Returning on Sunday to the very spot where, a year ago, the killing of an unarmed black 18-year-old named Michael Brown by a white police officer set off local unrest and a national debate on race and policing, hundreds of people chanted, sang and marched in a vigil that was as much a call to action as a remembrance of the death.
The event drew a range of political leaders, national activists and ordinary people, who said they felt a connection to the events of a year ago. With writer and academic Cornel West behind them, Brown’s family stood over a freshly repaved patch of Canfield Drive, where Brown died. Relatives of Eric Garner and Oscar Grant, two other black men who died in confrontations with the police on Staten Island in New York and in Oakland, California, also attended.
Assembled around a makeshift memorial of colorful stuffed animals, several campaigners urged the crowd not to let Brown’s death be in vain. They held a four-and-a-half-minute moment of silence — symbolic of the four-and-a-half hours that Brown’s body was left in the street after the shooting — and then marched 2.4km through the muggy air to a local church for a service.
“They didn’t give us no justice, so they ain’t going to get no peace,” Bud Cuzz, leader of activist group Lost Voices, told the crowd on Canfield Drive to boisterous cheers.
Later on Sunday night, several dozen protesters blocked West Florissant Avenue, a commercial district hit by rioting a year ago, as police mostly stayed back. A larger crowd, consisting of hundreds of young people, had gathered there earlier in the evening, but many had left during a heavy rain.
The police reported a break-in at a beauty supply store at about 8:30pm. Thieves took a cash register, but dropped it when officers approached, the police said. The shop was quickly boarded up.
TARGETING BLACKS
Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown and has since resigned from the Ferguson Police Department, was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a grand jury in November last year. While a US Department of Justice investigation concluded that the city unconstitutionally targeted black people for an array of fees and fines largely intended to raise revenue, it also concluded that the shooting did not warrant criminal charges.
However, people in Ferguson spoke of the need to overhaul the system, calling for an end to racism and what they see as the unfair treatment of blacks by the police. They invoked the names of other blacks killed by the police. They demanded that national politicians address the grievances of blacks. They called for a national day of resistance on Monday through acts of civil disobedience.
“Every city, I want us to close it down,” local activist Anthony Shahid screamed into a microphone before leading the crowd in a chant: “If we can’t get it, shut it down.”
Throughout the weekend, protesters and activists held rallies and vigils remembering Brown and others who were killed by the police or died while in custody in cities around the world.
In New York, protesters gathered on Sunday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and at a government building in Harlem before a planned vigil in Manhattan’s Union Square. Two people were arrested during a demonstration that blocked traffic near Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall.
In Ypsilanti, Michigan, demonstrators gathered at a library park for a rally demanding an end to racial injustice. Similar demonstrations took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Others were planned for Denver, Colarado; at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia, Washington; at the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, where Sandra Bland was found dead; and in St Petersburg, Florida.
In London, demonstrators picketed outside the US embassy. More demonstrations were held on Monday in St Louis, Missouri, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where organizers have adopted the hashtag #MoralMonday on social media.
Although things remained peaceful during the day on Sunday, a tension pulsed through the air. Brown’s killing set off weeks of unrest that included arson fires and looting, and the police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. As police officers escorted marchers through the streets on Sunday, they seemed determined to appear welcoming. At one point, law enforcement officials asked the marchers to hold up after gunshots rang out a few blocks away in a non-fatal shooting unrelated to the march.
“This is all good right now,” Chief Jon Belmar of the St Louis County Police Department said as the marchers paused while officers tried to make sure it was safe for them to continue.
However, after one of his department’s police cars came racing out of a side street, siren blaring, and turned in the direction of the demonstrators, Belmar became irked. He mumbled an obscenity, looked at some of his officers standing on the side of the road in the distance and twirled his finger in the air, saying: “Turn him around.”
The situation was quickly cleared and the march resumed to the church. The chief said he had himself been reflecting on the day of Brown’s shooting as he stood on Canfield Drive.
“I’d been a policeman over 28 years when that happened, and I tell people all the time: ‘You think you have all the answers and you think you’re experienced and have seen everything; well, you haven’t,’” he said. “Last year’s events serve as a reminder that just about the time you think that you really have a depth of understanding of anything that can happen, you don’t.”
The city of Ferguson, which is about two-thirds black, has taken some steps to address concerns about policies that the Justice Department described as discriminatory. It has hired a black interim city manager and a black interim police chief. It has released city officials who were discovered to have sent racist e-mails. It has hired a new municipal judge.
UNFAIR FINES
On a state level, the legislature passed a law capping the amount of revenue that cities can collect from traffic tickets, responding to accusations that municipalities were targeting mostly black motorists with unfair fines and fees.
Still, the people gathered in Ferguson on Sunday said they wanted to see more done.
Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, applauded the activists who climbed on stage with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and demanded an opportunity to talk about police killings during an event in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday. Sanders left the event without addressing the crowd.
“We got to hold our elected officials accountable,” Garner said. “If he’s not going to talk about our issues, he shouldn’t talk at all.”
Belden Lane, a 72-year-old white man, held a sign that read: “These are my sons, too, dying in the streets.”
“I don’t have to worry about that because my kids are white,” Lane said. “So I’m here to witness to what needs to be changed. It’s not just black men dying in the streets, but it’s white people losing beloved black men dying in the streets and our need to stand together and say: ‘No.’”
At one point during the march, Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr, said: “This moment was sponsored by Darren Wilson.”
The march ended at Greater St Mark Family Church, where rap music blared outside before a service that was part somber, part strategy, part fiery.
The Reverend Tommie Pierson, the pastor at Greater St Mark and a Missouri state representative, encouraged people to seek change through a political process.
“If we’re going to change the system to work for us, we need to run for office and vote for ourselves,” Pierson said. “Protesting is good, but it only brings attention to the problems. Solving the problem requires doing other things.”
Additional reporting by Ashley Southall
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