feature: ferguson – day 103

Winter hit Ferguson hard. “You should have been here last week,” one woman told me. “There were a lot more people out. I guess it’s just the cold.” She gave me a pair of gloves. 

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

During the day, journalists walk the streets shooting B roll and lead-ins. The QuikTrip near where Mike Brown was killed that had served as an early center of organizing is empty and collapsing, but a reporter stands in front of it wearing a Vietnam-era gas mask. It’s cheesy and crass, but I guess we all know what her angle is. The businesses on West Florissant where the larger protests were staged and the police used tear gas on the regular are still boarded up, but they’re open. It’s back to business as usual. The only protesters are up on South Florissant across the street from the police station, where they anxiously await a verdict. Everyone with a camera is white.

Everyone I talk to is exhausted and cynical. There is no confidence whatsoever that justice will be served, though each person qualified it with some variation on “but I’m still holding out hope.” The woman who gave me the gloves tells me “this is my day: I drop off food at the food share, and then I come up here.” She recounts the usual people that drive by around 5pm; supporters and hecklers alike. It’s truly surreal how normalized this has all become over 3 months. The police presence on the streets is impossible to ignore but they don’t get out of their cars. The warzone from August has turned into something like a cold war. And it’s very cold.

Things are busier the next morning, when a larger group has gathered on South Florissant. An older white woman is arguing with a pastor. “I love black people, but I don’t support all the looting on West Florissant.” “Forget about West Florissant, do you see any looting here?” As she turns to leave, she tells the pastor she made a mistake coming here. “No,” Jimmie Matthews tells her. “You’re learning.”

I talk to Jimmie for a long time. He’s an older man with a wry smile and a quick wit. He’s the kind of guy who can talk circles around you until you can’t help but agree. He tells me the murder of Trayvon Martin inspired him to get involved in social justice. He laughs off his argument with the woman earlier.

“You have to make sure you stay focused on the issue. Most people they want to talk about something else other than what we’re talking about. They say ‘oh you’re looting, you’re doing something else.’ Like that’s what we’re out here for. We’re here to protest what’s going on. Don’t let the other conversation change the focus. We’re trying to focus on equal treatment, justice, equality, profiling, people getting shot and killed, misused, spoken to, unable to display your rights according to the Constitution. That’s what we want to talk about. When you want to talk about looting and businesses, well life is more important than businesses, your profit, all that stuff. Businesses want our money, but they don’t want our presence protesting. That’s hypocritical. You want us to live in a chaotic situation but patronize your business, and your business shouldn’t suffer any consequences for our suffering. We’re all suffering, including the businesses and anybody else. The family, Mike Brown’s family, they’re suffering. So we’re all suffering because of their suffering. And we’re all suffering because of the same type of behavior that we experience in America.”

The feeling on the street is that the decision on an indictment was made a while ago, and they’re just waiting for the most opportune time to announce it. Theories abound: Friday to skip the news cycle, or maybe to coincide with Thanksgiving. A few people mention that they think they waited until it got too cold to minimize the number of people in the streets. Anything to keep people out of the streets protesting what’s likely to be no indictment. I give a man a ride to the train station on my way out of town. “Whatever happens, this town’s going to explode,” he tells me.

In the evening, the riot gear comes out again. The protest across from the police station swells. Another pastor is arrested, her vest ripped off, and called “The Devil” by an officer from the Highway Patrol. My friend Shawn Carrié tweets out “Every person who was arrested tonight was directly pointed out by police and snatched. Some locals tell me this is typical. #Ferguson”

As I leave Ferguson, the tension and suspense is palpable. Everyone is just waiting for the decision to see what to do next. The reporters wait around for a story to break out in the wake of a verdict, not realizing that the waiting itself is a story. The mobilized National Guard, the State of Emergency, the online battle between Anonymous and the KKK, the nightly meetings training activists in non-violent protest tactics, but more than that, the community organizing and support networks that have evolved over the last 3 months. The sharing of food and resources, and the sharing of stories. Everyone in Ferguson has a story about a run-in with the cops. People are breaking the silence and refusing to live in fear anymore. If there’s a positive to everything going on, it’s that the community in Ferguson seems to be rallying together for change. But whatever the decision, as Pastor Jimmie Matthews points out, it’s going to be a long fight.

“Institutional racism has been going on for hundreds of years, so we need to protest for that length of time in order to exterminate that type of behavior. So it’s going to take years. If we’re not willing to fight a hundred years war, then we shouldn’t even be out here now. The willingness to fight until we get what we want and need for the betterment of everybody—not just us, it’s for everybody.”

For anyone looking to support the organizing being done in Ferguson, or looking to find ways to get involved remotely when the Grand Jury’s decision comes in, the best resource to check out is http://www.noindictment.org/

I also strongly suggest people check out Shawn Carrié’s recent piece for The Daily Dot. http://www.dailydot.com/politics/ferguson-protest-grand-jury-kkk-anonymous-media-militia-nixon/

images (excluding banner): Tim B Eastman