Photography by Dominick Oranika.
Alston
For Alston, activism is a family affair. Here, Alston and Cameron Cole, his nephew, gather at the protest and march Alston organized in East St. Louis.
Armed with a video camera and his voice, Fareed Alston roamed the streets of Ferguson to document the days following Michael Brown’s death in 2014. Last week, Alston traded his camera for a megaphone as he led protesters demonstrating against racism and police brutality throughout East St. Louis. Come Sunday, Alston’s activism will once again take a new form as he helps host a vendor fair in East St. Louis Park.
Simply speaking, Alston has done a lot. St. Louis Magazine caught up with the East St. Louis native to learn more about the origins of his activism, his feature-length film 12 Days in Ferguson, and his fight to bring economic agency to local communities.
What started your passion for activism, particularly in regard to the Black Lives Matter movement, and how has it evolved over time?
I remember going to protests in St. Louis with my aunt, and from there, I always had an awareness of socioeconomics. I studied Africana studies in college, and I also studied filmmaking. Documenting protests has been a combination of what I have been passionate about studying as a child and studying and developing further in college.
What was your experience like documenting the protests sparked by the death of Michael Brown?
When I returned home from film school, in 2014, the protests going on for Mike Brown had just started, and so that was probably the first time I said, "Hey, I’m going to make a movie about protests." At that time, I wanted to make a feature-length film, and I did: 12 Days in Ferguson. It was my big venture into documenting causes related to socioeconomic culture and status.
In what ways is the BLM movement different today than it was when you were making 12 Days in Ferguson?
When I think about Black Lives Matter, I think about a hashtag that happened in 2012 while the protest over Trayvon Martin's death was going on. Then I think of how Ferguson in 2014 was the catalyst for people to recognize Black Lives Matter. The year 2014 really developed a script for how to handle protests in this new time of ours. Ferguson in 2014 was the example of how modern-day activism happens, meaning the information was spread through social media, Twitter, cell phones. From that, Black Lives Matter went from a hashtag to a chant to a saying. Now, it’s more commercialized. It’s something that people can say to attach themselves to a movement. People can throw money at it, they can post signs about it. Before, it wasn’t that big.
You’ve engaged in a wide variety of activism: from documenting protests to leading one to putting together the Vendors in the Park event this weekend. How do the goals of each differ?
The goal of the movie is to bring awareness to the events following the killing of Michael Brown, to etch that into history and get a perspective from my point of view and other young black men’s points of view—to make that like an archive, something we can always look back on for truth. But it's also to build economic stability. It’s something that’s helping me build economic power because I’m able to sell the movie and make money from it. That’s something that is lacking in our community, people having a product or being aware of their products or services that they can sell, and then selling it.
The point of the protests on June 18 was to basically bring awareness to the city of East St. Louis, to make people feel comfortable being there and spending their money there. Also, we gave out over 300 boxes of food to residents through our sponsorship with Better Family Life that day at the park.
The event that’s coming Sunday is about bringing empowerment and having small local businesses come to sell their products in a very open, marketplace-type environment. These types of things are what bring out more resources: people getting together, being able to network, get their cards out.
You used the phrase "economic awareness" in promoting last week’s protest and march. How do you define that term?
Economic awareness is having the sense and knowledge and literacy about money, being able to make informed spending decisions on a micro and a macro level, meaning for yourself, within your household, within your community, within your country, [and within] the world. Simply put, I would say the economic awareness that I want to bring is resources. This could be education, this could be actual … resources like food and money, or some type of capital to people who have been traditionally kept out or pushed out of wealth-building.
How do you hope to bring economic awareness to the East St. Louis community?
I want to wake people up, for one, to their socioeconomic status: "OK, this is where I am. I make this much this year, and this is what I’m considered to be." In order to transcend suffering, a person must be aware that they’re suffering. Once you become aware of the suffering, then you can transcend it … and then that awareness brings empowerment, and that empowerment can build generational wealth.
What advice would you give to young activists?
The best thing they can do is listen: Listen closely, listen carefully. Take notes, write down everything, always count everything. Don’t be afraid of any opportunity that falls into your lap because those are your greatest opportunities. Really prepare yourself to do activism work, because activism work is a job, but there’s no salary. [There are] all these different struggles that come with activism work, but if you have a goal in mind and you have a passion for your environment and you have compassion for the people and living beings in your environment, then you will be fine.
For more information on Sunday’s Vendors in the Park event, visit its Facebook page.
