Such accounts are absolutely correct. They are not though, the entirety of the story. The sheer length of the list above points to a deeper problem in American life - the utter decimation of a politics capable of changing the immediate and underlying facts that led to the tragic murder of Michael Brown.

The basic outlines of this political atrophy are already apparent. President Obama has urged Americans to “comfort each other and talk with each other in a way that heals”. He has suggested that Americans are “going to move forward together - by trying to unite each other and understand each other”. In the coming days there will be similar calls from people across the political spectrum,ranging from civil rights leaders to tea partiers. President Obama will direct the Justice Department to investigate the shooting and its aftermath. Perhaps he or Missouri Governor Jay Nixon will even form a blue-ribbon commission to study the underlying causes of the shooting, as was done in the aftermath of many 1960s-era uprisings.

Among those that are outraged by Michael Brown’s murder, the protests in Ferguson and satellite solidarity marches across the country will continue for a week or two. Many people across the world will express anger at American racism and inequality by liking a post on Facebook or making #HandsUpDontShoot trend on Twitter. Both responses, the “it’s time to heal” rhetoric of political leaders and the more vocally militant but equally as ineffectual witness-bearing associated with individualised protest and social media moralising get us no closer to real justice for the millions caught in the underlying conditions of poverty that events like those in Ferguson occasionally bring to light.

For more than a generation there has not existed in the United States a political force - be it based in a civil rights organisation, a political party, a labour movement, or some other institution - capable of demanding the kinds of changes that would curtail the daily oppressions faced by people like the residents of Ferguson and tens of millions of Americans like them. Opposition to these injustices takes the form of sign carrying, hashtags, morality plays, and the occasional thrown rock. In moments like these, building effective institutions that can some day imagine challenging these injustices seems boring. In more mundane moments it is forgotten entirely. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans alike continue to push policies that decimate the meagre remains of the US welfare state, continue the quotidian criminalisation of the American poor, turn cities into particularly profitable loci of global land speculation, and increase economic inequality by the day.

And so, some time next month, or the month after that another unarmed kid will be murdered by the police in an American city. People might protest, or they might not. Good jobs will still be mostly inexistent, healthcare will still be largely out of reach, rents will still be rising too fast for poorer Americans, schools will still be underfunded, the militarised war on drugs and the incarceration of generations of poor young people will continue. A few months after, the police will murder another unarmed kid. People might protest again, or they might not. President Obama may even direct us to heal and have a conversation, or he might not. As a proud urban American, I hope I am wrong. As an urban historian who has seen these same events happen over and over again for more than a half-century, I fear that I am not.