How Ferguson Woke Us Up

On Aug. 10, 2014, my first day of protest after the shooting of Michael Brown Jr., I stood outside the Ferguson Police Department and asked an officer why, on the night prior, he had brought German shepherds to a black community in grief, evoking the trauma of the midcentury civil rights movement. “Well, did anyone die?” he replied.

- Brittany Packnet

If that’s the standard, I thought, that’s precisely the problem.

“Yes. His name was Michael Brown Jr. And that’s why we’re not going home.”

Five years after Brown–an unarmed black teenager–was gunned down by officer Darren Wilson, Ferguson is a fixture. The day that a small town 15 minutes from my childhood home went from being Ferguson, Mo., to #Ferguson altered our collective outlook forever. But in August 2014, we weren’t trying to change the world as much as we were trying to secure our own humanity. We saw in Brown’s slain body the spirit of every black young person, under threat by systems that seem to feed on our downfall.

Our work was not looked upon with universal admiration. For months, we were called thugs, as though our black skin precluded us from being patriots. We were painted as lawless and disorganized, despite our strategy and discipline. And our righteous outpouring was met by tear gas and rubber bullets from local police departments.