At first, the worry was that no one would care.

November 2, 2015 7:22 PM

People sometimes say the story of Ferguson began with a body in the road. But Ferguson attracted attention not because of a body but a person, Michael Brown, and those who loved him—a community who took to the streets in anguish and grief. On a hot August day, Brown’s family, friends and neighbors surrounded the scene of what they deemed murder by cop. They refused to remain silent about Brown’s death, but at the same time were hesitant to speak out. Before Ferguson became a buzzword dropped by pundits and politicians, it was a tale told with reluctance.

posted by ChuraChura (5 comments total)

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It's always been about grief for me.

Tragically, another teenager, a young man of color, was recently shot in the face with Ferguson police in close proximity, in the north St. Louis County suburb of Normandy. Read about Amonderez Green and the #NormandyShooting. It's hard to know what happened for sure, but the circumstances are questionable for the alleged suicide. Everything is questionable.

Getting my money back today from the red-light camera ticket I paid last fall (the city of St. Louis' ordinance was recently struck down) just reminded me of how far we have to go in eliminating discriminatory and predatory practices among local government and law enforcement. My brain evaluates everything in light of a new set of criteria. But sadly, a lot of people seem fine with just moving on, continuing to make stupid racist jokes and winking and nodding and getting offended when one calls them out even minorly. A third of the way through my cohort's lives, so many people remain just irredeemably, adamantly racist and short-sighted and insular.

I mourn. I've been mourning for almost three years now for various reasons regarding North County, but last fall was a life-changer. Kendzior, as always, captures it well. A few months after it all happened last fall, after Mike Brown was killed and I started a new job and went through hell with close family members' illnesses, I started to lose more hair than usual. Nothing obvious, but I noticed the hair in the brush. Then my eyebrows went sparse. They still haven't totally grown back. My grief was already well underway before Mike Brown was killed, but everything that has happened since has been nothing short of revelatory—and even that isn't enough.

This is not about me, but at the same time, if we don't all recognize our roles in the tragedy of our times, we're lost. Again, Kendzior illustrates that so well.
posted by limeonaire at 9:23 PM on November 2, 2015 [9 favorites]

Despite the state of emergency and the presence of thousands of military and police officials, multiple buildings on West Florissant were left to burn. South Florissant—richer, whiter—was largely spared. The two parallel streets became the latest chapter in St. Louis’s long story of abandonment. Until the spring of 2015, wreckage still lined West Florissant—much as wreckage lines the streets of other areas of St. Louis whose residents were long denied resources and opportunities. This is the result not of arson but apathy. When St. Louis burns, it does not rebuild. This is a city with an urban forest in its center, where the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex once stood, because no one can agree what or how to build over it.

This is excellent; thank you for posting it. I happened to move away from St. Louis, my first real move, a few months before Michael Brown was killed, and strangely nothing has ever made me feel as connected to the city as following the protests from a distance. I don't think I can manage to articulate it well here, but it seems to me as though Black communities have been grieving for the past year, the kind of grief limeonaire describes above, and white St. Louisans are carefully trained from birth to ignore Black sorrow. I didn't feel like I could even begin to see outside myself until I left the city, and it's something I will probably be working on for the rest of my life. The only language I have to describe what racism has done to the people there, and to this country, is a spiritual one of blood and sin. Nothing else seems deep enough.
posted by thetortoise at 12:08 AM on November 3, 2015 [5 favorites]

I still have a complete archive of all the released documents from Ferguson on Dropbox I saved off. MeMail if you want me to work something out to make it available.
posted by Samizdata at 12:44 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thank you for posting. It's good to be reminded of Ferguson-the-real-place-with-real-people. It's become such a symbol. This is also a good telling of the main points of everything that's happened there since Michael Brown was murdered. I still can't quite believe how blatant it all was, the racism, the injustice. It's all just right there on the surface.

I know the people in Ferguson feel real grief for real people and for their own community. But I have to say that even as an outsider, it's also Ferguson-as-a-symbol that makes me feel grief. It's grief for my country, grief at deeply rooted and pervasive our injustices are, at how daunting any hope of real change seems sometimes.
posted by aka burlap at 11:12 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thank you for this post.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:05 PM on November 3, 2015