As outraged residents of Ferguson, Missouri continue to protest a police shooting that left unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown dead, Ron Davis – the father of another slain black teen in Jacksonville, Florida – is aiming to shame the United States before the United Nations for what he says are murders committed with impunity against young black men.

Davis's bid comes amid efforts back in Ferguson to build a more-than-a-century-old civil rights movement in response to Brown's killing that community leaders say never took hold in the Greater St. Louis area.

At the 85th meeting of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland on Wednesday and Thursday, Davis hopes to pressure Washington to bolster efforts to stop the phenomenon of what he and the United States Human Rights Network (USHRN), the NGO backing him, call “the criminalization of race” in America.

Davis is angry over what he and many others say is a spate of unpunished murders of young black men across the country.

Six months after neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, Davis’s son Jordan was killed at a gas station after he and his friends refused to lower the music in their car. The case brought against Jordan’s killer, Michael Dunn, resulted in a mistrial.

“These things eat at you that shouldn't have happened, and the people doing these transgressions are getting away with it,” Davis told Al Jazeera by telephone from Geneva.

Ron Davis hopes to direct his anger over the deaths into a solution for African-American fathers who have come to teach their children to accept police brutality as a fact of life in the United States. Davis and USHRN director Ejim Dike hope that taking U.S. race issues to the international community will create political leverage in Washington.

"We have a lot of people directly impacted by the violence. We have exhausted our domestic remedies. We have to take this to the United Nations. We have to see if we can leverage that pressure to see if we can get people to act on this issue,” Dike said.

“Talking about any issue as a human rights violation gets the attention of the U.S. government. It's embarrassing for the government that champions itself as a beacon of human rights in the world,” Dike added.

Language of the Unheard

While Davis and Dike engage in their international political bid, the St. Louis-area black community is working to start a movement to address their human rights concerns.

In a municipality where an estimated two thirds of residents are black, only three of a police force of 53 are black, according to Ferguson committeewoman Patricia Bynes, 34.

In the municipalities in the Greater St. Louis Area, Bynes says, black people’s movement is heavily restricted by law enforcement.

“If you have to drive through these municipalities, you'll be harassed multiple times in one night,” she said.

And there is only one black member of the local school board.

Local black community leaders say the civil rights movement has traditionally been calm in the city, and there hasn't been a history of violent racial clashes.

“In St. Louis there is a different mentality – there isn't really an appetite for explosive confrontation. It's mostly been one of dialogue and negotiation. The empowerment has taken a different form than perhaps different cities,” said Rev. Douglas Parham of the Ferguson-area Community Church of God.

But Shafeah M’Balia, an organizer with North Carolina-based advocacy group Black Workers for Justice, says she believes the lack of confrontation has sinister roots, citing the infamous Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPRO) executed by the FBI between the 1950s through '70s to covertly disrupt Black Power and other ethnic-based movements.

“One of the objectives was to separate out the youth from the movement so that the lessons being learned in the '50s and passed on in the '60s wouldn't be passed on to the youth in '70s.”

Regardless of why Black Power seems never to have reached Ferguson, youth from the area are taking to the streets, finding new ways to try to feel empowered, Bynes said. But not all of those actions, according to Bynes, have been productive.

Bynes heard a 19-year-old woman speak at a recent demonstration about how she participated in looting because, “That’s the only thing they will listen to — when my actions start hitting their pockets.”

“I don’t have a response for that,” said Bynes. “There is a better way.”

“A riot is the language of the unheard,” Rev. Parham said, echoing the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. But violence is not the answer, he added.

“We now have rights for women, women have achieved high levels in a full spectrum of professional and business ways – that is a byproduct of the civil rights movement – a nonviolent movement,” he said.

“Gay rights is a byproduct of the black civil rights movement. Nonviolence has its long-term effect. Eventually nonviolence brings the oppressor to the side of the oppressed. I would not advocate violence at all. That would be a disastrous strategy for the people who engaged in it.”

Parham offered the young woman an alternative.

“The young woman looting won't make the economic system feel any pain. An effective boycott could bring economic stress to businesses that serve the community. The things that would be more aggressive – possibly more effective would require community organization and discipline. That is achievable but not easily achievable.”

* Meanewhile, Al Jazeera America reported Wednesday that instead of a drop in gun violence, "Stand Your Ground" states have in fact seen an increase in homicides:

States that desire to combat violent crime or reduce overall homicide rates should either repeal or refuse to enact so-called “stand your ground” legislation, according to a recent report issued by a taskforce commissioned by the American Bar Association.

The National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws, convened in 2013, conducted a comprehensive and multidisciplinary review of the impact of “stand your ground” legislation on public safety, individual liberties, and the criminal justice system.

The 62-page report, issued Friday, found that “stand your ground” laws, which vary from state to state, obstruct law enforcement, confuse law enforcement personnel, and disproportionately affect minorities.

“Stand your ground” legislation has failed to deter crime, and, in fact, has led to an increase in homicides, the report said. States with “stand your ground” laws experienced an 8 percent increase in the number of homicides compared to states without such laws.

Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe, Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, Temple University, saw the report’s conclusions as unequivocal. “If our aim is to increase criminal justice system costs, increase medical costs, increase racial tension, maintain our high adolescent death rate and put police officers at greater risk, then this is good legislation,” Ratcliffe said. “There is no reliable and credible evidence to support laws that encourage ‘stand your ground.’”

Currently, 33 states have in place “stand your ground” legislation, which substantially expands the bounds of self-defense law. The terminology entered popular lexicon when George Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Florida.

Since then, “stand your ground” laws have come under intense scrutiny, particularly by those who say the laws endanger young black men.

Under “stand your ground,” individuals who reasonably believe they are facing an imminent threat of bodily harm may use force to defend themselves, including the use of deadly force. There is no legal duty to retreat, even when safe to do so, an element that marks a significant and troubling departure from traditional self-defense rules.

Critics of the law say that it promotes a “shoot first” mentality.

A former military officer cited in the report pointed to the absurdity of encouraging deadly force in public spaces. “Stand your ground” laws, he said, provide a more lenient rule for a civilians’ use of a firearm than is available to a police officer or even a soldier at war.

“It is troubling that under Stand Your Ground, there are less restrictions imposed on U.S. service members using deadly force when they return to the United States, than when they are deployed in a combat environment,” Christopher Jenks, an assistant professor of law at Southern Methodist University and director of the school’s Criminal Justice Clinic, said in the report.

The taskforce also found that “stand your ground” laws reinforce racial bias due to cultural stereotypes about certain racial groups being more threatening. In instances where a white shooter kills a black victim, that homicide was 350 percent more likely to be ruled as justified under “stand your ground,” than if a white shooter killed a white person.

Both police officers and prosecutors uniformly expressed confusion over how to enforce these laws, the report said, a reality that is leading to widespread opposition from law enforcement personnel towards “stand your ground” laws.

Among other suggestions, the task force encouraged the ABA to develop a national public education campaign with the aim of providing accurate information about “stand your ground” laws.

Dr. Gary Kleck, a noted pro-gun researcher and staunch advocate for Second Amendment rights, said, “There is little or no need for a gun for self-protection [for most Americans] because there’s so little risk of crime. People don’t believe it, but it’s true,” the report quoted him as saying. “You just can’t convince most Americans they’re not at serious risk.”

Originally published by Al Jazeera America