Last week, officials in St Louis teased that there was going to finally be a judgement from the Grand Jury as to whether Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO earlier this summer, would be indicted. Here in Seattle, there were protests and vigils that came many days before the verdict actually came down.

Yesterday, classes were cancelled in Ferguson. The ruling from the Grand Jury as to whether or not Darren Wilson would even go to trial was to be announced sometime on Monday. Eventually, word got out that the verdict would not be announced until 8pm Central. Long after the sun went down, hours after most people would be off work, they let the city stew in anticipation for the verdict. The Governor had called in the National Guard ahead of time, though he hadn’t deployed them.

The big question of the day wasn’t whether or not Wilson would go to trial. That they even called a Grand Jury was evidence that this would be washed over. Most Grand Juries, when it comes to cops killing civilians, do not send the police officers to trial. The biggest question became, why make the announcement at 8pm, which was a rather unusual move.

Many predicted that the built up anticipation of the ruling would cause the city to explode. Some commented that this was theater, that the news channels would focus on the rioting and then the public would be subdued. It was theater with property damage and dead bodies.

It’s not like this came out of nowhere. Three days earlier, Lionsgate released The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, a movie about government, rebellion and dictatorship. If you skip over the Peeta element, Mockingjay – Part 1 focuses on propaganda and political theater. Every time there was a rebellion, the Capital would cast it in the light of “look at these looters doing illegal things” and killed masked “criminals” as proof of their strength.

This was political theater as pointed out in a fictional YA book years earlier. This was political theater as pointed out by a movie released 3 days prior. Conflating fiction with reality is always controversial. Where you draw the line on how close this was to the book will be up to you. Regardless, the points that Mockingjay was making about propaganda and media control felt especially on point yesterday as America watched buildings burn while the media blamed the rioters for reacting to another example of injustice.