Reborn in Ferguson

‘Unless We Stand, We Will Have No Life To Risk’

By Anthony Grimes, Founder, Park Hill Parish

I was reborn on the streets of Ferguson.

I was reborn at what some locals call “ground zero,” right off of West Florissant Avenue and Canfield, somewhere along a row of boarded up buildings that have been the stage of the greatest democratic drama this country has seen since the civil rights era.

Many of my friends questioned my sanity when I told them that I was going, that I had to go in spite of the news images and livestreams that depicted Ferguson as a local Fallujah. “Why?” they asked. My best response was that every inclination of my being told me that Ferguson is a critical battleground for history that we could not afford to concede.

I paused for a photo outside my front door, on my way to the airport, partly in case I did not return home. I wanted my son and daughter to know one day why their daddy went on such a risky mission. The Instagram caption read: Someone asked me why I and others are risking our lives for this. Everyone must answer that for themselves, but I said, “Because unless we stand, we will have no life to risk.”

A young man who was no more

My visit to the Canfield apartments the day after I arrived on August 19, the neighborhood where Mike Brown was murdered, where his bloodied corpse lay facedown on the street for four and a half hours, framed all of Ferguson for me. There, on Canfield Avenue, where neighbors and friends had already erected a memorial — littered with cigarillos, teddy bears, and candles — for “Big Mike.” The main concern wasn’t about investigating the facts of August 9, nor was it yet about the mantra of “black life matters.”

Before those of us on the ground ever shaped a movement from the clay of chaos, it was about a young man who was no more. It was about a mother named Lesley McSpadden and a father named Michael Brown, Sr. making funeral arrangements instead of college visits. It was about other parents, and sons, and daughters struggling to ward off the fear of what Mike Brown meant for them and their futures.

The neighborhood was traumatized, and all that anyone knew at that point was that enough was enough. Before anyone knew how to fight, we knew that we must fight—not for the sake of abstract democratic principles or political agendas, but for the sake of our families. As we marched and danced, shouted and rapped, as we stood off against police lines and armed soldiers during the nightly protests around St. Louis County, the faces of our loved ones were on our minds, their names on our tongues.

It was in the fighting, next to unlikely comrades, that I was reborn.

For once, that old slippery, grandiose concept of democracy became something that I could see and feel. Democracy was a group of homeless youth camping outside of a gas station, passionately discussing the state of our nation more profoundly than Harvard lecture halls. It was blocking traffic flow on city streets because, as our chants reminded us, these streets were not the government’s streets, they were not the military’s streets; they were our streets.

“Show me what democracy looks like,” one would yell, “This is what democracy looks like,” all responded.

But there was a force on the ground that was even more potent than democracy; there was a spirit stirring about the people that I can best describe as the presence of God. This was not the “god” of empty religious ritual, who is confined to church buildings, who sponsors the agenda of empires. This was the God of justice, taking up the cause of tear-stained people. This was God stripped of pretense, holding hands with died-haired queers, standing next to crowds of tattooed millennials with gas masks strapped onto their backpacks.

The new Freedom Fighters

On the final night of my first trip to Ferguson, the people were tired. Discouragement began to settle in under the heavy rule of military occupation. We had been marching for days in the shape of a huge rectangle, up and down West Florissant.

The police enacted a martial law that made it illegal for anyone to stop walking during the protests in order to wear us out. But, on that final night, someone brought drums, and without any rehearsal the youth remixed the chants into a rhythm we could dance to. The energy of the protest suddenly transformed into something that was part pep rally and part dance party.

“No jus-ticccceeeee . . . No peace,” “Rock wit’ it, now, rock wit’ it.” “No jus-ticccceeeee. . . No peace,” “To the right, dance wit’ it, now.” Right in front of rows of officers, who appeared to be smirking with satisfaction at their success in draining our energy, we revived ourselves by dancing.

To be reborn is to first die. What died in me were the final traces of complacency and complicity with a social arrangement that does not adequately protect, and far too often actively suppresses, black life. What died was any sentiment that did not agree with the necessity of my life and those who looked like me for the redemption of our country and world.

Before I ever got home, I knew that I had to return. In fact, many of the youth and clergy asked me to come back. I wanted more people in my city to experience the special energy in Ferguson that has made this, second only to the Montgomery bus boycotts, the longest mass demonstration in U.S. history.

I borrowed an idea from my ancestors and elders, those righteous rebels known as the Freedom Riders, who challenged a segregated south in the 60’s by riding interstate, mixed race buses throughout the region. And so, the new Denver Freedom Ride movement was born.

As of Dec. 20 more than 30 Denver Freedom riders have taken three separate trips to Ferguson (two in November and one in December). We are leaders of various races, religions, and sectors, who see ourselves as family. The energy and lessons gained from these trips has spread throughout our city.

Larger than Mike Brown

Ferguson is much bigger than any individual transformation. It has become larger than Mike Brown himself, even as Mike has become larger than anyone could imagine.

The irony of it all, as local Pastor Traci Blackmon said in a sermon, is that Darren Wilson killed Mike because he was a big black man walking in the street. But, in killing him, he made Mike even larger in death than he was in his life.

The precious opportunity at the heart of this now worldwide movement is that the United States of America has a chance to be reborn into what it has never been, but, at its best, has aspired to be: a country whose ideas about freedom, equality, and justice are lived realities for all.

What keeps me up at night is perhaps the opposite of what keeps detractors of the movement awake. Those who have built their sense of security on a world that makes it impossible for some to breathe have no desire for their comfort to be disturbed by “agitators” who take to the streets to block traffic, occupy government property, and interrupt sacred social spaces.

They may call us extreme. That crowd may be prone to interpret the events of the last four months as an overreaction to a death that could have been avoided if the kid had behaved better. Others wonder why the focus of this movement seems to bypass the far more violent and prevalent nature of “black on black crime.” In the eyes of some, then, not only are we overreacting, but we are reacting against the wrong thing entirely.

My concern, however, is that we, pacified by the appearance of solutions that do not go far enough, would under-react by not seeing our vision to completion, by mistaking the false birth pains of a new America as the actual birth.

Even more, my desire is that we stop reacting all together and start preemptively imagining every possibility of what our country could be if it were not assumed that injustice would always live among us.

The great American experiment

My late friend and “uncle” – the local freedom movement icon Dr. Vincent Harding – often quoted a line that gave him much hope in the struggle: “As far as countries go, the great experiment of American democracy is very much still in the laboratory.” The statement is rich with possibility, if only we take agency as the workers who will see the experiment of a cross-cultural, multi-religious, reconciled democracy to pass.

Our vision is too small if our only goal is to solve police brutality. We underestimate the historical boldness of white supremacy if we think that it will stop once we catch more of it on tape through police body cameras.

In New York, not even a videotape was enough to secure justice for Eric Gardner’s family. The Denver Police Department, under the leadership of Chief Robert White, is already working to equip Denver officers with hundreds of body cams.

This is an admirable start, and a key part of the equation, but simply won’t do.

In a context where the nature of the problem is foundational to our country — indeed it lies in educational, economic, and governmental systems that are often designed to facilitate the failure of lower income people in general, and black, brown, indigenous, and formerly incarcerated people specifically — the nature of the solution must be foundational, as well. We need nothing short of a new U.S. society.

A society is only as strong as its neighborhoods and families. And the best way to morally judge any nation is by how she treats her most vulnerable citizens — the poor, elders, and youth.

A new world to build

As a native, born and raised in Park Hill, I propose that we start with remaking this neighborhood and city into a national example that other cities can follow. Given our state’s own shortcomings in regard to racial justice, we have much work to do, but, more than ever, I believe that it can be done.

What if all across the nation, we began rethinking where power and justice resided? What if justice did not primarily live in bureaucratic silos (courthouses, justice departments, and police stations) that were disconnected from communities? Rather, what if justice lived among relational networks, stewarded by youth and elders — and people of all backgrounds — inside of communities?

What if the people deciding a just outcome for the Mike Browns, Eric Gardners, and Marvin Bookers of the world were people who actually knew their names and stories? What if Darren Wilson had seen Michael Brown that day and rather than saying “Get the f$%k out the street,” he had the capacity to say, “Yo, Big Mike, I need to speak with you.”

Then, what if we did the same for education? What if we trusted local mechanics, business owners, and activists to actually be a part of developing the curriculum that prepares children for the world? What would happen if we redefined education to mean much more than continuing from one grade to the next? What if our schools began to value free thinkers over compliant ones?

In the new world that we, the builders, are making everyone has a name and a voice, and every life is essential to the well being of the community.

The other night, outside of a parking lot, a friend of mine asked me a very important question. “Anthony, after all you’ve seen and lived through these past few months, are you hopeful?”

I thought about the Denver youth I saw marching from Colfax to the capitol steps in December; I recalled the brilliant, organized, and resilient people of Ferguson; I remembered the undying hope of Uncle Vincent and without hesitation, I said, “I’ve never been more hopeful.”

Editor’s Note: In this Greater Park Hill News exclusive, pastor, writer, and community activist Anthony Grimes details the Denver Freedom Rides that he has organized to Ferguson, Missouri, the profound lessons he’s absorbed from his time there, and the resulting formation of the 99th State. Grimes, a Park Hill native, is the founder of Park Hill Parish. To join the movement and learn more, check out 99thstate.com. Follow Grimes on Twitter @antbuilder and reach him at Anthonygrimes.com.