September 23, 2014
This morning, the memorial
dedicated to Mike Brown on Canfield Drive, the street where he was murdered by
Officer Darren Wilson, was set on fire. This follows over 45 days of continued
harassment and intimidation experienced by the people in Ferguson by local
authorities. In contrast, the immediate community response reflects the
resilience and strength of the people of Ferguson, as people immediately went
to work to remove the ash and debris in order to rebuild the memorial. One
example of this incredible community support is of a young community member who
works at a local grocery store and used his store discount to purchase food for
community members who are rebuilding and standing vigil at the recreated
memorial on what they are now calling Mike Brown Lane. This vigilant selfless
and dedicated resilience is indicative of the fighting spirit I encountered
while there.
I arrived in Ferguson, on Labor
Day weekend as part of the Chicago contingent of the Black Lives Matter Ride,
fashioned in the spirit of the 1960’s Freedom Rides to end segregation. Our
mission was to work in solidarity with Ferguson residents, participate in a
Saturday march, and provide opportunity for those of us across the country to
meet and address what feels like an increase in state sanctioned violence
against Black bodies.
Since Mike Brown’s murder, there
have been at least three more killings by police in Chicago, that of Roshad
McIntosh, Darius Cole-Garrit and Desean Pittman. On September 3rd,
the family of Marlon Horton filed a civil rights lawsuit over his murder, almost
a year after his death, after CCTV footage was finally released showing Chicago
Housing Authority officers shooting and killing the man. Since Mike Brown’s death, hundreds of
neighbors and community members joined the mother of Roshad McIntosh in
protesting her son’s murder and demanding the name of the police officers
involved with his killing, as well as demanding a copy of the police report and
autopsy. His mother, Cynthia Lane, along with her supporters, has marched to
the police precinct everyday requesting the information regarding the death of
her son. Friday, September 5th a neighborhood fundraiser was held,
despite the rain, to raise money to pay for the Roshad’s funeral. Saturday,
September 6th the funeral was held even though the remaining $4,500
due to the funeral home remained outstanding. Thankfully, the home’s
proprietors allowed for late payment. Monday, September 8th was
Roshad’s birthday where he would have turned 20 years old.
It has now been over 45 days
since the killing of Mike Brown.
Based on data compiled from more
than 161 news sources[1],
there were 104 people in the United States killed by law enforcement within the
month of August. Of this count, 29 were Black, 37 were white, 25 were Latino, 2
were APIA, 9 were of unknown ethnic origin and 6 were white police/correction/or
parole officers who committed suicide as part of suicide/homicides. Of these
August totals, 6 other non-white individuals were known to be suicidal and 11
suffered from mental illnesses including PTSD. One such young man was killed a
mere three hours after being released from a psychiatric hospital[2].
Of these 104 deaths, the majority seemingly came from working class backgrounds
What becomes clear is that for the month of August, police killings were not exclusive
to Black and Brown bodies but occurred at an increased rate in comparison to that
of white bodies. Blacks and Latinos collectively resulted in 51% of police
murders in August yet comprise only 30% of the US population[3].
While whites comprised 36% of total police killings in August, whites comprise
a total of 63% of the total population. The numbers of Blacks and Latinos
killed by police in the month of August reflect highly disproportionate rate of
killings on bodies of color. Yet, it also reveals the high rate of deadly force
representative of police departments nationwide which stand in stark contrast
to global rates of police killings among other industrialized/first
world/global north nations. Iceland for example, experienced its first police
killing ever, in December.
While I walked the streets of
Ferguson, many commented on the smallness of the sidewalks. In Chicago, our
sidewalks are wide enough to fit two to ten people (depending on where in the
City one is). But the residential sidewalks in Ferguson were more akin to what are
considered lawn pathways in Chicago, sufficient space for one person to walk
comfortably. Coupled with this, Canfield Drive, the street in which Mike Brown
was killed, is extremely wide, something I from Chicago, am jealous of given
the narrowness of my neighborhood’s residential streets caused by street
parking (which is unnecessary in Ferguson as most people have garages and/or
parking lot), often requiring one car to pull over to one side in order to let
another vehicle through. In echoing sentiments many have already shared, it is
no wonder Mike Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, were walking in the street
when Officer Darren Wilson approached them. There simply isn’t room on the
sidewalk for more than one person. This spacial reality makes it clearly
suggestive that when Officer Darren Wilson told Mike Brown to “get out of the
street,” he was doing so not out of concern for street obstruction, but rather as
an excuse to harass two young Black teenagers. It was about Darren Wilson
weaponizing his power through his police badge. It was about the psychosis of
power that is produced within an ideology of Blackness as inherently criminal.
It is the brutality that is routinized within occupying forces as they make
distinctions between themselves and those they are occupying. It is an example
of how the banality of evil is entrenched in the police system. It is Nazi
Germany, it is Jim Crow South, it is occupied Gaza, it is apartheid South
Africa. It is the behavioral systematizing of oppression through police forces.
Throughout our time there,
discussions returned to repeated themes of widening the definition of state
violence and the necessity to catalogue atrocities to Black bodies. We need to
count how many indeed are dying with the consent of the state both in terms of
killings by police as well as vigilante murders like that of Trayvon Martin and
Renisha McBride. We need to know how many have occurred. We need to make visible
the lives of all those taken away. We need to know who has died, why and how,
and who they were. We need to see, feel, remember and honor their
humanity. We need to count. We need to
make tangible the humanity of our erased. We will not allow them to remain
invisible. We will not silence the pain of the bereaved. We will listen and we
will shout and we will show. We will make it impossible to look away and deny
their/our humanity.
Ferguson, like a heart beating,
pounding through my body, pointing me to look into the mirror of privilege in
which I live, where straightening my hair with a flat iron allows me to “pass”,
to lessen my Blackness and make my environment feel less hostile, less
threatening, lessening the likelihood of white violence on my non-white body.
Black Lives Matter Ride to Ferguson, where I was able to rejoice in loving all
of our colors and sizes and manifestations. Where resistance is embedded within
a community loving itself and knowing that loving themselves is a risk in which
they are willing to die. Ferguson, the skeleton of resistance in which we,
outsiders, honor and seek to learn and replicate their heroism. Ferguson, a
place in which the blood of Mike Brown’s body remains stained into the stones
and grit of Canfield Drive where his lifeless body laid for four and a half
hours. Where the Nation’s Fruit of Islam guard the memorial and family from
further police terrorism after police dogs urinated on vigil candles and
mementos. Ferguson, where we see the United States’ economy of racial
oppression lay bare.
I have been wrestling with a
question which has only become heightened since Mike Brown’s death, what does
Black freedom look like on this tainted and bloody soil? Can this country exist
without the billions of dollars that Black oppression produces for capitalists,
from the booming private prison industry to the high costs associated with living
poor? I am also asking, what does a de-militarized and de-weaponized US police
force look like? What does civilian freedom from deadly routinized police
violence look like? Iceland?
I come away from our Black Lives
Matter Freedom Ride to Ferguson empowered, motivated and ready to work. But I
also come away with more questions, with more confusion, with more pain. There
is a strange jarring disconnect created from the contrast of being where police
behaved as an occupying military force, terrorizing the community with tear
gas, flash grenades, LRAD, and rubber bullets and coming home to Chicago were
the mother of Desean Pittman was arrested for “mob action” after the Chicago
Police trampled her son’s memorial on August 25th, tore down his
posters, kicked the vigil candles and said that her son deserved to die. She
was arrested and held on $7,500 bond which she needed paid in order to attend her
son’s funeral. She was finally released Friday morning, September 5th
after the community came together to raise the bail amount. Yet the morning of
my return to Chicago, there was no mention of this in the local news. Again
Black lives, Black pain, poor people’s pain was rendered invisible.
I will strive to help raise the
remaining amount owed to the funeral parlor; I plan to march with the mother of
Roshad McIntosh who is asking for the name of the officer who murdered her son
on August 24th, who is simply asking for a copy of the autopsy
report and incident report. I will attend actions on October 22nd
against police brutality and I will work to dismantle this unjust system. But I
am mourning too. I am healing too. I am not forgetting that part of being human
is to feel pain inflicted and that in ending these systems of oppression, we
must make them clearly visible so that it is impossible for them to hide. We
must tell our truths as best we can. We must never silence our humanity. We must
resist any urge to quiet the truth of our realities in fear that those with
systemic privileges are not made uncomfortable, for when they are uncomfortable
they are often violent. It is this assuasion which helps them ignore the reality
of both their privilege as well as the violent and painful consequences their
privilege necessitates. It is this assuasion which hides the experience of the
working class and poor amidst deadly weaponized police forces who shoot to
kill, not to maim. It is this assuasion which has hidden the fact that suicidal
persons often seek out police in order to assist with their suicides, because they
are well aware of a social contract which assures the public that the police
will shoot and kill in lieu of the state providing for emergency mental health
professional responses. In resisting, in reasserting our right to life, in
rejecting deadly militarized police forces as acceptable to life within this
country, we will reveal our pain, and bleed. We will not be denied our
humanity. We will be heard. We will be seen. We will resist, we will fight and
we will be free.
In remembrance[4]:
8/3/2014 Abrego, Omar California (Los Angeles)
8/22/2014 Alvarado, Alex (38) California (San Bernardino)
8/3/2014 Armstrong, Justin (28) Arizona (Pinetop)
8/10/2014 Bandy, Tyrone “Ty” (45) Washington (Burien)
8/11/2014 Brennan, Daniel (51) New York (Palenville)
8/23/2014 Brown, Lamar Anthony (39) Florida (West Palm Beach)
8/9/2014 Brown, Michael (18) Missouri (Ferguson)
8/18/2014 Bukowiecki, Richard (47) California (Norwalk)
8/31/2014 Burch, Justin (21) Mississippi (Hattiesburg)
8/3/2014 Calhoun, JaCorey (23) California (Oakland)
8/1/2014 Calloway, Anthony (27) Georgia (Atlanta)
8/19/2014 Cole-Garrit, Darius (21) Illinois (Chicago)
8/9/2014 Cornelio Morales, Alberto (41) California (Walnut Park)
8/5/2014 Crawford, John (22) Ohio (Beavercreek)
8/25/2014 Crawford, Joshua Matthew (29) Colorado (Grand Junction)
8/13/2014 Cusseaux, Michelle (50) Arizona (Phoenix)
8/11/2014 Davis, Eddie Texas (DeKalb)
8/26/2014 Dion, Bryce (38) Nebraska (Omaha)
8/3/2014 Doll, Steve Matthew (40) California (Stockton)
8/25/2014 Douglas, Steven (29) Texas (Dallas)
8/6/2014 Dozer, Michael (26) California (Bakersfield)
8/19/2014 Ellis, David (29) Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
8/25/2014 Esquivel, Guadalupe (51) Texas (Lubbock)
8/6/2014 Farias, Rudolph (51) Texas (Houston)
8/4/2014 Flores, Manuel (28) New Mexico (Albuquerque)
8/11/2014 Ford, Ezell (24) California (Los Angeles)
8/22/2014 Fowler, James Matthew (41) Georgia (Adairsville)
8/20/2014 Friedman, Darren (45) Maryland (Ellicott City)
8/29/2014 Garcia, Enebelio (45) Texas (Guadalupe County)
8/31/2014 Garza, José Walter (30) Texas (Laredo)
8/10/2014 Gaynier, Andrew Scott (26) Texas (Dallas)
8/19/2014 Godinez, Maria Fernada (22) Florida (Orlando)
8/11/2014 Gonzalez, Jose Manuel (18) Texas (Dallas)
8/24/2014 Griffis, Timothy (35) Florida (Lake City)
8/19/2014 Guy, Miranda (28) Tennessee (Harriman)
8/11/2014 Harris, Torrez (52) Mississippi (Canton)
8/28/2014 Havenor, Chaz Michael (21) Minnesota (Ramsey)
8/24/2014 Herrera-Garcia, Mauricio (39) Arizona (Phoenix)
8/8/2014 Higgins, Justin Wayne (23) Arkansas, (Fort Smith)
8/5/2014 Hudson, Tommy (53) Virginia (Hudgins)
8/14/2014 Jennings, Alvin Curtis (61) Iowa (Davenport)
8/24/2014 Jennings, Joseph (18) Kansas (Ottawa)
8/18/2014 Jones, Andre Maurice (37) California (Los Angeles)
8/13/2014 Jones, Reagan Alabama (Muscle Shoals)
8/6/2014 Lake, Jeremy (19) Oklahoma (Tulsa)
8/3/2014 Lanza, Mark (23) Arizona (Phoenix)
8/29/2014 Lebak, Erik Charles (32) California (Redding)
8/27/2014 LeBlanc, Freddie (48) Louisiana (Albany)
8/19/2014 Leichardt, Chad (40) Kansas (Haysville)
8/29/2014 Lewis, Jeremy (33) Florida (Orlando)
8/12/2014 Lopez-Gonzalez, Gabriel (22) California (San Fernando)
8/17/2014 Love, Levon Leroy (44) Texas (San Antonio)
8/25/2014 Matheny, Randy (31) West Virginia (Dingess)
8/24/2014 McIntosh, Roshad (19) Illinois (Chicago)
8/24/2014 McMilon, Stephen Andrew (52) Oregon (Medford)
8/2/2014 Mendoza, Frank Al (54) California (Los Angeles)
8/16/2014 Miller, Fred (38) Maryland (Fort Washington)
8/11/2014 Mroczek, Pammi (49) New York (Palenville)
8/11/2014 Mroczek, Robert (46) New York (Palenville)
8/23/2014 Ossorio, Hernan Milton (61) Maryland (Ellicott City)
8/14/2014 Parker, Dante (36) California (Victorville)
Joshua Paul, front,
pictured here with his fiance, Jeff Bolek
8/18/2014 Paul, Joshua (31) Illinois (Carpentersville)
8/9/2014 Paulino, Jose, Jr. (38) Pennsylvania (Tamaqua)
8/9/2014 Penderghest, Joseph (40) Pennsylvania (Springfield Township)
8/6/2014 Pickard Jr., James (51) Hawaii (Pearl City)
8/1/2014 Pierre, Daniel (42) New Jersey (Winslow Township)
8/12/2014 Pifer, Ronald (54) Michigan (Fairfield Township)
8/17/2014 Piirainen, Steven (52) Maine (Mexico)
8/24/2014 Pittman, Desean (17) Illinois (Chicago)
8/19/2014 Powell, Kajieme (25) Missouri (St. Louis)
8/2/2014 Ramirez, Cedric Oscar (24) California (Los Angeles)
8/27/2014 Ramos, Sergio (18) Texas (Dallas)
8/7/2014 Reyes-Torres, Jose (20) California (Folsom)
8/4/2014 Rodriguez, Maria (42) California (Bakersfield)
8/27/2014 Rogers, John (61) New Mexico (Bloomfield)
8/5/2014 Rowe, Donyale (37) Ohio (Cincinnati)
8/25/2014 Salazar, Mark (22) Oklahoma (Oklahoma City)
8/28/2014 Sellars, Terry (31) Florida (Manatee)
8/28/2014 Sharpe, Mark Jeffery (54) California (Sutter County)
Diana Showman with her
mother.
8/14/2014 Showman, Diana (19) California (San Jose)
8/3/2014 Swearingen, Ryan (27) Iowa (Fort Madison)
8/11/2014 Taylor, Dillon Utah (South Salt Lake)
8/18/2014 Towe, Jeffrey (53) California (Woodland)
8/31/2014 Turner, Eugene (28) Kansas (Kansas City)
8/8/2014 Uncles, Austin David (26) Colorado (Denver)
8/31/2014 Bingamen, Royal Shawn , (42) Nevada (Reno)
8/29/2014 O’Connell, John (44) Arizona (Littlefield)
8/28/2014 unidentified (??) Minnesota (St. Paul)
8/8/2014 unidentified (??) Michigan (Detroit)
8/3/2014 unidentified (??) Texas (Houston)
8/13/2014 unidentified male (??) Texas (Houston)
8/3/2014Vang, Yee (20)Minnesota (St. Paul)
8/28/2014 Villarreal, Raymond (43) Texas (Corpus Christi)
8/7/2014 Wagner, Regan (23) Texas (Longview)
8/14/2014 Wagner, Sonny (52) Kansas (Newton)
8/18/2014 Walker, Luther Lathron (38) California (Los Angeles)
8/26/2014 Washington, Cortez (32) Nebraska (Omaha)
8/16/2014 Wegener, Travis (28) Tennessee (Knoxville)
8/26/2014 Wesson, Kerry (45) California (Lynwood)
8/20/2014 Williams, Arvel Douglas (30) Maryland (Perry Hall)
8/29/2014 Withers, Jayson Matthew (26) Oregon (Pendleton)
8/22/2014 Woodard, Vernicia (26) Georgia (Atlanta)
8/13/2014 Zavala, Jacinto (21) Colorado (Greeley)
[1]
(Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States,_August_2014#cite_note-1
[2]
Aunt of teen shot by Ottawa, Kan., police says he didn't have to die
(kansascity)
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article1287028.html
[3]
United States Census Bureau (USA QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau)
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
[4]
Killed by Police – August 2014 (Mental Health Association of Portland RSS)
http://www.mentalhealthportland.org/killed-by-police-august-2014/
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