Mustafa Alshalabi
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
The 25-year-old is an employee at Sam’s Meat Market, which was looted multiple nights, starting on August 10.
After leaving work, I got home and took a shower, started eating ice cream, and watched a movie. Luckily, I got the FOX News app on my phone. They started sending messages, and they said QuikTrip was damaged and burning. So I quickly jumped in my clothes and drove my car 80 miles an hour in a 35-miles-per-hour zone.
When I got to Highmont Drive and West Florissant Avenue, there was a huge amount of police cars and people gathered around. I saw people coming out of the store with pretty much everything—it was real bad. All of the cigarettes were gone. The counter’s cash register was on the floor. Liquor was taken from everywhere. The floor was sticky. The manager’s office was broken into.
The response from the community was pretty much awesome. We had people who we didn’t even know who came and offered to help. Some people didn’t even ask if we needed help; they just joined in and started sweeping. People brought donuts. People brought McDonald’s—very nice people.
I’d never seen anything like this in my life. When I was in my home country, Georgia, I heard about the Rodney King incident. I said, “Wow, this is crazy.” I never thought I’d see it in my life.
Rev. Traci Blackmon
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
The 51-year-old is the pastor of Christ the King United Church of Christ in North County.
Almost every day, somewhere in America, you can see a black male being gunned down by police for some reason. We typically just get a blurb on the TV about it, right? You’ll see a headshot, or you’ll see some thugged-out shot, or you’ll see some baby picture with a caption that there was an altercation with police. But now we live in an age of social media, where people are beginning to videotape what is actually going on. And you saw this 18-year-old man who was unarmed, who was lying in the street with blood coming out from his body—lying in the street for four hours—after being shot multiple times when he carried no weapon. We don’t usually see that.
While certainly we want justice in the case of Mike Brown, the real culprit here—the real enemy that we have to begin to address in Ferguson, in St. Louis, and in this nation—is racism. Until we deal with racism at its core, until we aggressively put in practices that change behavior, this is going to continue to happen over and over again. I think that people are at a point now where they say, “No more.”
This city is going to change. I pray that it is going to change for the better, because people are ready to listen.”
Ricky Allen
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
The 15-year-old freshman at Riverview Gardens High School lives off Canfield Drive, two blocks from where Michael Brown was killed.
I think it was the day after Brown was killed, they had a roadblock. They had their tanks and blocked off the street. There were like three dudes pointing their guns at us, telling us to go in the house. They most likely had rubber bullets, but I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a rubber bullet hit somebody; it does damage, more than a BB gun does.
It cut down on my school. We missed about five days. At night, I had to watch the news and stay alert and be out here or at the door, watching what was going on. We didn’t have a lot of sleep. One time, we actually had school, but I had to miss out, because I was really sleepy. I couldn’t go out for football, because we’d get out at like 5 o’clock, and by that time, the street would already be blocked off. Hopefully, I’ll get on basketball, but I wanted to play football.
We’d heard state troopers had been buying basketball hoops and giving them to people who they see outside having nothing to do. We already had a neighborhood basketball hoop, but we didn’t have a net. One day, they put a brand-new net on there. The day after that, a bunch of them came over here and started playing basketball with us. We’ve been getting connected with the troopers a lot, but Ferguson ain’t doing nothing but losing respect from people around here.
Edward Crawford
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
The 25-year-old became the subject of an iconic Ferguson protest photo by St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer Robert Cohen.
When the picture was taken, it caught me in the motion of throwing the tear gas out of the crowd. After that happened, I was arrested. I was beaten. I have long hair, and they pulled out 21 locks. I’ve been trying to see if charges have been filed. I haven’t heard anything.
I spoke to my mom very briefly just to let her know where I was going to be, and the first thing she said to me was “Don’t get into any trouble.”
I got the chips that I’m holding in the photo from one of the protesters. I walked up to him and asked, “Can I have some of these chips?” and he gave me a whole bag.
A lot of people look at me and say, “You’re a hero.” No, I’m not a hero. I’m someone who was in a place at a certain time, and that happened. I wasn’t trying to do anything heroic. I’ve heard people say, “He was throwing it back at the police.” Any time I see that on a social-media site or anything, I try to clarify as much as I can: I was not throwing it back at the police; I just threw it out of the crowd. I didn’t have a direction. It all happened so fast. I just grabbed it and threw it.
It felt room-temperature. It wasn’t hot, wasn’t cold.
Adam Weinstein
Photo by Kevin A. Roberts
The 42-year-old owner of County Guns recently moved his business from West Florissant in Ferguson to Bridgeton.
On Sunday, August 10, we were watching the news as things started to unfold, and we watched the looting and rioting progress north on West Florissant Avenue. As it got closer, we decided it would be a good idea to go up there and at least get all of the inventory out of the shop. A couple of us decided, “You know what? There’s a beauty-supply place next door. There’s a cellphone place next door. There’s a liquor store. These are all prime looting targets.” So we decided to stay.
We armed ourselves pretty heavily. We were all wearing Kevlar bulletproof vests, and we just stayed. We weren’t going to let them destroy our strip mall. A pretty large group started heading down the strip mall toward us, and once they got a look at what was waiting for them, they quickly changed their mind. I don’t know if word got around or if they just saw us up there, but pretty much after Monday, there were zero incidents at that strip mall.
Honestly, we had been planning on moving the business anyway, because we expanded into firearm refinishing and manufacturing, which is something we couldn’t do at the current shop. This just kind of pushed us to say, “OK, now’s the time.”
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
The 39-year-old state senator represents the 14th District, which includes Ferguson.
The real state of emergency is that young people, minorities, have been ignored for years. That first night of tear gas was the worst night, in my estimation. I was there. And the governor was chilling. He was going all across the state like nothing was going on, until this story became international. That first Monday, Gov. Jay Nixon’s behind should have been here in Ferguson. Because he never talked to the people on the ground, his tactics were totally off, and he had to change them multiple times. If he were on the ground, he would have known that the overmilitarization of police officers was not the approach for the black community. Because let me tell you: You step to us with some guns, and I got at least 20 people willing to give up their lives. And I’m serious. They would tell me, “I didn’t think I was going to make it to 21 years old, so I might as well die right now for justice.”
People are hurting here. They are still angry, and they’re relentless. They’re not going to stop, period, because they see themselves as Michael Brown at any given day, any given time. I think there needs to be cultural exchange. What’s been evident in this whole thing is that black folks don’t understand white folks, and white folks don’t understand black folks.
