Police Killed Michael Brown 3 Years Ago. Reflections on the Energy and Trauma of the Uprising It Sparked
Three years ago today (August 9), a White Ferguson, Missouri, police officer named Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed Black 18-year-old he’d stopped for walking in the street on his way home. Authorities let Brown’s body lay outside for some four hours, stunning and then angering his community. The following day saw both a peaceful vigil and the burning of a QuikTrip gas station among other sites. For 10 days and nights, local then state police met mostly peaceful protesters with tanks, rubber bullets, tear gas and other military-grade equipment. At the height of what some call the Ferguson Rebellion, Black activists—some taking action for the first time—demonstrated around the clock, triggering worldwide media coverage, the deployment of the National Guard and the arrival of national organizers under the rubric of Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Ashley Yates, a Florissant, Missouri, writer, artist and activist, was one of the early on-the-ground organizers who repeatedly faced militarized police from the city and state and then the National Guard. During those stressful days, she co-founded Millennial Activists United, a grassroots group that marched nightly, made meals for protesters and treated people tear-gassed by police. In December 2014 Yates was one of a group of young activists who met with then-president Barack Obama at the White House. In 2015 she served as a Black Lives Matter representative at the United Nations in Geneva. Yates has also written for or appeared on media outlets including NPR, Democracy Now, the Huffington Post, MSNBC and Colorlines. In this interview edited and condensed for space and clarity, activist and journalist Lamont Lilly talks with Yates about the day Michael Brown was killed, the Ferguson movement, and the importance of mental health care in a war zone.