically racially different from the county represent their interests?

does a ethnic mismatch become acuate list. a catalyst. our guests. while it is a tragedy, does it present an opportunity to smart young application who want to shape things up in this suburb . >> at a very local level you have a very opportunity for african-american candidate to step forward

, and they're more likely to support those kinds of candidates. there is a small step there, but i think you can think more bro broadly. what you have to do, there are two things you need to do. you need to change who is in office, and you need to change the policies that they're producing, and both of those are interrelated. in the state of missouri the state could decide, mandate that local elections are held on the same day as national contests and that automatically would change the kind of voter who would turn out to vote in ferguson and other municipalities. bu and that could change the kind of elections we would have and that would bring officials

that look more like ferguson and the population as a whole. and as mentioned earlier we know from pastor experience having minorities in office does lead to substantive changes. there are more minorities working for city government. police practices tend to change. having a black mayor is associated with more community policing and things like that. and also with greater black involvement in turn out and greater black involvement in the cities structures administrative elite you tend to get a change in other sorts of policies. public opinion tells us pretty clearly that at the local level black americans want more education spending and social spending and they're willing to tax themselves to do those sorts of things whereas more white lets are interested in development, airports roads,

structures and less interested in raising their own taxes and spending on social services. if you get this power shift and the way to do this is to change the time of election, you can do that at the local level and state level and change having only a third of our cities on cycle elections, all of our cities we would get a fairly massive shift of who is elected and a pretty significant shift in the types of policies that local governments passed. >> you may know this already, or you may have a decent guess, are there politicians already getting their campaigns ready for the next time the cycle comes up? does this present an opportunity for change that might not have been there two weeks ago. >> i think it does absolutely present an opportunity for change, but regardless of whatever candidate step forward for any further election, if we

don't get the voter turn out to increase significantly we're going to have the same old story. >> so i actually would--it's not just about that next election cycle because you can recall the mayor now, right? it's very possible that-- >> you can. >> it's very possible that people on the ground collecting sittings, people registering to vote and moving to recall the mayor. that's the thing that i'm most hopeful of, and that recall act could then embolden potential people to run and then can also be used as a broader strategy to change electoral practices in ferguson and throughout the region. >> enougis it enough? i see the emotional reaction to lines of policemen pushing people back on the sidewalks and so on, but there has to be political action backing that,

doesn't it? you can't solve all this on the street. >> right, right. the thing is you got that emotion, use it. to the extent--to a number of people who are in ferguson are not from ferguson. we're talking about politics. the alderman, the person who has been probably most effective at both communicating and organizing is antone yes french. antonio french is a st. louis city alderman. he doesn't represent ferguson. but what i'm thinking, the extent that ferguson folks are there, it takes them out of the emotion. get them registered, thinking about politics, and it's a done deal. >> i got to say goodbye. to our guests, thanks a lot. that brings us to the end of "inside story." thanks for being with us. from washington, i'm ray suarez.

>> because michael was a big guy, but he was a kind, gentle soul. before he left this earth, the day that he was killed he was out spreading the word of jesus christ. this moment michael also stated to the family that one day the world would know his