Photography by William Powell
A trip through the torn community of Ferguson yesterday showed anger and wreckage at every turn. Driving down West Florissant Avenue, I passed rows of boarded-up businesses, their windows smashed out by looters. At the Canfield Green Apartments, where teenager Michael Brown lived and was gunned down in the street by a Ferguson police officer, a peaceful crowd of neighbors held signs and spoke with reporters, the afternoon cool and sunny. The site where Brown fell, where the unarmed 18-year-old lay dead on the street for hours, was marked with traffic cones and a makeshift memorial—candles and teddy bears and a foam tombstone.
I spoke with a young man who didn’t want to give his name. Full names are what white people use, he said, adding that people who live in Canfield go by other monikers. He said the people in the community weren’t the ones looting, blaming the violence on stupid kids. But he planned to be on the sidewalk protesting all through the night, every night, until justice is served.
“I will be out here until this guy is found guilty of murder,” he said, referring to the unidentified Ferguson police officer who shot Brown. “Ferguson police hasn’t apologized to that family. We need somebody to offer some type of apology.”
He expressed frustration with the heavy police presence in the neighborhood, describing the flood of cops in heavy riot gear as akin to martial law. “We are going to maintain order in our community, so they can’t take our freedom,” he said.
Back on West Florissant, a loud protest spilled from in front of the burned-out QuikTrip, another casualty of the looting, and into the street. Cars honked as they passed, while hundreds of protesters chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” the rallying cry of demonstrations here. Across the QT parking lot, Dorian Johnson, who was walking with Brown at the time of the altercation with police, stood in front of a camera, giving an interview to CNN.
Police say that Brown and the officer were wrestling in a squad car for control of the officer’s gun, when Brown was shot in the tussle. But Johnson, as well as other witnesses, say Brown was running away and had put his hands up when the officer shot him several times. As soon as the TV interview ended, Johnson was whisked away by his family and an attorney. The 22-year-old has suddenly become a news celebrity, and he has an entourage trying to help him handle the attention.
Meanwhile, police arrived at the QT, their squad cars flying over the curb and through the grass. Police from various departments across the county have been active in Ferguson. In this instance, officers from Fenton took up a position in the street, pushing the protesters back out of traffic.
Later in the evening, two churches held community forums. Both were packed. At one, Al Sharpton spoke. I attended the other, where Governor Jay Nixon, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, and many others addressed the crowd, offering ideas for solutions and answering questions. Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, the target of so much animosity, received a large ovation when he said, “It breaks my heart to see what’s happening here. It breaks my heart what happened on Saturday. What really breaks my heart is that some in this community consider me part of the problem. I want to change that. I want to be part of the solution.”
Despite the throng of public officials, whose quotes you can read elsewhere, it was the community and religious leaders whose comments were most powerful.
Traci Blackmon, pastor at Christ the King United Church of Christ, which hosted the event, brought the crowd to tears with this impassioned opening: “We are here because we are hurting. We are here because we are angry. We are here because we are weary. We are here because we are grieving. We are here because Michael Brown is not here. We are here because we demand justice. We are here because we will not rest until we have answers. We are here because we are community… We are here because we are Michael Brown, all of us. We are here to stop the bleeding in our streets. We are here to take our communities back. We are here to take our children back. We are here to take our voices back. And this time, we will not go away!”
In an opening prayer, Rabbi Susan Talve spoke about unifying our fractured region. She called for an end to racial profiling and, more broadly, to racism. She spoke of societal inequity, touching on economic injustice, prison reform, poor education, gun control, and access to healthcare. “We have made this region divided, and it’s killing our children,” she prayed. “God, somehow, we have allowed there to be two Americas, two St. Louises, and even two Fergusons… We need to build that bridge between these worlds and build a table big enough for all, because until we do this together, my friends, our dear teenage boys will keep dying.”
And in the most powerful speech of the night, a woman named Amy Hunter spoke about what it’s like to be the mother of a black son in America. “There is no other people on Earth that I love more than my children,” she said. “I would really like to stop being afraid every time they leave the house. That’s why this has to change. It was Michael Brown that day, but it could have been Andy or Ashton or Nicholas or John. It could have been any one of our children. It has to stop. It has to stop!”
Hunter told a story about a time when her son was 12 years old. He was walking home from the Loop and was stopped by police. They patted him down. He asked, “Why?” When he got home, crying and shaking, he said that when he was on the corner and saw the police officer coming after him, he considered running home to his mother. Hunter told him never to run. Then, he asked Mom a question: “If this happened because I was black, I just want to know, how long will this happen to me?”
She answered: “For the rest of your life.”
Later, long after the event had ended, on a nearby corner where a disturbance had been reported, a man who police said pulled a gun was shot by a St. Louis County police officer. He was critically wounded.
Tension continues to mount.
