article_snippet.sent: Ferguson's governing structure, with a strong city manager and a weak council and mayor, mirrors that of thousands of other suburbs in the United States.
article_snippet.sent: That form of governance might have been precisely what thriving, middle class white suburbanites wanted when middle class white suburbanites fled racial integration in cities like St. Louis.
article_snippet.sent: But working class suburbs like Ferguson with a majority black population in which the needs of the population in the areas of education and economic opportunity more closely hews to the needs of urban residents, may need a more robust form of governance.
article_snippet.sent: In any case, a system in which the elected officials have minimal power, but non-elected leaders, like the town manager and the chief of police, have inordinate power, is a recipe for the kind of unaccountable, non-representative government that controlled Ferguson's residents.
article_snippet.sent: It's not that Ferguson is so different than towns across America.
article_snippet.sent: It's precisely because Ferguson holds up a mirror to flaws in our democratic system of government in towns across the United States that the stakes are so high.
article_snippet.sent: And Ferguson's example should provoke self-examination in working class suburbs across the country, where the power and effectiveness of weak elected local government is inadequate to meet the needs of the population.
highlights_snippet.sent: A city with a pattern of racial discrimination says Ferguson faces other changes, too, that  should spur rethinking in working class suburbs across America .