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A protester sprays lighter fluid on a police car as others smash its windows near the Ferguson Police Department after the November 24 grand jury decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson for murdering Micheal Brown.
\nOn August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager—just one of hundreds of instances every year in which a white police officer kills a young Black man in the United States. This time, though the cup overflowed—and for a week and a half, an ungovernable revolt raged in on the streets of Ferguson as angry residents and their supporters used a variety of tactics including arson, property destruction, looting, and gunfire to keep police at a distance and impose consequences for the murder. This set a precedent for subsequent rebellions around the country from Berkeley to Baltimore—culminating, after a pause during the first years of the Trump era, with the countrywide upheaval in response to the murder of George Floyd. To understand the events of the past two and a half months better, we can revisit the uprising in Ferguson and the practices and discourses that emerged in those days.
\n\nThe following overview sets out the context leading up to the revolt and recounts the events in a timeline including narratives from the participants. For another account of the uprising, read Looting Back; to learn about the perspectives of anarchists who were involved, read Reflections on the Ferguson Uprising, a group discussion recorded in February 2015.
\n\nAn earlier version of this text appeared in 2015 in issue #12 of Rolling Thunder, our anarchist journal of dangerous living. It is also available as a zine you can print out and distribute in your community. As we revisit the uprising that spread from Ferguson in 2014, our thoughts remain focused on those who have not yet been killed by police—from whose number another life is subtracted every day. Honor the dead and fight like hell for the living.
\n\n A protester sprays lighter fluid on a police car as others smash its windows near the Ferguson Police Department after the November 24 grand jury decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson for murdering Micheal Brown.
\nTo understand what happened in Ferguson in 2014, we have to start a little earlier.
\n\nOur story begins in the 1850s, when Missouri was a battleground between proponents and critics of slavery. Abolitionists and other well-meaning individuals repeatedly attempted to use the courts to secure freedom and rights for Black people. This was as naïve and ineffectual then1 as counting on the courts to convict police is today.
\n\nIn the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, concluding a court case initiated in Missouri, the US Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent—enslaved or free—could not be accorded the rights of citizens. It also overturned the “Missouri Compromise” of 1820, intended to maintain a balance between states that practiced slavery and states that prohibited it. The Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment barred any law that would deprive a slaveholder of his property, such as his slaves. Furthermore, if Black people were
\n\n\n\n\nentitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race the right to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation… it would give them full liberty of speech in public and in private, to hold public meetings upon public affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.
\n
This is a concise history lesson on the institutions of US democracy. Property, the sanctity of which is asserted today by those who wring their hands about the looting in Ferguson, is revealed as a justification for robbing an entire people of their lives. Citizenship, which has divided democracy into included and excluded since ancient Athens, shows its true colors: rather than a means of transcending racism, citizenship served to introduce racial disparities, as it serves to perpetuate them today. The court system put the stamp of legitimacy on all this, validating racial divisions so poor white people would have an interest in siding with the wealthy against poor people of color. Nothing was more terrifying to the honorable and learned men of the Supreme Court than the possibility that Black people might speak, travel, and bear arms freely, mingling with the rest of society. The Dred Scott decision should make an anarchist out of any person of good conscience: for either one is bound to abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the highest law in the land, or one is bound to abide by one’s own conscience regardless of what any court rules.
\n\nCountless Black and indigenous rebels came to the second conclusion, along with at least a few white people. One of these was John Brown, who led a raid into Missouri at the end of 1858 to liberate a handful of slaves, killing one slaveholder and seizing the belongings of another. Thus began the countdown to his raid on Harper’s Ferry, which triggered the Civil War. It was illegal direct action in support of Black resistance that forced the issue of slavery, not legal recourse or peaceful protest.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/14.jpg\")
Graffiti on the gas pump at the burnt QT in Ferguson, celebrating eight decades of uprisings.
\nFast forward through the reorganization of capitalism from plantation slavery to industrial wage labor: capitalists have to pay for the upkeep of slaves through thick and thin, while workers can be hired and fired as needed. Fast forward through the restabilization of white supremacy by the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups that were autonomous of the state and yet complementary to it (just like the pioneers who formed the vanguard of colonization, whose frontier spirit is remembered so fondly by “libertarian” capitalists today). Fast forward through the civil rights movement, much of which was channeled into institutional struggles for inclusion that ultimately stabilized white supremacy once more—offering a pressure valve for an upwardly mobile minority while the majority of Black people languish in poverty and, increasingly, in prison.
\n\nAt the turn of the 20th century, St. Louis, Missouri was a thriving industrial center, drawing massive numbers of Black workers. When globalization drew factory production out of North America, reducing cities like Detroit and St. Louis to Rust Belt ghost towns, Black workers were the first to suffer, left to starve in decaying urban cores.
\n\nDespite formal desegregation, explicitly racialized power remained as economically spacialized power. Around the country, urban blight and aggressive development slowly broke up longstanding poor and Black communities, dispersing people to new suburban ghettos. Ferguson is a satellite town just outside St. Louis; between 1990 and 2010, its Black population more than doubled, while more than half of the white population fled to other suburbs.
\n\nIn 2008, the economic crisis hit, once again impacting Black people first and worst. Ferguson was in the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis in Missouri; for years, banks had preyed on families, extending them sub-prime mortgages. Consequently, as unemployment spiked, many were left impoverished and homeless, or crowded into housing complexes.
\n\nAll this gives the lie to rhetoric about people “destroying their own neighborhoods.” Many in Ferguson own nothing at all; they have only recently been forced to move there, driven by market forces that would soon drive them on again. Pundits bewailed the economic setbacks that the rioting might inflict on an already suffering town, but this confuses the profits of developers with the needs of actual residents. If Ferguson is developed and experiences an economic upswing, its poorest residents will not benefit from this—they’ll be forced out by rising costs.
\n\nIn fact, for the poor and unemployed, rioting might be the only hope of improving their prospects: in March 2015, the QuikTrip Corporation announced that it would donate the property of the QT that was burned in August 2014 to host a job training center, to be funded by $1.2 million in donations from St. Louis businesses. It took weeks of rioting and arson to secure this single concession from the profiting class.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/10.jpg\")
Graffiti in Ferguson during the uprising supporting Kevin Johnson, on death row since 2007 for the killing of a police officer involved in the death of Kevin’s 12-year-old brother, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long. Kevin is from Meacham Park, a small working-middle class Black neighborhood in affluent, white, suburban Kirkwood. Meacham Park was also home of cop killer Charles Lee “Cookie” Thorton, and in 2004 the scene of youth chasing police from the neighborhood with rocks and bottles.
\nDespite widespread hope that Obama’s election heralded the coming of a post-racial America, racial disparities only worsened while he was in office. In retrospect, this expectation sounds so naïve that few will even admit to it—but how else can we explain the euphoria that greeted his victory in 2008, prompting even anarchists to suspend their usual counter-inaugural protests?
\n\nDuring democratic presidencies in the US, there seems to be a period after the mid-term elections that is prone to social upheaval. The Seattle WTO demonstrations of 1999 occurred in the third year of Bill Clinton’s second term, interrupting the neoliberal triumphalism that characterized the 1990s. The Occupy movement of 2011 occurred during the third year of Obama’s first term, bringing anti-capitalism into mainstream discourse for the first time in generations. It is not surprising, then, that the second wave of rebellion under America’s first Black president, occurring at the analogous point in his second term, focused on race. At this point in the electoral cycle, no one had any illusions that electoral politics could address racial inequalities, and there was no more incentive for even Obama’s staunchest supporters to keep quiet.
\n\nToday, in 2020, it seems clear that the general public is becoming progressively disillusioned—with neoliberalism, with capitalism, with liberal notions of racial equality and “progress.” But just as Obama’s initial campaign re-mystified the disenchanted millions, we will likely see future political parties accomplish the same thing, as Syriza temporarily did in Greece in 2014 (with disastrous results). There’s a sucker born every minute, ready to fall for age-old tricks. As long as representational politics commands the hopes and imaginations of so many US citizens, electoral rhythms will modulate the pace of social movements—triggering them every so often, but suppressing them the rest of the time. We should be ready to seize the opportunities that arise when politicians fail to deliver on their promises, but in the long run we have to transform that disillusionment into a feeling of possibility outside the electoral system.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/6.jpg\")
The events in Ferguson stripped the veneer of legitimacy from the forms of structural white supremacy imposed by police violence.
\nIn early 2011, in response to austerity measures, protesters occupied the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a localized struggle, but it gained traction on the popular imagination out of all proportion to its size. This clearly indicated that something big was coming, and some anarchists even brainstormed about how to prepare for it—but all the same, the nationwide wave of Occupy a few months later caught everyone flat-footed.
\n\nIn August 2014, after white police officer Darren Wilson killed unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a week and a half of pitched protests shook the town. Once again, these were localized, but they loomed big in the popular imagination. Police kill people every day in the US, but until that August it hadn’t gained traction on the public consciousness. What was new about the Ferguson protests was not just that people refused to cede the streets to the police for days on end,2 nor that they openly defied the “community leadership” that usually pacifies such revolts. It was also that all around the country, people were finally paying attention and expressing approval. Like the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, this portended things to come. Ferguson is a microcosm of the US; what happened there could happen anywhere.
\n\nThe Occupy movement subsided without achieving its object of transforming society. We can identify three built-in limits that contributed to this. First, it offered almost no analysis of racialized power, despite the central role of race in dividing labor struggles and poor people’s resistance in the US. Second, perhaps not coincidentally, its discourse was largely legalistic and reformist—it was premised on the assumption that the laws and institutions of the state are fundamentally beneficial, or at least legitimate. Finally, it began as a political rather than social movement—hence the initial decision to occupy Wall Street instead of acting on a terrain closer to most people’s everyday lives, as if capitalism were not a ubiquitous relation but something emanating from the stock market.
\n\nAs a result of these three factors, the majority of the participants in Occupy were activists, newly precarious exiles from the middle class, and members of the underclass, in roughly that order; the working poor were notably absent. The simplistic sloganeering of Occupy obscured the lines of conflict that run through our society from top to bottom: “police are part of the 99%” is technically true, economically speaking, but so are most rapists and white supremacists. All of this meant that when the police came to evict the encampments and kill the movement, Occupy had neither the numbers, nor the fierceness, nor the analysis it needed to defend itself.
\n\nWhen a movement reaches its limits and subsides, it illustrates the obstacles future movements will have to surpass. Accordingly, the model of struggle originating in Ferguson transcended the failures of Occupy. Where Occupy whitewashed the issue of race, the Ferguson protests placed it front and center. Where Occupy confined itself to the unfavorable terrain of “political” physical sites and reformist demands, the people who rose up in Ferguson were fighting on their own streets for their own very lives. Whereas, with the temporary exception of Occupy Oakland, Occupy lacked the will to stand down the police, people in Ferguson braved tear gas and bullets to do just that. Where Occupy sought to conceal all the different forms of hierarchy and strife that cut through this society beneath the unifying banner of “the 99%,” the conflicts in Ferguson pushed them to the fore.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/21.jpg\")
The army of the rich…
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/22.jpg\")
…the vanguard of white supremacy.
\nIn today’s hyperlinked world, revolt can proceed from the bottom to the top and from the periphery to the center, as Bakunin once prescribed. How many people had previously heard of Ferguson or of Sidi Bouzid, the town in Tunisia where Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and sparked the uprisings of the Arab Spring?
\n\nThis poses further questions about the relationship between the hotspots and the hinterlands. Should aspiring insurgents focus on intensifying high-profile struggles in radical meccas like the San Francisco Bay Area, in hopes that they will catalyze revolt elsewhere? Or should we regard those as the effects, rather than the causes, of ruptures in little-known towns that are not already quarantined as radical enclaves? Although both Occupy and the wave of revolt emanating from Ferguson arguably reached their peaks in the Bay Area, neither began there, and many of the participants had moved there from elsewhere. Even if we measure the progress and intensity of revolt by what happens in the hotspots, it may be that to push things further, we have to focus on the hinterlands.
\n\nWhat convergence and concentration were to the anti-globalization movement at the turn of the century, simultaneity and diffusion are today. Just as capitalism and white supremacy are everywhere, any expression of resistance can instantly replicate and spread.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/15.jpg\")
Thousands of police and National Guardsmen failing to preserve order, November 24.
\nIn preparing this timeline, we drew from the zine No We Won’t Go Home, the Missouri Prison Newsletter, the Antistate STL website, and many other sources.
\n\nAUGUST 9 (SATURDAY) - Michael Brown is shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri by police officer Darren Wilson. Brown was walking home from a convenience store to his grandmother’s house when Wilson stopped him for jaywalking and a scuffle ensued. Witnesses report that the officer shot Brown as he fled with his hands up in surrender. A crowd quickly grows; shots are fired into the air and a dumpster is set on fire. Police respond with an armored riot vehicle, a helicopter, dogs, and assault rifles. As anger grows, the police are forced to withdraw.
\n\n\n\n\nAs the night drags on, the politicians arrive. OBS, NOI, NBPP, UAPO,3 alphabet soup. They’re trying, with little success, to grab the attention of a relatively small crowd. Instead of joining us as we face the police station, they face us, trying to tell everyone how we need to act, what needs to happen next, who will be involved in a futile and meaningless negotiation, as if those of us on either side of the line that is being drawn have anything to say to those on the other.
\n
AUGUST 10 (SUNDAY) - In the evening, crowds gather for a prayer vigil at the site of the shooting, in the Canfield apartments. The crowd marches to W. Florissant where police have massed. The protesters confront the police line, yelling insults and throwing things. Three or four police cruisers attempt to drive through the crowd. People surround them and smash out their windows.
\n\nAfter police exit the scene, people begin to celebrate. Some march down to the Quick Trip; others attempt to march to the police station, but meet a wall of police. Protesters smash the windows of the QuikTrip and others flood in to loot the store. People openly drive cars onto W. Florissant and fill them with looted goods. Police respond with tear gas, but mostly remain clear of the crowd. Later, someone reportedly shoots at the police helicopter circling above.
\n\nThe crowd remains in the street late into the night. By the time things die down, the looting has spread to twelve businesses, with multiple dumpsters on fire. A fire completely engulfs the QT and reduces it to rubble. Two officers have been injured by rocks and bottles.
\n\n\n\n\nIt’s about 8:10 when I show up. Exiting the highway, I see six cop cars parked at the gas station. Across the street, there are more than 10 police SUVs parked in the cemetery. We comment on how they’re just being prepared for what might happen, yet nothing could prepare us for the amount of police ahead. We drive another mile down Lucas and Hunt, and as we head north, traffic gets incredibly thick. Then the police cars start speeding past us. It’s impossible for them to get through, so they speed dangerously past on the opposite side of the street. We can’t make it to the apartment complex by car because there are so many people, police, police cars, dogs, kids.
\n\nWe park and make the hike in—past over a hundred cop cars.
\n
\n\n\nThe police on the southern end of the street, where the rowdier crowd is, call for more backup from the police blocking off the north side. Instead of navigating the side streets, the scared and hasty cops drive their cars through a mob of hundreds or more people who are growing bolder all the time. The first two or three cars slowly make their way through the crowd, but by the fourth people are physically stopping the cars, beating on them and eventually all you can hear is one loud thud after another as people stomp the police cars. The door of one cop car is pulled open, but the car speeds off before the cops inside are extracted. The police are just running a gauntlet of angry people. Lots of cheering. Almost everyone has stopped being afraid.
\n\nYou might expect the crowd of attackers to be young men in their early 20s or teens, but all genders and all ages are getting their kicks in. I see people as young as 10 or 12 years old attacking the cars and people in their 50s too.
\n\nOnce the police have made it to the south side, it seems clear that the block is ours. The police are maintaining lines at Ferguson Avenue (to the south) and just north of the bridge for the 270 interchange (to the north). The mile or so between is totally unpoliced and filled with thousands of people.
\n\nThis commercial stretch, full of parasitical businesses, has numerous small roads leading east into the densely populated neighborhoods just a block away. The police, too afraid and outnumbered to enter a residential area seething with outrage, are unable to block those streets. As they hear about what is going on, people are pouring into the commercial district on foot, in cars, on motorcycles. For once, the geography of this suburb is on our side.
\n
\n\n\nIn the QT, it looks like people three or four deep just lining the windows. The gas prices are ripped down off the big sign out front and “SNITCHES” is painted on it. “RIP MIKE MIKE,” “187 County Police,” and other messages adorn the brick of the QT. Elsewhere along the street: “AVENGE MIKE MIKE” “FUCK DA POLICE,” “KILL COPS,” “THE ONLY GOOD COP IS A DEAD COP,” “SNITCHES GET STITCHES,” “AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES OUR MASTERS BLIND,” and “MIKE BROWN, THIS FOR YOU.”
\n
\n\n\nA pallet of water bottles. I grab a case and hand them out; it’s August after all. “There’s more where that came from.” Everyone is eager for a first drink of looted beer and packs of smokes are passed around. Might as well, even though it tastes like shit. Come to think of it, I don’t actually want any of this crap. But that’s not really the point, is it?
\n\nSome have started to work on the cash register as lottery tickets rain down from the sky and celebratory shots are fired into the air. Are they taking aim at God or just sending a warning to the cops?
\n\nEither way, it’s a little too close for comfort. Fear is still with me, but it’s not controlling me.
\n\nNext, it’s Sam’s Meat Market, the beauty shops, Red’s BBQ. Someone has a go at the Liberty tax prep office while others are trying to get into the storage units across the street. Dumpsters are being set on fire as cars speed wildly up and down the strip. Young people with masked faces leaning out the windows showing off their looted bottles, flipping off the police helicopter.
\n\nA ten-year-old girl carrying a large sack full of food says, “We’re gonna eat good at school tomorrow.”
\n
\n\n\n“Hey, can you get me some ‘rillos?” A group of young women peer around the corner at the gas station being emptied of its contents.
\n\n“Nah, but you can, they’re free tonight.”
\n\n“We don’t got a mask though. You got another one?”
\n\n“Here, it’s easy, just take the t-shirt and put your head through the neck hole like you’re gonna put it on. Then turn it into a hood and tie the sleeves behind your head.”
\n\nAfter two and a half hours, the looting has spread within fifty yards of the southern police line and backup has arrived in sufficient quantities to begin clearing the strip. The stationary phalanx has started to move and everyone is running back into the neighborhood. We hear a rumor that the Foot Locker on the other side of the cops is being looted, but then we see it: plumes of black smoke and an orange glow on the horizon.
\n\nLike moths we are drawn towards the flames. “The smoke so thick down there you can’t even breathe.” Armored personnel carriers block access to the fire, shining powerfully bright lights in our direction. Back the other way. Maybe we can still get some shoes to replace the ones falling apart on our feet.
\n\nA man runs out of the woods, coming from where we’re headed. “It’s over, Foot Locker’s done. The cops showed up. They lockin’ people up.” He warns a few more behind us and then, loaded down with shoeboxes, dips into his house.
\n\nA young kid on a bike rolls up as we walk back to the car.
\n\n“Hey, y’all black bloc?”
\n\n“Uh… Yeah, sort of.”
\n\n“Me too, I’m one of those anar…”
\n\n“Anarchists?”
\n\n“Yeah, that’s me.”
\n\n“Black bloc’s not a group you belong to, it’s just a way to stay safe in the streets. When everybody wears the same color and covers their face it makes it harder for the cops to arrest you.”
\n\n“Cool. Why y’all out here?”
\n\n“Cause we’re pissed about what happened. Isn’t that why everyone’s here?”
\n\n“Yeah… but I heard I could get some free shit too.”
\n\nAs we head back home, cop cars are still racing in from distant jurisdictions. I roll the window down and let the night air blow through my hair knowing that this moment will never be erased.
\n
AUGUST 11 (MONDAY) - Crowds attempt to gather at the burned QuikTrip. As soon as people begin to block the street, they are attacked by riot police with armored personnel carriers, tear gas, and rubber bullets. The cops set up static lines on either end of W. Florissant while neighborhood residents and others yell and throw stones. Neighborhood residents come to the aid of those from outside the area, giving them directions and leading them through the surrounding neighborhoods. Mild street fighting continues late into the night as protestors discuss the need for continued determination, more supplies, and new tactics such as strikes and walkouts.
\n\nLooting threatens to spread as smash and grabs occur in south St. Louis and the Galleria Mall in West County. Police deploy preemptively in dense commercial districts downtown and in University City.
\n\nAUGUST 12 (TUESDAY) - Again, people attempt to stage a protest at the QT and are attacked by militarized riot police. Some of the crowd marches to a rally at a local church where Al Sharpton is speaking. Outside, the mood is tense. Hundreds of people are milling around the yard of the church, the sidewalk, and the street, holding signs, yelling, and talking, while motorists drive up and down the street honking their horns in support. Racial conflicts surface within the crowd. Late that night, five people are shot, one by police.
\n\n\n\n\nThe police have started to blame organized white anarchists for instigating the mayhem on Sunday night. Others on Twitter and Facebook are following their lead, unwittingly playing into the new police disinformation strategy of our era: the anarchist as outside agitator.
\n\nAs we drive in, a large crowd is headed away from ground zero, the burned out gas station newly named “Mike Brown Plaza.” We park and decide to go where the crowd is—a rally at a local Black church. Al Sharpton presiding, Nation of Islam running security. The mood is tense given the previous nights of rioting, police attacks, and arrests, but hundreds of people are here, lining the sidewalks and the median. The street is full of cars. The incessant honking is overwhelming.
\n\nI’m facing the street, trying to work up the courage to strike up a conversation. Then from behind, a commotion. I see my friend being chased away by a stream of people. I try to intercede. “What’s going on? What are you doing?” Immediately I’m surrounded. Large men are standing close all around me.
\n\n“Get out of here. This is a Black space.”
\n\n“If you an anarchist, you need to leave.”
\n\n“We don’t want that anarchist shit here.”
\n\nThis is the most important moment of my entire life. They’re gonna have to kill me to keep me away.
\n\n“No. I’m staying.”
\n\nA slender black arm reaches across my chest and pulls me out of the crowd. “No, we want him here,” she yells. “Him being here proves this ain’t about black versus white.”
\n\nAnother man approaches, wants to get his picture taken with me. “Come here, get in the picture,” he yells to his friend. We hold hands like in a poster for racial unity. Another arm around my back.
\n\n“What was that about?” No one seems to have the answer.
\n\nI’m shaken. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay with these people who just rescued me, who value my presence, who in this moment I feel closer to than my own brother. But I can’t help feeling like an outsider, like I no longer belong. I feel small.
\n
AUGUST 13 (WEDNESDAY) - A familiar scene plays out on West Florissant. Crowds gather and are attacked by police. This time some protestors come prepared. A small number of Molotov cocktails are thrown at the police lines along with rocks and returned tear gas canisters. Things are escalating.
\n\nAUGUST 14 (THURSDAY) - As President Obama speaks on the events in Ferguson, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon puts the State Highway Patrol in charge of the protests, under the leadership of Ron Johnson, a Black officer. Johnson promises to be less heavy-handed than the County Police. Protesters fill West Florissant early in the day with cars and barbecues.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/2.jpg\")
Where brute force fails, try cooptation: Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson attempts to ingratiate himself to protesters in Ferguson—as white police officers look on.
\n\n\n\nThe QT has been a gathering point since it was burned, but today is the first day it feels like the epicenter of a movement. It has transformed from a gas station to a burned building to a thriving park where people exchange ideas, make friends, and prepare for the coming fight once the sun goes down. The mood is festive; cars blast music, some loaded with people shouting out of the windows or riding on the hoods.
\n\nThree separate times, the police attempt to enter the crowd and are chased out. Even the commanding officers are surrounded, shouted down, and chased to their cars and out of the demonstration. One can smell the fear from the officers and see the sweat on their foreheads. Despite the efforts of wannabe politicians, the presence on the streets lasts long into the night as we all celebrate winning the streets from the police.
\n
\n\n\nThe police have pulled back. They’re still there just around the corner, hiding behind the thin veneer of social peace, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice, but they’re not attacking us tonight. They’ve retreated, strategically, but it was the fierceness of our fight and the threat of more to come that made them pull out. I’ve outrun and evaded the police before, but I’ve never seen them fall back, I’ve never been part of something powerful enough to bind their hands. Not until now.
\n\nIt feels like everyone else is experiencing this small victory with me for the first time as well. The half-mile strip of W. Florissant is a victory parade ground. All that’s missing are the streamers and confetti. There are a thousand people on the street tonight and a thousand more passing through in their cars.
\n\nEveryone must be feeling good. I’m back at the church and a large Black man in fatigues motions for me to come talk to him.
\n\n“I saw you here the other night and I meant to pull you aside.”
\n\n“Yeah, that was crazy. What was that all about? If there’s a problem I hope we can talk it out.”
\n\n“I don’t even know. That’s not what I’m about. I’m on some anti-government shit. I was one of them chasin’ your friend away. I didn’t want to see no disrespect for the Brown family. But I guess I just got caught up in it.”
\n\n“Yeah me too.”
\n\n“I seen you out here and I just want to let you know where I’m at. I got gas masks in my car. I’m ready for whatever. I been in touch with my militia brothers. They say they can have boots on the ground tomorrow.”
\n\n“Damn, alright.” Holy fuck, this shit is way over my head. Is this a trap? Is this guy for real?
\n\n“Be safe out here.”
\n\n“You too. I’ll see you around.”
\n\nLater that night we see the guy who led the charge against my friend.
\n\n“That wasn’t the time or the place to say something. When I realized who y’all were, I thought about it and I realized we’re pretty much on the same page. Whatever differences we have, I’m sure we can work it out. Everything was just really tense the other night… I’ve been dreaming about this my whole life and I want it to last forever. But we gotta be organized and y’all are organized. Y’all are more ready than anybody.”
\n\nIn some ways we are more ready for this than most people: riot police, chemical weapons, days and nights of marching, becoming anonymous when we need to, fundraising, jail support, coming prepared. In other ways, we’re in the rear watching as people of all ages and genders run ahead of us. The collective strategy people have enacted directly on the streets is more intelligent and brave than anything we could come up with in one of our circular, painful meetings.
\n
AUGUST 15 (FRIDAY) - The Ferguson Police Department releases surveillance footage of the “robbery” Mike Brown allegedly participated in at Ferguson Market. During the day, the scene on the street is festive. By evening, the mood has shifted as a confrontation unfolds between protesters and police guarding the store. The police use tear gas and flash-bang grenades in an effort to disperse the crowd. Instead of running away, protestors fight back; some shoot into the air. A group of about 100 confronts police lines, throwing bottles and rocks and holding ground against overwhelming numbers of police. Ferguson Market is the epicenter of renewed looting.
\n\nAUGUST 16 (SATURDAY) - In response to the previous night’s looting, Governor Jay Nixon declares a curfew from the hours of midnight to five in the morning. Almost immediately, there is a public call by activists to resist the curfew. The QT quickly fills up with people, eating, giving out water, and talking about what to do next. Although the crowd largely seems intent on resisting the curfew, a few “leaders” from the New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam successfully scare most people out of staying in the streets past midnight. As the clock hits midnight, the NOI, NBPP and even the activists that put out the call to resist the curfew are nowhere in sight. The only people left, while relatively small in number, are determined and defiant.
\n\nArmed with pistols and Molotov cocktails, some of the crowd has assembled under the awning of a boarded up barbecue restaurant and are preparing to attack the police when they advance. Around 45 minutes after midnight, the police begin to slowly clear the streets. When protesters refuse to disperse, the cops fire tear gas and smoke grenades into the crowd. People pick up the gas canisters and throw them back at the advancing police line. Multiple protesters collapse in the street and are carried to relative safety by others. Some people rip up chunks of asphalt from potholes while others grab rocks from storefront landscaping, but they are no match for the heavily armored police vehicles. The crowd is pushed back.
\n\nOut of nowhere, a lone police car with its sirens on screams down W. Florissant from the opposite direction of the advancing line of riot cops. In the ensuing panic, protestors run down side streets as gunfire rings out from people posted up underneath the awning. Chaos ensues as the police car loops back and more protesters flee, running straight into the crossfire of the people under the awning and the advancing police line. One protester is hit twice by gunfire, either from police or by friendly fire. He is loaded into a car and rushed to the hospital.
\n\n\n\n\nThe governor has declared a curfew. No one will be allowed on the streets of Ferguson after midnight.
\n\nOf course we’re going. “Fuck their curfew.”
\n\nA local activist group has called for a march to defy the curfew. The rumor is that they want to march out of the boundary and then back in all together in a big crowd. Safety in numbers. Or maybe a trick to lead us all away from the coming conflict. Leaders betray.
\n\nIt’s been drizzling for hours. If anyone had any doubts, this confirms it: God is a counter-revolutionary.
\n\nBlack army boots and a suit with silver starred epaulets. The national chairman of the New Black Panther Party is going around the crowd trying to convince everyone to go home. “I will not lead my people into a meat grinder. The art of war tells us that we should choose the time and place we fight, not our enemy. Brothers, we don’t have enough guns out here today to defeat the enemy. We don’t have enough gas masks or medical supplies. There are women and children here!”
\n\nPaternalistic, patriarchal, militaristic… completely out of touch with the mood on the street. And yet some people are buying the fear-monger’s wares. Slowly, because of the rain or an exaggerated threat, the crowd thins. The clock strikes twelve. “Hands up, don’t shoot!” “We still here. What you gonna do? Nothin’!” Somehow there are still two hundred of us left in the street. The crowd seems small, too small, compared to the hundreds here just hours before. The cops are keeping their distance, so what do we do? Close the gap.
\n\nWe march towards the police line. Defiance that just won’t quit. Scuffles. Rocks and bottles thrown and then comes the tear gas. Round after round filling the street, choking the air. I run after a spinning canister trying to catch it so I can throw it back. Someone else gets there first.
\n\n“Ow, that shit burns!”
\n\n“You gotta get some gloves.”
\n\nI show him my leather work gloves.
\n\n“Two dollars from Home Depot.”
\n\nHe nods his head in agreement, appreciation.
\n\nI see my friend trying to help up a stranger who has fallen. My respirator in place I run through the clouds of gas to help him.
\n\n“Can you stand up? Can you walk? Here, lean on me.” I put his arm around my shoulder and carry his weight.
\n\n“Watch my back!” I scream to a nearby stranger as we slowly walk away from the approaching police line.
\n\n“I got you, keep going.”
\n\nWe’re breaking up chunks of asphalt and throwing them at tanks. Others are watching us, getting the idea, joining in. Then for no apparent reason a lone police cruiser, sirens blazing, comes screaming in from behind. Panic everywhere, people running, loud bangs, smoke and tears filling my eyes. Where are my friends? What’s happening?
\n\nStill frame: a body lying on the ground.
\n\nIf I was in a movie right now, everything would go quiet for a second or two, the frames clicking by one at a time blurry and out of focus, and then it would all speed up again, the camera framing a shot of my closest friend, fallen, hurt, but unable to tell me what’s wrong, what happened. The only sound he can muster: a haunting groan. A crowd forming around us, me yelling for everyone to get back, to give us space, my voice cracking with emotion. A short stocky man with a high-pitched voice, his whole body shaking, gyrating, almost as if he were dancing, is screaming, “He’s been shot! He’s been shot!” over and over. And then seemingly out of nowhere a car pulls up, my friend is carried in and he’s rushed to the hospital, guided there by riot angels I’ll never know.
\n\nI stare at the spot where he had just been. Rain mingles with small puddles of blood in the dimpled surface of the sidewalk. A police tank stops at the intersection. “Fuck you, motherfuckers!” as I throw the stone I’ve been holding. I want to hurt them, to draw the blood that was drawn from my friend. If I can’t do that, I’ll have to settle for letting their hell fall down on my body. It’s nothing I haven’t felt before: the sting of rubber bullets ripping into my skin, metal cuffs cutting off the blood flowing to my hands, the relentless fire of pepper spray burning my face, the choking cloud of tear gas condensing in my eyes, the dull thud of a four foot wooden pole on my head.
\n\nGive it your best shot. I can take it.
\n\nI even kind of like it.
\n\nPerhaps this is the moment in which I lose my fear.
\n
\n\n\nThey won’t let us all into the hospital. Gun violence, protocol, protective custody. A friend is lying on the sidewalk, unable to go further. Others are walking around aimlessly, in a daze. I’m talking on a cell phone to a drunken friend, trying to explain what’s happened.
\n\nI see him walk up. A suit and a tie, a badge on his hip.
\n\n“So were any of you there? Did you see what happened?”
\n\nWithout thinking, just wanting him to leave, “Nobody’s going to talk to you, just go away.”
\n\n“Ok, well, I hope your buddy dies up there.”
\n\nShock. Did he really just say that?
\n\n“Get the fuck out of here! Go shoot yourself in the fucking head!”
\n
AUGUST 17 (SUNDAY) - Violence breaks out hours before the curfew, in what the media call the worst night of rioting. The past few days have only increased the audacity of the crowds. This time, protestors attempt to march on the police command center located in a nearby strip mall. Some throw Molotov cocktails at the police; gunshots are reported. The police respond with a rain of tear gas and rubber bullets, eventually pushing the crowds back down the street. The looting becomes more dispersed and widespread, with incidents reported in multiple locations miles away from the QT.
\n\n\n\n\nAfter a few hours, it becomes obvious. We have to go back out there. Can’t just sit around the house all day rotting inside, letting our sadness turn into paralyzing fear. A friend brings some candles and flowers from our garden. We head for the spot where he was shot. There’s still some police tape tied to the fence. We rip it off and I push it into the mud with my shoe. We light the candles and scatter the flowers. I sit down wondering if anyone walking by will know what happened here, in this exact place, not even twenty-four hours ago.
\n\nI want to write something. A paint marker and some toilet paper. “The only way to heal this pain is to change the world.”
\n\nI need to walk around, to feel the crowd surround me, to be covered once again in the warm blanket of an anger that refuses to die.
\n\nI see the top cops walking around, so sure of their safety, pressing the flesh. What do they think they’re doing? “Hey, I just wanted you to know that not everyone here likes you. You know, in case you forgot.” I follow them around for a while, looking right at the center of their eyes. And then I’m screaming.
\n\n“Hey Johnson, let me get your kidney. I want your kidney.”
\n\n“Calm down son.”
\n\n“Don’t tell me to calm down. My buddy’s in the hospital right now with all kinds of tubes and shit comin’ out of his face. He lost his kidney and his spleen. There’s a bullet right up in his heart. And that’s on you motherfucker. Fuck your curfew. If you hadn’t come down here with your tanks and tear gas none of that shit would’ve happened. I want your fuckin’ kidney! If he dies, you’re gonna pay.”
\n\n“Listen, I’m here to protect your right to protest peacefully.”
\n\n“What do you think I’m doin? Just because I’m getting loud? What’re you gonna do? You gonna beat me up? You gonna shoot me? Go ahead. Get the fuck outta here. Are you gonna wait till somebody else gets shot, till somebody else dies before you wake the fuck up.”
\n\nHe’s trying to ignore me, talking to the media, trying to appear calm and reasonable in contrast to my out-of-control raw anger.
\n\n“I’m gonna get that kidney one way or another.”
\n\nThey don’t even touch me. They just walk away and get in their cars, sweating, stinking of fear.
\n
AUGUST 18 (MONDAY) - Governor Nixon declares a State of Emergency and calls in the National Guard to protect the police command center. The police announce that they will not allow crowds to assemble and that all protesters will be forced to continue moving along the street or be arrested. The curfew, however, is lifted from the city of Ferguson. Police block off W. Florissant to cars and set up checkpoints at both ends of the strip. Many of the side roads through the neighborhoods that lead down to the strip are blocked as well. This new police tactic is a blow to protesters who had previously used the side roads to flood onto W. Florissant and escape when things got too hot.
\n\nIn the afternoon, pop star Nelly arrives on the scene, telling people they have options. Someone in the crowd shouts back “You have options, you’re rich!”
\n\nAs darkness approaches, the crowd swells and people begin to defiantly march in the streets. As a standoff with the police line develops, rocks and bottles fly through the air. Peace marshals link arms in response, forming a line between the march and the police and attempting to push people back off the streets. Despite the efforts of the “peace police,” some continue to confront the police throughout the night.
\n\n\n\n\nWhat does that even mean? State of Emergency. National Guard. Will the army be the new police? Will they have live rounds? What are the rules of engagement for this new situation?
\n\nWe’re marching again. Up and down the strip, cops blocking off either end. “Stay on the sidewalk.” We’re in the street. “Stay in the right hand lane.” We’ve taken up both. “Move back towards the sidewalk.” We take over the whole street. Every passing car is simply a part of the demo. “If you scared go to church.” “No justice, No sleep!” There’s a thin police line ahead but we go right through it and they don’t lift a finger. That’s how afraid they are of another confrontation, another spark. It’s clear they’ve been ordered to stand down.
\n\nWe’re back at the other end. This time they’ve made a line we won’t be marching through. They don’t want a replay of the night before. But wait, they’ve brought help. Fifty preachers and liberal do-gooders, the “peace keepers” link arms and walk toward us with their backs to the police. Non-violent resistance now means doing the job of the police for them, weaponlessly.
\n
\n\n\nBack at Canfield, there’s a crowd around two or three police tanks. The cops are all wearing fatigues, helmets and body armor. They’ve got pepper ball guns, beanbag and wooden dowel shotguns, AR 15’s, tear gas launchers, sniper rifles, tazers.
\n\nA woman has ripped up a “Do Not Enter” sign and is holding it up in the middle of the street. She’s all alone. Every once in a while, she drops the sign and goes back into the crowd to check on her baby.
\n\nThe police, through their loudspeaker, are telling us not to do everything we’re doing. Even when we comply, they threaten us.
\n\n“If you are ripping out a street sign you may be subject to arrest or other measures.
\n\n“If you are standing in the QuikTrip lot you may be subject to arrest or other measures.
\n\n“If you are carrying a street sign that you have illegally removed you may be subject to arrest or other measures.
\n\n“If you are standing still you may be subject to arrest or other measures…”
\n\nThe lone woman comes back into the street with her large metal sign. One by one people drag out traffic cones to symbolically block the way. A few dumpster lids are propped up between them, creating a flimsy defense against rubber bullets. The street slowly fills with people.
\n\nTen, fifteen, twenty tear gas canisters fly through the sky. They’ve also brought flash-bang grenades and smoke bombs. This time, everyone is throwing them back. Rocks are flying through the air. It’s still not enough, but at least people are learning to work together, to throw in waves.
\n\nAn armored car approaches and we run down Canfield back to the safety of a neighborhood the police have yet to invade. Shots ring out. “If you gonna shoot, shoot straight!” The tear gas is thick tonight and we take a minute to wash our faces in the spigot of a house just down the block.
\n\nSome kids next to us light a Molotov and either out of excitement or nerves drop it in the middle of the street. “You’ve got to run up before you throw that.” Everyone is laughing, teasing the youth for his lack of experience in something we’re all still novices at.
\n\n“Make this one count!” Someone runs up to the window of a nearby building, breaks the glass and tosses in a Molotov. The small crowd cheers to the sight of reflected flames. Someone else runs up with a bottle of gas and dumps more fuel on the fire.
\n\nSome trash is added to the small fire burning in the street in hopes that it will disperse the low-hanging clouds of gas.
\n\nAnother armored car speeds in and we run away. At least for tonight, we’ve had enough. Back home, we’re giddy with the knowledge that this rebellion has been going strong for ten days and nights. Despite the overwhelming show of military force, despite the recuperators and their longer leashes, despite the good cops and their bigger cages, the rebels on the streets refuse to back down.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/3.jpg\")
Demonstrators blockading the streets of Ferguson on August 18.
\nAUGUST 19 (TUESDAY) - Shortly after noon, police kill Kajieme Powell a couple miles away from Ferguson in North St. Louis. An angry crowd gathers.
\n\nMeanwhile, for the first time in over a week, police and their political counterparts succeed in imposing order on W. Florissant. Despite an intimidating police presence, people continue to march up and down the street. Members of the Nation of Islam, church leaders, and liberal activists urge, shout, and push people onto the sidewalks and away from police lines. Some small conflicts erupt, but nothing gets out of control.
\n\nSEPTEMBER 10 - Organizers call for a shut down of I-70 in solidarity with Michael Brown and to put pressure on the prosecutor to indict Darren Wilson. Police respond with an overwhelming show of force, deploying roughly 300 officers. Protesters gather in the street and boldly march towards the police line. The police succeed in stopping protesters from reaching the highway, but are unable to calm the crowd, some of whom throw bricks and bottles at them. Police make a few arrests but fail to catch some of the culprits, who escape into the surrounding neighborhood.
\n\nSEPTEMBER 23 - Mike Brown’s memorial is burned in the early morning. Residents blame police or white supremacists. Throughout the day, supporters rebuild the memorial, while tension builds as word spreads. When night falls, the streets fill once again, this time without the presence of “peacekeepers.” Police are met with bottles and rocks as they push people off the streets and into the neighborhood. After a brief standoff on Canfield Drive, which the police are still too scared to enter during protests, shots ring out. The next morning, two high-ranking officers complain of having to dive behind cruisers to avoid being hit.
\n\nSEPTEMBER 28 - A large crowd of protesters throws bottles and rocks at officers outside of the Ferguson Police Department.
\n\nOCTOBER 2 - Police evict a protest encampment that had been occupying an empty lot in protest of Mike Brown’s killing.
\n\nOCTOBER 4 - Protesters briefly disrupt the St. Louis symphony, singing “Which side are you on?”
\n\nOCTOBER 8 - Just before dusk, a white off-duty police officer moonlighting as a security guard in a wealthy St. Louis neighborhood shoots and kills 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers. Within a few hours, hundreds have gathered at the intersection. Police spout off the usual story that the kid had a gun and shot first. But many witnesses and friends claim the “gun” was actually a sandwich Vonderrit had just purchased. The crowd’s anger grows and people begin to surround the nervous police officers, shouting at them. The police, realizing they are outnumbered and that the situation is beginning to be unsafe, try to leave in their cruisers. People surround the cars, smash- ing out taillights and the window of a detective’s car as he drives off.
\n\nAfter the police withdraw, protesters take the street and block traffic on the major boulevard, Grand. A few more minor scuffles occur. Police are attacked whenever they approach the march; instead of calling in backup, they withdraw. The city is clearly afraid of having a “Ferguson” on their hands.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/8.jpg\")
Demonstrators burn American flags after a vigil remembering Vonderrit Myers, murdered by police.
\nOCTOBER 9 - Once again, a large crowd gathers at the intersection where Vonderrit Myers was killed. The crowd marches down to South Grand and proceeds to shut down the on-ramp and exits for highway I-44 for close to an hour. The police keep a safe distance, hoping to deescalate the situation. Eventually, the crowd starts to march down Flora Place, after one woman points out that it is the wealthy residents of that street that pay for the private security who killed Myers.
\n\nAs the crowd approaches Flora Place, people bang on cars, scream at the residents, and blare air horns. Protesters steal American flags off of front porches and a few houses have bricks thrown through their windows. The crowd gathers in an intersection and burns the collected flags, then marches back to the main street. When protesters reach the main intersection, three cops boldly run into the crowd. The officers are immediately surrounded and shoved out. Within minutes, roughly 100 officers flood the area to rescue the three, spraying the crowd with mace. Brief scuffles follow, but the crowd is mostly dispersed.
\n\n\n\n\nSomeone pushes her head in the window of a cop car. “See this face?” she screams at the driver. “Every time you put your fucking finger on that trigger know this face is gonna be there. Every god damn time, this is what we’re gonna do.”
\n\nAfterwards, the media repeats the usual line of “a peaceful protest turned violent.” But from the moment the group left the vigil, it was rowdy and militant. There was no “turning” at any point for this group, nor a small group whose actions stood out from the broader group.
\n
OCTOBER 12-14 - Activists called for this to be a weekend of disruption in solidarity with Mike Brown and to push for an indictment against Darren Wilson. During the day, protesters disrupt various sites and events, including political campaign rallies, the Rams game, and Wal-Marts. At night, people gather outside the Ferguson Police Department. The weekend, while “peaceful,” achieves its goal of interrupting the normal flow of life in St. Louis and returning nationwide media attention to the case. Over the following month, suspense builds as a Grand Jury prepares to announce whether to indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/1.jpg\")
Protest in St. Louis, October 12.
\nNOVEMBER 17 - As the Grand Jury continues to deliberate, Governor Jay Nixon declares a State of Emergency. National Guard troops move in to guard 43 locations around Ferguson including electrical substations, police stations, shopping malls, and government facilities. An eerie tension descends on the city as residents await the verdict and National Guardsmen roam the streets in armored cars.
\n\nAll around the country, the authorities have been scrambling to prepare for the impending storm. Some are trying to make agreements with protest leaders, in hopes of isolating troublemakers. Others emphasize that the protests will be dramatic and disruptive, no longer trying to preserve the illusion of social peace. Corporate media widely reports an announcement from the FBI that “extremists” will likely attack police officers and other targets.
\n\nNOVEMBER 20 - 28-year-old Akai Gurley is “accidentally” shot and killed by the police in Brooklyn in the stairwell of the apartment where he lived.
\n\nNOVEMBER 22 - Police murder Tamir Rice, a 12-year- old boy, in Cleveland, OH, firing the fatal shots within two seconds of arriving on the scene and refusing to provide first aid to the child. This makes national news—not because it is more egregious than other police murders, but because of the attention already focused on the issue.
\n\nNOVEMBER 23 - Protesters gather where Vonderrit Myers was killed and march through south St. Louis, disrupting traffic throughout the city. A website lists scores of gathering points around the US for protests responding to the forthcoming Grand Jury announcement.
\n\nNOVEMBER 24 - Hundreds gather outside the Ferguson Police Station, awaiting the announcement. People huddle around cars and stereos listening to live news broadcasts. When it is announced that Darren Wilson will not be indicted, the crowd rushes the police station, shoving down the crash barriers surrounding it. Mike Brown’s stepfather is recorded screaming, “Burn this bitch down!” Later, the police threaten to charge him with “Inciting a Riot” if he doesn’t apologize for this. Within the hour, the crowd has started to attack police and break the windows of buildings surrounding the police station. Protesters surround the riot cops and armored trucks, throwing rocks and bottles at them as they hide behind their shields. A crowd rushes an abandoned police cruiser, damaging it and attempting to flip it over. Police fire tear gas, then fall back as gunshots are fired from the crowd. With the police retreating, the crowd starts to loot and set fires. Two police cruisers are completely burned.
\n\nOn West Florissant, hundreds of people take over the street. People are openly looting as police watch helplessly from a few hundred yards away. By the end of the night, two dozen structural fires have been set and many cars at a dealership have been completely torched. Gunshots ring out all night through the smoke and flames. Interstate 44 is shut down by hundreds of protesters.
\n\nOn South Grand, people riot through the bar district, smashing out windows and looting various stores. A few protesters try to stop the crowds from looting businesses, mostly without success. Eventually, police overpower the crowd with armored trucks and tear gas and disperse protesters into the surrounding neighborhood.
\n\nElsewhere in Ferguson, there are apparent reprisals, as the church Michael Brown’s father attends is burned and the body of another young Black man, 20-year-old DeAndre Joshua, is found near the location of Michael Brown’s death. He has been shot in the head and then burned.
\n\nMeanwhile, solidarity actions explode around the country. Tens of thousands of protesters converge in New York, shutting down all three bridges into Manhattan; the Police Commissioner is splattered with fake blood at a demonstration in Times Square. Protesters shut down highways 10 and 110 in Los Angeles and Interstate 5 in Seattle. In Oakland, over 2500 meet downtown and block highway 580 for hours. Then the crowd marches back downtown to the police station, where clashes erupt on Broadway. Participants erect burning barricades and loot several corporate stores, including a Starbucks and Smart & Final grocery store. Dozens are arrested.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/9.jpg\")
The New York City Police Commissioner, spattered with fake blood in Times Square by a protester on November 24.
\n\n\n\nWe are gathered in downtown Ferguson. The moment comes for the prosecutor to read the verdict. Someone has rigged up a PA system to broadcast the speech. He’s cutting in and out. I can barely hear it.
\n\nI see people shaking their heads. The verdict is clear: no indictment. Word is spreading through the crowd and folks start to yell at the police line guarding the station. Some throw things at them. I hear later that the first thing thrown was a bullhorn, which has all sorts of meaning if you think about it. We yelled at you for too long, this thing has proved useless! The time for talk is over! At this point, there are only ten or so riot police around. Some of them start to back away frantically, almost tripping over each other.
\n\nA woman comes through the crowd sobbing. I try to comfort her and she tells me, “We’re so far from ever getting any justice! Why?” We hug and another woman comes up to hold her. I let go just as CNN comes over to record this moment. I get in front of the camera and yell at them for being vultures, for not letting this woman have this moment alone. They eventually leave. Antagonism towards the media is pretty strong. Earlier in the night some media were robbed and others threatened with violence.
\n\nSuddenly, gunshots ring out and people surge in that direction. Windows start breaking all around. Some peace police are trying really hard to guard the businesses, but failing.
\n\nMeanwhile, a large part of the crowd is marching to a formation of riot police down the street to confront them. People start to bust up blocks of paving stones, concrete, and anything they can find to throw. The sound of rocks hitting riot shields is ubiquitous.
\n\nA cop car is parked about fifteen feet in front of the line of cops, where most of the crowd is. Folks start to trash it. Windows are smashed and anything loose in the car is grabbed. I heard later that someone popped the trunk and got an AR-15 out of it. No one is stopping anyone. Two young Black girls are yelling expletives at the police. One of them, embarrassed, says, “Oh, I’m sorry! I don’t usually cuss. I go to church every Sunday!” They laugh, pick up rocks, and throw them at the cop car. There are numerous cameras around and they aren’t wearing masks. I try to warn them, but they just shrug.
\n\nThe police yell over the intercom, “PLEASE STOP THROWING ROCKS! YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST OR OTHER MEASURES! STOP IT NOW!” People start to rock the car to try to flip it. “PLEASE STOP TRYING TO FLIP THE POLICE CAR, OR YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST! STOP NOW!”
\n\nThen they fire tear gas and beanbag rounds. As we run from the gas, I see an older Black man asking younger kids if they’re leaving.
\n\n“You all leaving already? Or are you just taking a break and gonna go back for more? Yeah, take a break, but don’t leave! Keep your strength. Go back for more.” Sage advice.
\n\nPeople wait until the tear gas dissipates and come back to throw more rocks at the line. The cop car is totaled. There’s nothing left to do except to try and flip the motherfucker again. In response, the police shoot more tear gas, this time a whole lot.
\n\nThe crowd is dissipating into the neighborhood side streets and the police are advancing towards the police station and firing gas into the side streets. Some folks are looting a BoostMobile store and a few other shops.
\n\nMy group decides to circle back to the police line where our cars are. We walk through the neighbor- hood, and someone near us pops off a few shots in the direction of the police, pretty nonchalant. The police fire more gas. We loop back to S. Florissant, where the cop car is now on fire.
\n\nIt’s beautiful. A rare sight. Later, I hear that another cop car behind it got set on fire too.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/11.jpg\")
Demonstrators attempting to flip a police car in Ferguson on the night of the grand jury announcement, November 24.
\nNOVEMBER 25 - Governor Nixon has deployed over 2000 National Guardsmen in Missouri. Protesters rally again outside the Ferguson Police Department. The crowd has dwindled significantly since the previous night, but people are still angry and confrontational. The police and National Guard have increased their presence in front of the police department and are largely able to maintain control, rushing into the crowd and attacking people every time a bottle or rock is thrown.
\n\nAfter a few hours of standing off with the police, the crowd begins to march quickly down the street, leaving the police behind. A few blocks later, protesters round a corner and approach the Ferguson City Hall, which is unguarded with a single empty cop car parked in front. People break the cruiser’s windows, attempting to flip it over and set it on fire while others break the windows of City Hall. By the time the police arrive with their armored vehicles and cars, the crowd has moved back towards the main street. A few cruisers have their windows smashed out as the armored vehicles shoot tear gas into the air.
\n\nSolidarity actions continue nationwide, in what will add up to more than 170 cities. Thousands march again through Manhattan—taking over Times Square and Wall Street, shutting down an entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and both sides of the FDR and West Side Highways, and blocking traffic for hours. Protesters block highways and clash with police in Atlanta, Durham, Portland, and many other cities. In Oakland, a small crowd takes over highway 880, then a larger crowd blocks highway 580, ending in nearly 100 arrests. The remaining crowd creates massive burning barricades across Telegraph Avenue to hold back police, looting a series of corporate stores in North Oakland and smashing gentrifying businesses. Another mass arrest occurs near Emeryville at the end of the night.
\n\n\n\n\nWe’re leaving downtown Durham, North Carolina, and I’m looking with caution into the darkness of smaller neighborhoods as our police tail increases. But upon seeing the signs of the Durham Freeway, NC-147, the crowd starts shouting, “1-4-7” over and over. We steer effortlessly onto the on-ramp, no police in front of us. A large piece of construction fencing appears magically to our right, and I help several other masked folks pick it up in stride as we march down the hill. The fencing is too small for a barricade, but maybe it will help to slow traffic so no one gets hit by an aggressive driver.
\n\nThe fencing gets suddenly heavier; a middle-aged white woman has grabbed onto it, yelling that we need to “be peaceful.” I want to tell her that the fence is going to help keep people safer, but instead I just ignore her and keep walking toward the highway. We can argue later—this moment feels crucial and she is a distraction. Unfortunately, the woman refuses to let go and is futilely trying to win a tug-of-war over this little bit of fence. She’s pulled along, until another person pulls her hands off the fence. They both trip and fall. Others help her up and make sure she’s not hurt, but she’s already screaming about being knocked down. I think of all those nonviolence advocates that have been tugged along as they pull backwards, finally to be abandoned to the side of the highway as a struggle explodes beyond their comfort level. Right now, I think that all of us, even those who have dreamt of our cities on fire for years, have been totally surpassed by what we’ve seen and heard from Ferguson. Honestly, I’m just trying to catch up.
\n
\n\n\nFrom the sidewalk of a park a block away, I watch three thousand people fill the plaza above Underground Atlanta. Left-wing organizers are leading emotional chants from a small stage. Speakers blasting Public Enemy, a few musical acts, and a series of vehement speeches lend a communitarian, cultural mask to the result of the previous day’s private meeting between organizers and law enforcement: a four-hour rally with no plans to march.
\n\nTwo hours later, I’m departing from the park with sixty others, tinny music playing on a sound cart. I’m shouting through a t-shirt tied around my face. Nearly half of the crowd joins as we march past, splitting the static rally in two. Tensions are emerging that will intensify as the night goes on. On one side, lit road flares, knocked over trashcans, and homemade masks; on the other, cleanup crews and indignation.
\n\nThe cover of last week’s independent weekly showed people blocking the highway near here; we head for it again. The red light of road flares reflects off the concrete walls, matching the tail- lights of oncoming traffic on the Interstate 75/85 connector. Within moments, six lanes of traffic are at a complete halt in front of nearly 250 of us. I hear shouts from the other side of the interstate. Glancing back, I realize that half the crowd has stopped in the on-ramp: a protester is face down, one shoe off, a cop’s knee in his back. Rocks start to fly, but we’re disorganized and it takes too long to make our way to the nearest off-ramp. As we crest the hill, I see a cruiser drive away with an arrestee behind a smashed windshield.
\n\nThere are about 80 of us still going. We dip right, my shoulder a little too close to one of the many motorcycle cops at the bottom of the hill. Nearly all of us flood the CSX train yard, filling jackets and packs with stones. A block later, young people are shouting the names of their sets and cliques as we chuck rocks at police officers, cruisers, storefronts, and parked cars. I see one cop fall to the ground, hit in the face by a flying stone, taking a second officer with him.
\n\nA bridge ahead: at once the gateway back to downtown and the easiest place to get kettled. We’re in before the realization hits the whole crowd—a line of riot police in front of us, a line of cruisers at the back. I’m certain we’re getting arrested as the banner holders at the front press forward. Yet, at what must be a command from some higher authority, the riot police scramble to part before us.
\n\nTwo hours after the march began, we pass the plaza where we started. There are still nearly 300 people at the rally; this time, all of them join the march. As the composition of the crowd changes, the shape of the march shifts: the new participants drag behind, creating a physical gulf between the front and the back. In the front, my mask enables me to blend with a mix protestors, young college students, gang members, graffiti writers, parents, white east side hipsters, Black and brown streetwear partiers, middle-aged radicals, and other angry people. The back seems to be more reactionary: upwardly mobile students, private school alumni, left-wing activists. A masked demonstrator leaps atop a parked taxicab, smashing in its front and back windshields: cheers from the front, boos from the back.
\n\nYoung people are rushing into stores ahead, screaming that if they don’t close for the night, they’ll be attacked and looted. Several oblige as construction equipment, trashcans, newspaper boxes, and a decorative display of Christmas trees are overturned and dragged into Peachtree Street. I’m keeping count in case the news crews don’t: a window each out of Meehan’s Irish Pub, Wells Fargo, and a vacant storefront.
\n\nClad in a Morehouse jacket—an all-Black private school on the city’s west side—a protestor rushes from the back of the crowd to start swinging on a vandal. His blows are interrupted by another Black man, screaming “If you fuck with my bloods, you’re gonna get killed.” I’m shocked, but not as much as he is; fifteen people surround him and another demonstrator knocks him out flat.
\n\nTwo blocks up, a hundred riot police block the road. We’re being pushed to the sidewalk as more than twenty demonstrators are snatched at random. As we’re forced to retreat south down Peachtree, I see the remains of the banner from the front of the march, now burning.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/24.jpg\")
Police in Atlanta on November 25…
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/25.jpg\")
…and the protesters opposing them.
\n\n\n\nOakland, California. I was grabbing a quick dinner when I started getting texts that the 880 highway had been blocked. After the insanity of the previous evening’s demonstrations, I was reluctant to get back out on the streets. But the frantic texts started multiplying. I met up with some friends and we drove around the edges of downtown, trying to find the march by following the spotlights of the police helicopters.
\n\nThe crowd is roughly 1000 people. After successfully blocking the 880, they’re facing off with a line of California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers who are preventing them from taking another onramp. A moment of confusion; people are yelling out suggestions for what to do next. Someone tries to do a mic check, hearkening back to Occupy. They’re completely ignored.
\n\nThe crowd pushes ahead into uptown and onto Telegraph Avenue, leaving the onramp behind. A group of young people—mostly Black and brown, mostly hooded and masked—has taken the initiative, and the crowd is following. Cars honk in support; spectators cheer from the sidewalks. A dumpster is pushed into Telegraph and set alight, a preview of things to come.
\n\nSuddenly, I understand where we’re headed. Up ahead, past 34th, the 580 overpass crosses Telegraph. There’s no onramp here, just a chain- link fence—and beyond it, a vine-covered hillside ascending to the highway. People knock down the fence and hundreds rush up the embankment in the surreal glare of the police helicopter spotlight.
\n\nAt the same time, a burning dumpster appears behind the march, and another on a side street. Riot police have been gathering farther back in both those directions, but they’re hesitant to advance on the furious and ecstatic crowd. Masked kids are smashing the windows of the Walgreens at the base of the embankment.
\n\nThe police continue to hold back, so we follow the hundreds that have climbed up onto 580. Multiple highways converge in Oakland near this point, creating a tangle of overpasses and elevated connectors. The section of highway we stand on is completely blocked by the crowd. About thirty feet ahead of us, across a chasm, lies another parallel elevated highway, swarming with riot police and police cars.
\n\nAn unmasked woman in a button-down shirt is screaming at the police: “How does it feel to know that everyone hates you?” The blue and red lights of the police sirens illuminate her enraged expression. “This time it’s not about the economy, it’s not about the war, it’s about YOU!” A young guy adds, “How does it feel to be losing, you motherfuckers?” We can see the bulky silhouettes of the riot police puffing out their chests and pointing at us, but all they can do is shine their flashlights across the dark chasm in our direction.
\n\nMuch of the crowd on the highway begins march- ing east, so we scramble back down the embankment to Telegraph, where around 500 people are still holding the intersection to prevent the growing lines of riot police from cutting off those up on the 580. An old-school Bay Area anarchist approaches me with concern. “Keep an eye on that truck,” she says, pointing to a big expensive-looking pickup speeding off into the darkness down a side street. “They just tried to run down those kids building barricades.”
\n\nThe march has now split. Roughly half the crowd is continuing east on the elevated highway. Within the hour, many of them will be mass-arrested. Our half of the crowd starts to push north up Telegraph as the riot police slowly advance behind us. As we march under the overpass, a thunderous boom echoes through the crowd, followed by a moment of frightened silence and then cheering. Someone in the crowd has come prepared with some intense firecrackers.
\n\nThe California Highway Patrol is out in full force, with officers decked head to toe in tactical gear guarding their outpost just beyond the overpass. A tense silence falls on the marching crowd for the duration of the block. When the last of us arrive at the next major intersection at MacArthur, the riot police begin to move in behind us. A startling explosion punctuates the night and cheers rise from the crowd. From the top of the small mound at the corner of the intersection, I see a puff of smoke rise from the police lines and the CHP officers in that section of their line stumbling backwards. Another explosion next to advancing CHP cruisers on MacArthur inspires more cheering and chanting.
\n\nA squad car in the intersection that has been partly surrounded by the crowd begins accelerating in an attempt to escape. Someone completely masked up runs over and starts taking out its windows with a hammer. Police surge into the crowd and fistfights erupt. The masked person is tackled; batons swing to keep the crowd back. Dozens of riot police charge up Telegraph towards us as we once again continue north.
\n\nI’ve seen many demonstrations and riots in this city over the years. But I’ve never seen something like this traverse multiple neighborhoods in one evening, employing so many different tactics and forms in quick succession. It’s as if we’ve crossed some kind of line. We’re back again, finally, in that magical and euphoric uncertainty where everything suddenly seems possible.
\n\nA massive wall of fire rises across Telegraph at the back of the march. A strange mix of neighbors and participants hold their phones up to snap photos of the eight-foot-tall flames stretching across the wide street, while others put the final touches on the burning barricade: a last dumpster here, another recycling bin there. Some people are star- ing into the flames; I hear others saying prayers. A second massive burning barricade is already shining half a block ahead. This one has been artfully constructed out of materials from the nearby MacArthur BART transit village development. We hurry to join back up with the main section of the crowd.
\n\nStanding in the intersection of Telegraph and 40th, the gateway to the increasingly posh and gentrified Temescal district, I no longer see the lines of riot police behind us. Only fire.
\n\nThe crews that came for looting see their opening. Sounds of shattering glass and cheers draw my attention first to the Subway up on the left, then to the BMW and Audi dealership across the street on the right. In both cases, lockboxes and cash registers are carried off into the night. I look through the broken glass into the car dealership. Young people are jumping on all the cars on the showroom floor to the sound of the high-pitched burglar alarm. The crowd is still hundreds deep. Next to go is the corporate paint store. Expropriated full cans of paint fly through the windows of a pretentious new coffee shop, exploding white paint inside.
\n\nSuddenly that pickup truck is on us, revving its engine as it tears through the crowd, barely missing several people. It flips a U-turn down the street and accelerates towards us for a second pass. People around me are screaming as we scramble to get out of its path. Someone with great aim smashes out one of the truck’s windows with a rock as it passes. It screeches to a halt, the doors fly open, and two big men jump out, pointing in the direction of the rock thrower. Another woman sitting in the back seat does not get out. An argument breaks out between the men and the closest protesters. As an angry woman turns to walk away from the men, one of them punches her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground. The crowd instantly swarms the two men. They lie unconscious beside their truck as we continue north.
\n\nA T-Mobile store is thoroughly gutted; the looting continues to escalate. Things are starting to blur together; it becomes difficult to count the number of stores looted, highways blocked, and confrontations with police and vigilantes. Scenes like these continue in the Bay Area on a near-nightly basis for the next two weeks. Later, as we walk back on side streets towards downtown, where we left the car hours earlier, I see the helicopters circling far off to the west. For us, the night is over; we’ll be back tomorrow. For others, the night is just getting started.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/13.jpg\")
Missouri National Guardsmen patrol the ruins of Ferguson on November 26, 2014.
\nAs momentum plateaued in Ferguson and other parts of the country, it picked up in the Bay Area. Oakland, which hosted the high point of the Occupy Movement in 2011, became the epicenter of two weeks of nightly clashes.
\n\nNOVEMBER 26 - A destructive march plays cat and mouse with Oakland police in downtown and West Oakland for hours before being dispersed by police. Multiple downtown businesses are damaged.
\n\nNOVEMBER 28 - Black Friday protests interrupt shopping all around the country. In Missouri, crowds of protesters march through the St. Louis, West County, and Frontenac shopping malls, shutting down all three.
\n\nIn West Oakland, coordinated civil disobedience at the Bay Area Rapid Transit station shuts down all service in and out of San Francisco for over two hours. In San Francisco, nearly 1000 protesters besiege the shopping district of Union Square, clash- ing with police and damaging fancy stores. They march into the Mission district, looting stores and smashing banks. The night ends in a mass arrest of the dwindling crowd.
\n\nDECEMBER 3 - A New York grand jury refuses to indict the police officers who choked Eric Garner to death in July. Solidarity demonstrations adopt his last words, “I can’t breathe.” Crowds block Market Street in San Francisco. In Oakland, a march weaves through downtown; riot police prevent it from reaching OPD headquarters. Instead, participants march through the wealthy Piedmont neighborhood.
\n\nDECEMBER 4 - Another march weaves through Downtown Oakland, eventually heading east to- wards the Fruitvale district, where there is a showdown with Oakland police and a mass arrest. In San Francisco, a die-in blocks Market Street for a second night. In Minneapolis, demonstrators march three miles on Interstate 35W.
\n\nDECEMBER 5 - Hundreds march through downtown Oakland, holding a noise demonstration in from of the jail to support arrestees. The crowd moves on to take over the 880 freeway before being pushed off by police. Next, the march surrounds the West Oakland BART station and destroys the gates protecting the riot police inside. The station is shut down for an hour before the march moves back downtown for more property destruction, clashes with police, and arrests. In Durham, another march hundreds strong blocks the highway and clashes with police.
\n\nDECEMBER 6 - A march originating near the University of California at Berkeley campus clashes with Berkeley police near their headquarters and loots multiple stores, including a Trader Joe’s and Radio Shack. The crowds grow as students join in. In response, police departments from across the region pour into central Berkeley, firing dozens of rounds of tear gas and physically attacking demonstrators and bystanders, inflicting serious injuries.
\n\nDECEMBER 7 - On Sunday night, another march starts in Berkeley and moves into North Oakland to clash with police, destroy multiple California Highway Patrol (CHP) cruisers, and take over Highway 24. CHP officers use tear gas and rubber bullets to push back the crowd. People respond with rocks and fireworks, then march back into downtown Berkeley, destroying bank façades and ATMs. They attack cell phone and electronics stores, culminating with the looting of Whole Foods. The night ends with hundreds of people gathering around bonfires in the middle of Telegraph, popping bottles of expropriated Prosecco. Police are afraid to engage the crowd, but some participants are snatched in targeted arrests.
\n\nDECEMBER 8 - The third march from Berkeley is by far the largest. Over 2000 people take over Interstate 80, stopping all traffic for two hours, while another segment of the demonstration blocks the train tracks parallel to the freeway. The crowd attempts to march on the Bay Bridge but is pushed back into Emeryville, where over 250 people are arrested.
\n\nDECEMBER 9 - The fourth march from Berkeley sets out once again down Telegraph Avenue into Oakland and shuts down another section of Highway 24 and the MacArthur BART station. Increasingly violent clashes ensue with CHP officers in full riot gear, who fire rubber bullets and beanbag rounds, causing numerous injuries and ultimately pushing the crowd off the freeway. The march then loops through downtown Oakland and makes its way into Emeryville, where a Pak-N-Save grocery store is looted along with a CVS pharmacy and 7-Eleven.
\n\nDECEMBER 10 - Hundreds of Berkeley High School students stage a walkout and rally at city hall. A smaller fifth march from Berkeley makes its way into Oakland, where a T-Mobile store is looted and other corporate stores are attacked. People point out and attack undercover CHP officers, who pull guns on the crowd as they make an arrest.
\n\nDECEMBER 13 - Rallies called by civil rights organizations in New York, Boston, Oakland, Washington, DC, and elsewhere around the country draw tens of thousands—but they also signify the end of the unruly phase of the movement as the old guard of Black leaders regain control. Like the People’s Climate March in New York two and a half months prior, most of the demonstrations are scripted affairs in which the police need not make arrests, although hundreds manage to take the Brooklyn Bridge after the official protest ends. In Washington, DC, a group of young activists from Ferguson and St. Louis interrupts the scheduled programming to declare that the movement has been hijacked from its confrontational grassroots origins.
\n\nDECEMBER 20 - A gunman shoots and kills two NYPD cops in their patrol car in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. Media and city officials blame the Black Lives Matter protests; NYC Mayor de Blasio calls for a moratorium on demonstrations. NYPD officers respond with a sort of strike in which they only make “necessary” arrests, and publicly catcall the mayor for not being supportive enough. This slowdown dramatizes how most arrests are needless, intended only to accrue profits for the government, but it is also a sign that the police are beginning to conceive of their interests as distinct from the power structure they ostensibly serve—a development that sent police into the arms of the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece. A flood of racist invective on the internet also hints at a possible resurgence of extra-governmental white supremacist activity.
\n\nDECEMBER 23 - Police in Berkeley, Missouri shoot and kill 18-year-old Antonio Martin outside of a Mobil gas station. Police claim the teen pointed a gun at an officer but many witnesses claim otherwise. Within the hour, a crowd of roughly 200 people has gathered around the Mobil, which by now is completely full of police, medical examiners, and forensic teams. After a few hours of being yelled at, the police attempt to snatch a man from the crowd. People instantly rush the officers and a scuffle ensues. Eventually, the police throw flash-bang grenades to clear the area. People respond by throwing bottles and fireworks, then run into the street and attack police cruisers. Some rush across the street and begin to loot the adjacent QuikTrip.
\n\nPeople calmly loot the QT for roughly an hour before a fire is set inside it, causing the police to rush in with assault rifles and extinguish the fire.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/18.jpg\")
The site in Berkeley, Missouri where Antonio Martin was murdered by a police officer.
\nDECEMBER 24 - Protesters in Berkeley, Missouri gather again outside the Mobil gas station to protest the killing of Antonio Martin. This time people march towards the highway and block I-70 for roughly 45 minutes. The crowd retreats to the Mobil after police push people off the highway. People smash out a beauty supply store and begin to loot. Tonight the police are far more prepared and are able to arrest many of the alleged looters.
\n\nThe next evening, a few dozen protesters in Oakland vandalize businesses and the city’s main Christmas tree; but as in Greece in December 2008, the onset of the Christmas holidays marks the end of the trajectory. Over the following month, St. Louis police murder two more young men of color—23-year-old LeDarius Williams, who had already been shot once by police as a teenager, and 19-year-old Isaac Holmes.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/19.jpg\")
In the eyes of police, those who oppose their right to murder with impunity are simply targets.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/20.jpg\")
As police increasingly rely on militarized violence to control the population, the tactics that demonstrators refined in Ferguson have become essential to protesters around the country.
\n\n\n\nDespite everything that has happened, to this day, the police in the St. Louis area have stuck to their pattern of killing a person every month. If we want a world without police murders, we need a world without police. The struggle continues.
\n
The following reflections were composed in early 2015.
\n\nA compelling narrative with a protagonist that everyone can relate to is supposed to be the centerpiece of quality fiction writing, not to mention successful journalism. Yet no two people tell a story the same way. How does a story change depending on who tells it? What are its unseen roots?
\n\nIt’s revealing how different people chart the lineage of the surge of anti-police activity in 2014. Some look back to the acquittal of the man who murdered Trayvon Martin, some to the murder of Oscar Grant, some to the Rodney King riots. Whose names do we remember? In Ferguson, graffiti at the QT proclaimed “LA ’92/Watts ‘65/Spain ‘36.” Which lineage is that?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/17.jpg\")
Demonstrators riding through Ferguson after the grand jury announcement, November 24.
\nLet’s go back to the beginning/the middle/a long time back/a little ways back. In the US, for decades now, we’ve been experiencing the effects of the redirecting portion of a cycle of recuperation. Many of the people who fought in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s have been thoroughly incorporated into the system, so that they can be used to legitimize the state,4 while most of the people who refused to compromise have been incarcerated or killed. Diversity trainings for every police department, as well as Black prison wardens and presidents, have become a palliative program for maintaining social inequities. As part of this process, the non-profit complex has been solidifying its role as the gentle hand of the state, taking up the language of combative cultures past and reworking it into the rhetoric of social justice activism—once called civil rights activism—so that it can interface more legibly with power.5
\n\nAn important piece of the non-profit puzzle has been the institutionalization and specialization of anti-oppression politics, creating a new discourse useful for those interested in a specific kind of control: reform.6 The rhetoric of identity politics and allyship flattens a complicated terrain of overlapping and oppositional experiences. It centralizes personal experience in a way that fosters both an overinflated sense of self-importance and an obsessive self-criticism that can be paralyzing.7 Also, by framing the project of taking leadership from those who are most affected as an objective moral duty, it obscures the essential question of how people choose who to ally with. We all exist in a multiplicity of realities that are in constant flux,8 but the language of identity politics forces a static identification, falsely unifying people in categories according to a few characteristics, despite all other difference.
\n\nIn response, some comrades theorized a few years ago that the refusal of fixed identity would be central to the coming insurrections—that rejecting our individual subjectivities was essential to rewriting our culturally held mythologies of power. As a reaction against managerial and pacifying identity politics, this made sense—but in practice, the abolition of identity was never more than a gross oversimplification.9 A peculiar self-centering becomes implicit in this apparent self-abolition. When we remove all language about our experiences of difference, pretending that all we have to do to negate our socialization is to proclaim it so, which unspoken, singular narrative easily replaces all the others? This rhetoric also implied that in moments of open conflict, it would be easy to find each other across our socially imposed roles through a shared combative culture—because when we’re rioting, we’re all one. In a strange parallel with the identity politics it rejected, this rhetoric centered individualized personal experience once more, disregarding the challenges to achieving more than a fleeting connection across socially imposed gulfs.
\n\nFor too long, anarchists have been left in a void between the rejection of identity politics and the rejection of identity, grasping for an approach to understanding narrative and experience while resisting the totalizing force of definition. Meanwhile, most of the major political struggles of the last several years have centralized questions about racialized power, specifically anti-Black (and sometimes anti-brown) violence—foregrounding (in)visibility and (a socially imposed) lack of subjectivity10 from a very different angle. Protest cultures that remain stuck in controlled or single-issue approaches have become obsolete11; today’s struggles force multiple axes of power to the surface. We need new ways of understanding and engaging with them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/16.jpg\")
Demonstrators in Ferguson destroyed the material infrastructure via which police impose the violence of white supremacy.
\nWhen deep-rooted social conflicts are pushed to the surface, people rush to conceal them again. Hide away the problems. Keep trouble from spreading. Sew the ruptures in the social fabric back together. Whatever their motivations, proponents of social peace use both physical and rhetorical means to achieve this; sometimes, they’re more dangerous than the cops.
\n\nLiberal leaders and authoritarian groups from far and wide fought hard for control of the narrative in Ferguson. The recuperative power of the Black left was in full effect, expressed via an array of tactics to discredit everyone who could not be reconciled with the state. From organizing separate daytime protests that were coordinated with city officials to using the legacies of dead militants to justify demands for nonviolence and launching public smear campaigns, leftists vied to undermine the possibility of self-organization. Even corporate media picked up on the divergence of agendas between (more targeted) Black youth and the people of color who hoped to “lead” them, practically all of whom were more integrated into the power structure and had more reason to remain compliant. Despite the forces arrayed against them, many of the people in Ferguson were determined to gain control of the streets, and pushed the would-be managers aside. What would it take for this rejection of the political left to outlast the days of open conflict?
\n\nIn a parallel containment practice, media, politicians, and revolutionary leaders alike decried “white anarchists” as outside agitators.12 This approach to pacification, aimed at fracturing any possible cohesion those fighting state power might find through conflict, typically separates out good protestors from bad ones and draws lines along race and ethnicity.13 In Ferguson, the Black managerial class tried to use this to link whiteness—in this rare case, an undesirable identifier—with property destruction, looting, and other undesirable actions. This was a divisive tactic to prey on people’s fears, spread mistrust, and discourage others from showing up. How can revolutionaries and other activists parrot the media and police rhetoric that obviously serves to reinforce, rather than collapse, the power of the state?
\n\nThe phrase “white anarchists” is ripe with problems and questions. It invisiblizes anarchist people of color—perhaps in order to separate anarchism out as a professional or political class, something that is not for poor people, and definitely not for poor people of color. Anarchism is not a white radical phenomenon—but let’s be real, much of anarchist culture is intensely racialized. Anarchist cultures carry within them many of the problems we inherit from white supremacist culture; most of them remain disproportionately rooted in European history, and many suffer side effects from the exploitation and tokenization of people of color that is popular among the authoritarian left.
\n\nIn the midst of post-Ferguson conversations about how whiteness and anti-Blackness are normalized and maintained in this culture, we have to ask how we reproduce white supremacist culture in anarchist cultures. How do we fetishize and tokenize people we want to be in struggle with, or combative cultural norms that we idealize, in a way that keeps them outside? For instance, let’s not use the growing popularity of Afro-pessimist critiques to make our anarchist projects seem more relevant without re-evaluating the foundations of our theory and practice in light of them. When it comes to future anti-police struggles, anarchists—as a body that is certainly not singular—will likely be both inside of and outside of the social dynamics and demographics of those struggles, and we will continue to have to reconcile the limitations and opportunities that situation creates.
\n\nThe lifelong projects of destroying whiteness and class society necessitate attacking the structures that reinforce them. This is not just a question of our personal conduct, relationships, or social norms.14 It may be that when we’re rioting, we’re not magically all the same, but we can fight together in a way that acts against our socially imposed positions in this world. We can choose to act against the parts of our own identities that otherwise cause us to wield power over others and/or to play the victim.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/4.jpg\")
Anarchists tend to fight from the outside. Whether or not we gather in self-identified radical circles of friends, anarchists intentionally position ourselves outside and against almost everything else. Perhaps this is because we are theoretically opposed to being involved in broad coalitions in order to steer them in a certain direction. Perhaps it is because we don’t believe in politicking and don’t want to legitimize it. Whatever the reason, this outsider status often positions us well in the beginning, when social ruptures crack open the center to render everything outside; but it often leaves us struggling to catch up as new insides begin forming. We reject this re-forming process, calling it recuperation, but we usually lack a meaningful way to engage with what comes next. How can we—not just anarchists, but rebels of all kinds—make something that transcends our social circles and immediate projects?
\n\nReflecting on the most recent wave of anti-police activity, many anarchists are talking regretfully about not coming out of the days in the streets together with more new relationships that could become long-standing. Anarchists who were in Ferguson say they aren’t surprised that some folks they met there got involved in leftist groups in the following months, partly because there weren’t visible anarchist spaces or projects.15 During intense periods of social unrest, anarchists sometimes pose a dichotomy between fighting in the streets and “outreach,” as if those are the only options, as if they must be in opposition to each other. Certainly, there are physical limits to what any group of people can do, but there must be ways to connect with folks that increase our capacity for fighting together. Could we engage differently with people during those moments of conflict, in ways that could change what happens afterwards?
\n\nWith so many obstacles in place to prevent us from finding common cause—from the far-reaching physical and emotional effects of police violence and state repression to the attitudes and actions of aspiring managerial activists—how do we find each other in those moments of instability? How do we engage with people without defining ourselves in a way that excludes us from everything, while still recognizing the ways we are different? How do we side with militants within embattled communities that we are not a part of, without further contributing to divisions within them that may endanger those potential friends and our relationships with them? And how do we search out new directions without obsessing uselessly over questions of relevance?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/12.jpg\")
Ferguson, August 2014. Old anarchist hyperbole coming true.
\nThe conflicts that spread from Ferguson were not initiated by anarchists, but drew great interest and participation from anarchists across the country. In this kind of situation, we have to show up prepared to contribute and with a perceptible humility. No one wants to start from someone else’s pre-formed political agenda; we all have to figure out what we have to learn from each other. Often, anarchists describe our role in social upheavals as pushing struggle further, but sometimes we are only playing at a criminality that others are much deeper in. In struggles where many of the people involved are responding to the reality of constant low-intensity warfare with the police, we have to be honest with ourselves about what strengths we have to bring and what overtures we are prepared to make good on.
\n\nNone of the conflicts that came to a head in Ferguson have been resolved, nor do the authorities or their colleagues have any idea how to resolve them. Whether we bring the courage to act, an eye to security and collective safety, specific tactical know-how, or ideas that challenge embedded norms, let’s be prepared to engage whenever the next eruptions occur.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/7.jpg\")
A legacy of defiance.
\nA selection of some of our previous publishing on the revolt in Ferguson:
\n\nThis episode of our podcast offers an overview of the development of white supremacy in the US from colonization to the Ferguson uprising.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/23.jpg\")
\n\n\n\n“When they are asked to participate, they don’t answer. They do not wish to be spoken\nto. Without looking round they keep walking. They appear to live in another universe. They’re occupied with all kinds of things, but their purpose remains invisible through the media lens. They seem never to know what they want. But this dismissive attitude is not\nmerely indifference. They are intently concentrating on the right thing; their silence stems from this. They only answer unasked questions. Their attention is focused on the approach of an event. And when the time comes, they are the ones who move into action without hesitation.”
\n\n–ADILKNO, Cracking the Movement
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/08/09/26.jpg\")
\nIn St. Louis, racial codes prohibited a variety of relations between legally designated racial groups since the late 1600s. So-called miscegenation was prohibited well into the mid-20th century, and neighborhood ordinances effectively prevented Black people from owning houses in Ferguson through the 1960s. These laws were essential in creating the racial tensions that persist up to the present day. ↩
\nOccupy Wall Street was awkward to say the least for the first week of its existence; it only entered history because it went on long enough for more people to trickle in. The revolt in Ferguson was only one of many such outbursts in a series stretching at least back to the 2009 Oscar Grant riots in Oakland. The difference was that it persisted long enough to spread. If a revolt can extend in time, it will extend in space. ↩
\nThe Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) and Universal African Peoples Organization (UAPO) are decades-old Black-led organizations based in St. Louis. The Nation of Islam (NOI) and the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) are national organizations with a roughly separatist agenda. (“There is no new Black Panther Party” -members of the original Black Panther Party). ↩
\nYou can read about Mayor Jean Quan and other activists-turned-politicians in the excellent ’zine Who is Oakland? ↩
\nAbout ten years ago, for instance, a former Black Panther noted that after he came out of prison, he was expected to give up all the information to the state that he had been careful to protect as a Panther—under the guise of grant writing. For more about non-profits, read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. ↩
\nReform isn’t neutral; it moves us backwards. After social conflict comes to the surface, giving movement to bound things, reform serves to put us all back where we started, immobilized again. ↩
\nThink about how “the personal is political” devolved into the lipstick feminism of the white, middle-class third wave. ↩
\nThe middle class American/colonizer project is one of imposing stability on a system that will never stabilize. This gives some insight into how definition itself is violence. ↩
\nSee En Vogue’s song, Free Your Mind. “Colorblind, don’t be so shallow” is still the proper response. ↩
\nCheck out Frank Wilderson, Saidiya Hartman, Achille Mbembe, and Calvin Warren to read more on Afro-Pessimism and anti-Blackness. ↩
\nFighting racialized power is increasingly central to the vital conflicts that are erupting today, in the same way that repressive inclusion is increasingly central to the shutting down of revolutionary possibility. The People’s Climate March of September 2014 was a classic example of the latter: it boasted the diversity language central to the nonprofit organizing model and insisted that it “made history,” and yet it took up none of the questions, tactics, or strategies that Ferguson had pushed to the fore. Rather, the form of organization conspired to suppress them, using the language of diversity against diversity itself. ↩
\nThe operation of creating outside agitators is a microcosm of the process of re-inclusion/re-exclusion that stabilizes capitalism and white supremacy. This tactic has been used repeatedly, especially against populations of people who have been forced to relocate through immigration or exile. In the 1960s, for instance, it was frequently a defensive maneuver white Southerners used, labeling as “outside agitators” the Black youth whose families had moved north during the diaspora after emancipation. ↩
\nHow was this different in Ferguson, where the Black youth who are typically drawn as criminal outsiders were already painted as some of the protagonists of this story? ↩
\nFor those who are not on the receiving end of the legacy of colonization and slavery, these projects do mean being ready to take flack for looking like a dumb white person (or whatever the equivalent is in your case). However hard this may be, it can’t be as hard as being on that receiving end. ↩
\nMidwestern stereotypes aside, there has been an earnestness in many of the accounts from Ferguson that is sometimes lacking from anarchist discourse. A kind of bravado can fill anarchist texts as we front an offensive position when we are actually acting defensively, all while trying to figure out how to sound like we’re being “real.” Often that realness that anarchists search for is as simple as being in touch with your own personal capacity, and understanding how you allow yourself to be pushed beyond it when there is an outside need. ↩
\nIn the following analysis, we review the series of movements that led to the uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd, explore the factors that made the uprising so powerful, discuss the threats facing it, and conclude with a series of accounts from participants in Minneapolis, New York City, Richmond, Grand Rapids, Austin, Seattle, and elsewhere around the country.
\n\nThroughout this article, we have only used photographs that are already widely available online, in order to avoid inadvertently providing sensitive information to the police.
\n\n\n\n\nLet us not resent those who get out of hand for reminding us of the conflicts that remain unresolved in our society. On the contrary, we should be grateful. They are not disturbing the peace; they are simply bringing to light that there never was any peace, there never was any justice in the first place. At tremendous risk to themselves, they are giving us a gift: a chance to recognize the suffering around us and to rediscover our capacity to identify and sympathize with those who experience it.
\n\nFor we can only experience tragedies such as the death of Michael Brown for what they are when we see other people responding to them as tragedies. Otherwise, unless the events touch us directly, we remain numb. If you want people to register an injustice, you have to react to it immediately, the way people did in Ferguson. You must not wait for some better moment, not plead with the authorities, not formulate a sound bite for some imagined audience representing public opinion. You must immediately proceed to action, showing that the situation is serious enough to warrant it.
\n\n-“What They Mean When They Say Peace,” published during the uprising in Ferguson, a precursor of the movement that has unfolded countrywide since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
\n
We must begin with a moment of silence—for no revolt, no matter how powerful, not even if it could burn down every police precinct and open up every prison, could ever give life back to Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, David McAtee, Rayshard Brooks, or any of the countless other Black people who have been murdered by police since the founding of the United States of America. Uprisings like the one that began in Minneapolis are a way of attempting to discourage the police from committing future murders, but they are also expressions of grief for the irreparable losses that have already taken place.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/7.jpg\")
Seattle, Washington.
\nIn seeking historical reference points to understand this uprising, most people begin with the riots of the 1960s—though as longtime news anchor Dan Rather put it,
\n\n\n\n\n“In 1968 there was a sense, proven by subsequent elections, that those taking to the streets in pain and protest were a minority of the country and the levers of power in business, government, and culture were arrayed against them. I do not get that sense in 2020.”
\n
Tracing the lineage of this revolt, we would start more recently, passing over the rebellions in Los Angeles in 1992 and Cincinnati in 2001 to begin with the riots in Oakland in 2009 in response to the murder of Oscar Grant. The unrest in Oakland was small in comparison to what has happened since, but it brought together the same combination of demographics that has been involved in subsequent uprisings—angry Black youth who knew they could be next, protesters fed up with fruitless reform campaigns, anarchists opposed to state violence on principle, and other rebels of a variety of ethnic backgrounds—setting a precedent that was echoed over the next five years in Seattle, Atlanta, Anaheim, Brooklyn, Durham, and elsewhere.
\n\nEach of these revolts lasted a couple days at most, a gesture rejecting the order imposed by police violence without being able to counterpose a sustainable alternative. This changed with the revolt in Ferguson in August 2014, which extended over a full week and a half, then recurred in November, spreading across the entire United States for a period of weeks. After the uprising in Ferguson, it was possible for those on the receiving end of police violence to imagine becoming ungovernable on a massive scale.
\n\nFurther uprisings followed around the US, arguably peaking in Baltimore at the end of April 2015 in response to the murder of Freddie Gray. By the time revolt broke out in Minneapolis in response to the murder of Jamar Clark in November 2015, this model seemed to be reaching its limits—limits imposed by the increasing consolidation of power in the hands of institutional organizers as well as by the force of police repression. As we noted in 2015,
\n\n\n\n\nIt’s not clear how much further the state can go to maintain the current order by means of pure force. If uprisings occurred in multiple cities in the same region at the same time, or if a much broader range of people got involved, all bets would be off.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/9.jpg\")
St. Louis, Missouri, 2020.
\nWhen Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, these revolts suddenly ceased. We identified this at the opening of 2018; it is a historical enigma yet to be properly accounted for. Certainly police did not cease murdering or oppressing Black and brown people. Perhaps all that changed was that anarchists and other activists were so busy reacting to fascist violence that they failed to provide the necessary solidarity to the communities most targeted by police violence.
\n\nThe onset of the Trump era provoked a wave of participatory direct action involving tens of thousands of people—from the successful efforts to disrupt Trump’s inauguration and blockade airports to the ICE occupations of 2018. By mid-2018, however, anarchists and targeted communities were increasingly on their own in these struggles, as other protesters returned to seeking state solutions.
\n\nCentrists hoping to repeat the downfall of Nixon pursued a doomed strategy of seeking to impeach Trump and remove him from office, demonstrating a fundamental naïveté about how power works. Leftists reprised their campaign to elect Bernie Sanders president, likely absorbing some disappointed centrists but ultimately discovering that their ambition to fix America from the top down was equally naïve. Centrist fossil Joe Biden rode Black votes to victory in the Democratic primaries, temporarily creating the mistaken impression among some pundits that the majority of Black people in the US were more interested in a second-rate rerun of the Obama years than in radical change. In retrospect, it’s clear that the real issue was that no meaningful forms of change were on the table.
\n\nBy the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in full force, all the statist means of seeking social change had been exhausted. Trump exacerbated the situation, seizing the opportunity to arrange a massive wealth transfer of billions of dollars to the richest stratum of society in the midst of the worst economic recession in living memory. In this context, millions of people in the US, alongside billions around the world, spent mid-March to late May in isolation, contemplating their own mortality. It had never been clearer that the institutions of power are fundamentally hostile and destructive to the lives of ordinary people.
\n\nThis is why, when the news of Black rebels’ response to George Floyd’s murder spread, even white middle-class liberals felt the tragedy viscerally. The pandemic suspended some of the mechanisms that ordinarily insulate the privileged from identifying with the most marginalized.
\n\nThose who are always targeted by police, who suffer most from racism and poverty, recognized that it was now or never. Heroically, all around the US, they staked their lives in an all-out attack on their oppressors—and millions of stir-crazy people of all classes and backgrounds joined them in the streets.
\n\nTrump and other politicians have expressed shock at the riots that followed George Floyd’s murder, alleging that anarchists must have coordinated them; in fact, they did more to provoke the riots than anarchists ever could. It was the policies of the state itself that spread the collective intelligence that guided the revolt—marking police, banks, and corporations as legitimate targets and making it easy for just about anyone to understand why people would attack them. Trump’s explicit support for white supremacists, his xenophobic border policies, his efforts to abolish healthcare access, his contribution to accelerating global warming, and his refusal to provide any sort of support for those threatened by unemployment or COVID-19 showed everyone that we are all facing a life-or-death struggle, not just those who are regularly murdered by police.
\n\nPerhaps the darkest hour does herald the dawn, after all.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/2.jpg\")
Together, we are unstoppable: Minneapolis, Minnesota.
\nWhere one reformist campaign after another has failed, the courage of those who burned down the Third Precinct in Minneapolis has catalyzed an unprecedented movement for social change. The victories of the first week of the movement alone surpass what other approaches had accomplished in years. We should not underestimate the contributions of abolitionists who have labored for decades to make it possible for people to imagine doing without police and prisons, but many of those who set this movement in motion do not think of themselves as activists at all.
\n\nThe past three weeks have offered the most persuasive demonstration of the effectiveness of direct action in decades. Liberals will try to represent the strength of the movement as a mere question of numbers, but these numbers only came together because daring rebels showed that they could defeat the Minneapolis police in open combat. The idea of abolishing the police was deemed inadmissible until it became conceivable that rioters could overthrow the police by main force. Then, and only then, police abolition became a widespread discussion item.
\n\nSo direct action gets the goods—and everyone knows it now. It will be very difficult to put this genie back in the bottle. From the centrists who are suddenly struggling to reduce police abolition to a matter of “defunding” to Donald Trump himself, who was forced to make a show of calling for police reforms yesterday, there is no denying that the riots have changed everyone’s priorities. Rather than alienating people, as critics always alleged it would, confrontational direct action has won millions over to ideas and values they might never have considered otherwise.
\n\nThis will have long-term effects on a global scale as movements all around the world internalize these lessons. International solidarity actions have already taken place in over 50 other countries, some of them including massive riots.
\n\nAs we wrote in 2014, one of the most important things about a movement like this is that it finally enables us to grieve together and to grasp what is being taken from us—not just in the daily murders of Black, brown, and poor people, not just in the incarceration and deportation of millions, but also in the ways that the order that the police enforce forecloses everyone’s potential. For some of us, this order prevents us from accessing the resources and education we need to make the most of ourselves on our own terms; for others, it prevents us from being able to access the compassion buried deep in our hearts for those who are more targeted than we are; for still others, it threatens to end our lives wholesale. In interrupting this order, we rediscover what it could mean to live fully, in meaningful and expansive community, enabling ourselves to feel deeply and to act according to our consciences.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/1.jpg\")
Washington, DC, May 30.
\nNone of this is to say that things will be easy from here forward. Let’s review some of the risks we face.
\n\nUntil now, Trump has sought to benefit from social polarization. During the first week of the uprising, it seemed possible that Trump could take advantage of the revolt as a sort of Reichstag fire to seize still more power, perhaps establishing martial law. There is evidence that his supporters openly pursued this strategy. On May 29, an Air Force sergeant and another participant in the white supremacist “Boogaloo” movement killed a federal security officer in Oakland, apparently as a false flag operation intended to accelerate the arrival of civil war.
\n\nTrump’s grip on power was strong enough to survive the impeachment, but it was not strong enough for him to mobilize the military against the general population. The appearance of the National Guard on the streets of many cities set a limit to how far the revolt could go in those locations, but the demonstrations only spread to other towns, drawing more and more participants and support and expanding to include new tactics including statue toppling and occupations. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to turn the army against the protesters, but other members of the government balked. On June 11, the highest-ranking military figure in the US apologized for appearing alongside Trump in a media stunt outside the White House on June 1. As the political climate becomes more and more volatile, the heads of the military doubtless understand that they need to preserve their veneer of legitimacy lest the entire house of cards collapse.
\n\nWhen it proves impossible to isolate and destroy our movements, the next danger is that they will be gentrified and coopted. Police repression has proved useless; the police are caught in a cycle in which all of their tools for controlling disorder only spread it wider. The influx of aspiring politicians, managers, and other would-be leaders into the streets has done more to dampen the revolt than any amount of state violence. This would still pose little threat to the movement’s momentum if all the participants had internalized the importance of horizontality and autonomy, as demonstrated by the victory in Minneapolis; but those lessons will take some time to learn, and there are many powerful institutional actors who have every reason to interfere. As we continue to discuss how to root out elements of structural white supremacy within our movements, we will also need to relentlessly challenge the legitimacy of those who aspire to concentrate power, to represent others, or to determine for others what strategies and tactics are appropriate.
\n\nCentrists are spreading the most superficial version of our arguments, talking about defunding the police without addressing any of the deep disparities in wealth and power that the police exist to maintain. We will have to continue spelling out why we oppose policing itself alongside other aspects of capitalism and the state—and this may become more difficult, rather than less, as liberals appropriate our talking points and rhetoric.
\n\nIn the future, while we will likely see some changes to police protocols or even to the institution of policing itself, the authorities will aim to carry this out at the expense of our communities, seeking to drive anti-social activity into the spaces that they abandon. Police elsewhere have already utilized this strategy to punish unruly neighborhoods such as Exarchia in Athens, Greece. This makes it especially pressing to apply ourselves to the positive aspects of police abolition, addressing the root causes of destructive and anti-social behavior. As most of our communities possess limited access to resources, this will not be easy—but it will be necessary regardless, as the state is not coming to save us.
\n\nLaw enforcement agencies, especially on the federal level, will continue trying to weaponize every toxic element that they can find in our movements, from oppressive dynamics around race and gender to egotism and social conflict. Formal solidarity agreements are an important step towards shoring up our collective weaknesses, but interpersonal dynamics represent another front on which we have to step up our efforts to handle conflict constructively.
\n\nAlready, we are seeing house raids and FBI visits around the country. While local courts remain overwhelmed by the cases that have backed up during the pandemic and some prosecutors are refusing to press low-level charges against demonstrators, federal investigators are seeking to inflict the worst possible consequences on those they blame for the revolt. This twitter thread illustrates some of the strategies federal agents employ to identify protesters. How much support these defendants receive will determine how much further federal prosecutors go in targeting those who participated in the movement—and how much momentum remains for the future.
\n\nFinally, there is the looming threat of intensifying fascist activity, which would take attention off the white supremacist violence of the state and put activists and targeted communities on the defensive. In 2017, anarchists and anti-fascists defeated a growing fascist movement—staving off a menace that could have made the victories of the past three years impossible. It remains to be seen whether the continuing polarization of our society will give rise to a new mass wave of fascist organizing, but militias have mobilized in many towns and fascists and other far-right individuals, emboldened by Trump’s calls to treat anti-fascists as terrorists, have already shot demonstrators in Seattle and Albuquerque.
\n\nWhatever happens next, we should remember for the rest of our lives how bleak things looked just one month ago and how rapidly the situation changed. Although revolts across the world in 2019 hinted at the possibility that the United States, too, would erupt, few anticipated it after the outbreak of COVID-19 and the malaise that followed. Even when we cannot see them, there are always opportunities to resist the ruling order and find common cause with others. May this experience sustain us through the difficult years ahead.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/12.jpg\")
A solidarity poster distributed in Seattle calling for the dismissal of charges against all the participants in the revolt.
\nIn the following anonymously submitted narratives, anarchists across the country recount their experiences during the first week of the uprising. For other accounts of the uprising in Minneapolis, consult It’s Going Down, our own report entitled “The Siege of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis,” and “An Obituary for Identity Politics.”
\n\nMinneapolis
\nRichmond
\nNew York City
\nGrand Rapids
\nCleveland
\nPhiladelphia
\nAustin
\nFort Lauderdale
\nAtlanta
\nSeattle
\nCoda: Minneapolis, again
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/6.jpg\")
\nWe marched down Lake Street, dragging barricades into the road and painting “Fuck 12” with teenagers. Some kid who joined off the street yelled excitedly that we were like Martin Luther King, Jr. and another kid responded “No, bro, we’re Malcolm X!” Our tumbleweed of an offshoot march felt angry and joyous and like an escalation… and then we got to the Third Precinct. As we walked up, Black youth were smashing a cop car, ripping out gear and stacks of blank tickets until everyone stormed the gate to the precinct parking lot. A kid smashed each squad car with a skateboard until an elder yelled “WAIT STOP!!!” I thought the anticipated peace policing had finally arrived—until she concluded, “Get their personal vehicles too!”
\n\nSomething thick was in the air the next few nights. We saw people watching each other’s backs, sharing food and looted beer with strangers, having dance parties, passing out spray-paint and hand sanitizer, hugging even though they shouldn’t. Someone grabbed a set of golf clubs from a pawnshop and gave them out in front of the US Bank. It was like it was a team sport and those windows were the opponents and we were all on the same team. Rebels took turns beating an ATM with a sledgehammer and driving cars into it while the crowd cheered. The sky was so heavy with smoke it looked like dark clouds. And then the police station was on fire.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/3.jpg\")
Minneapolis, May 2020.
\nSurrounded by ashen rubble and streets flooding with water, the scene outside the Third Precinct that night can hardly be described. It was as if we had all been transported to the distant future, after the apocalypse. Picture it with me.
\n\nAcross the street is the precinct. People are using the boards ripped off of adjacent businesses to build barricades to shield themselves from the tear gas canisters. The people around me are being hit with rubber bullets. The confidence of the crowd ebbs and flows as the sun begins to set. The final goal here is obvious, but victory is hardly guaranteed.
\n\nPeople are collecting stones from rubble piles and breaking them into smaller chunks. They’ve requisitioned a trash can from the Target and are filling it up and dumping piles by the front lines. In this scenario, it’s hard for anyone to think for more than five or ten seconds before acting, including the police. That gives anyone capable of planning even a few minutes into the future an advantage.
\n\nIt’s not long before someone runs up urgently with a familiar look of absolute seriousness in his eyes. He has some friends with shields on the side of the building and they need help. In a few minutes, we are facing a constant barrage of concussion grenades and rubber bullets. The shields repel most of them. People all around us are using the stones to overwhelm the dozen or so cops on our side of the building, focusing on one weak point of their fortification rather than attacking all of them at once.
\n\nWhen the police began to pull back, the cheers were deafening. It hurt my ears to hear the thousands of people around me screaming, “Burn it down!” as everyone climbed over the fences together. It was as if we were the first people to land on the moon. Determined clusters of people fortified the area with barricades; others simply stood and laughed, taking it all in.
\n\nBy the end of the night, teenagers encircled the flaming building, skating, holding hands, sitting in the street with bottles of champagne. Older folks passed through with surgical masks on, waving to the kids. They can never take this away from us.
\n\nMinneapolis, night of May 28.
\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1266213711167045632\n\n\n
On the night of May 30, I joined hundreds at the intersection of West Broad Street and North Belvidere Street, where a bus had been incinerated by our crowd the night before. Neither our rage nor our sense of our own power had diminished at all. We were eager to take the city by storm again. As the crowd mobilized, warming up with a march through the nearby university campus, we returned to the Broad & Belvidere intersection to find multiple stopped police cruisers with their officers standing outside them. Unhesitatingly, the front of the crowd rushed the police, running them out almost instantly, and the tone for the second night was set: cops out!
\n\nWe raged through the city, eager to outdo ourselves, leaving in our path desecrated monuments, a torched Confederate museum, smashed banks, and looted chain stores including the freshly-built Whole Foods. For hours, we played cat and mouse with the police, overwhelming their attempts to direct us and moving more quickly than they could in their efforts to shut us down. Again, we returned to Broad and Belvidere, meeting lines of riot cops and armored vehicles in front of us. They attempted to gain ground, spreading from their besieged headquarters blocks away, only to be confronted with a crowd unintimidated by force. Tear gas grenades, rubber bullets, and marker rounds were countered by rocks, bricks, blinding lasers, blazing barricades, and whatever we could hurl toward the enemy to keep them at bay. A long caravan of cars blocked a lane of traffic parallel to the battle, honking in support of us and cheering, while the intersection behind us became a sideshow of cars and motorcycles doing donuts, stereos incessantly blasting Boosie’s “Fuck the Police” and Crime Mob’s “Knuck if You Buck.”
\n\n\n\n\nCities, fuck ‘em!
\n
\nNarcotics, fuck ‘em!
\nFeds, fuck ‘em!
\nDAs, fuck ‘em!
\nWe don’t need you bitches on our streets, say with me,
\nFuck the police!
Doing a full 360° rotation, I could hardly take in everything I was experiencing. It was a whirlwind of tear gas, car exhaust, weed smoke, and the fumes of burned material filling the air as militants clashed and friends embraced and danced carelessly. What had begun in rage and mourning had become a lesson in our own power; even as a fierce battle wore on, I found myself smiling. In the spaces we had opened up, there were opportunities for joy to explode into the world, joy unhindered by fear. The police stood there silently in their burdensome gear in the heat for hours. One wonders whether they envied us.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/14.jpg\")
A police car burning in front of the police station in Richmond, Virginia on the evening of May 29.
\nUnion Square. Police in riot gear line 14th street, preventing the march from moving further north. The climate is both joyous and tense; music lingers in the air. In New York, it is commonplace to see a speaker on wheels—on the tail end of a bike or shoved inside a granny cart. Tonight, at the center of 14th and Broadway, we’re blessed by at least one serenading. Rather than continue marching, the crowd spreads out across several blocks. No one is certain as to how to move forward. We pace, anxiously anticipating a move from the police. Suddenly, as if to break the stalemate, someone swings a hammer through the plate glass window of Chase Bank. Then, all at once, the entire area from 14th and University to 12th and 4th comes alive with clamor.
\n\nThere was once a garbage can on every corner of this street. Now there are four in the road catching fire. A single police car squeals into the intersection. The crowd scatters. I lose my friends in the commotion.
\n\nIn retrospect, I had come with too many people. Our group was put together hastily. Our risk factors and ways of interacting with a riot varied widely. Though we were scarcely more than a handful, our numbers made it impossible to keep track of everyone simultaneously. On later nights, I went only with one or two dedicated friends, committed to sticking together.
\n\nI turned the corner to the next block. A small line of protestors was dutifully hammering at a couple abandoned police vans. A few people were guarding the corner store—not so much to quell the anger of the crowd as to direct its focus. Nobody was protecting the banks. One trashed police van was on fire. I later learned that another was burned to the ground only a couple blocks over. Tension was mounting. Cops started careening in from a side street. Most people fled. Being on my own, I decided to run as well.
\n\nI put some distance between my body and the chaos on 14th Street. I stripped off my sweater, happy to be free of its excessive warmth. I tossed my bag under a parked car where it was less likely to be picked up and walked through Washington Square. It was populated mostly by families, musicians, people gleaning the last cool nights of late spring, seemingly unfazed by the demolition of the neighboring streets. It was going to be a long walk home.
\n\nApproaching Broadway-Lafayette, I noticed a series of clothes hangers strewn across the sidewalk. A march of about a hundred young people was roving around Soho. As it turned out, their actions set the stage for the next few nights.
\n\nTo some, it might be surprising to hear that the most dramatic situations still had an air of serenity. It was no coincidence that much of the looting took place where there was little police presence. The brazenness and unpredictability of the riotous crowds complicated the police response. Occasionally officers would rush a crowd to make one or two arrests. It was a scare tactic. They would rush so we would run; we would run so they wouldn’t be obliged to arrest us. Pure theater.
\n\nSometimes people stood their ground. Sometimes the cops were the ones to retreat.
\n\nIn New York, especially, the racist implications of the good protester/bad protester narrative are starkly apparent. The first couple nights, I saw very few instances of what has been called riot shaming—the policing of young Black and brown people in the aftermath of police murder. If anything, the disputes were about targets, not tactics. As more white people joined the movement from one night to the next, I watched this narrative shift in real time from “not here” to “don’t.” I began to see white people physically confronting Black protesters on the premise that what they were doing was bad for the movement. Normally, I try to avoid totalizing statements. However, in view of the implications of this dynamic, I will say this: It is not white people’s place to weigh in on what is an appropriate response to the constant murder of Black people by police.
\n\nAway from the streets, politicians left and right began speaking out against protesters. Racially charged epithets appeared in the newspapers: “These were not protesters, they were thugs, criminals.” Both Trump and De Blasio clung desperately to the lie that outside agitators were responsible for the uprising. They hid behind the racial ambiguity of this claim in order to violently repress Black resistance. In actuality, Black people were at the forefront of everything from peaceful demonstrations to arsons. In New York, the political distinction between looters and protesters was a conscious effort to condemn a part of the movement that was not only Black-led, but had disproportionately more Black participants. On several occasions, Trump himself has echoed the myth that violent protests overshadow peaceful protests. If this doesn’t confirm whose agenda this narrative serves, I don’t know what could. There is no other way to say this: To condemn looting and praise the peaceful marches is to demonize Black self-determination and favor majority white crowds.
\n\nStill, some people allege that looters are just criminal opportunists—that they are not actually there to protest. For me, protesting is not an act unto itself. It is the reason for action. One can march in protest, one can resign from office in protest, one can hunger strike in protest, and yes, one can loot in protest. There is no denying that the looting that took place was in direct response to the murder of George Floyd. Sunday night, I watched so-called “criminal thugs” storm Lululemon for yoga mats and leggings. I passed a teashop where I had previously purchased Christmas gifts for my mother. The looting was not a way to capitalize on a movement. It was a shattering of status symbols that are predicated on racial exclusion. Sure, some of it will be resold, but at a fraction of the price the stores were charging. The press says organized crime; the looters say DIY Reparations.
\n\nSeveral nights, one could hear over the scanner that officers were not to pursue looters at all, presumably for risk of injury. Instead, when police wanted to assert their force over the protests, they did so by rounding up and beating peaceful protesters. Some wish to blame this brutality on the looters. That is not my intention. I believe there is a mutual benefit to having protesters who practice nonviolence alongside those who do not. Every march that involves destruction of property contains within it a kernel of nonviolent protesters. What’s more, clear division between orderly and rowdy marches mark the former as easy targets for police violence. I’ve attended a myriad of marches in the past couple weeks. By far my most terrifying experiences were spent kneeling.
\n\nI’ve never seen such a massive and widespread upheaval before. It was common to leave one protest only to wind up unexpectedly in the midst of another. Some people claim that the lawlessness was a coordinated effort by anarchists. As an anarchist, it was nearly impossible even to coordinate with my immediate friends as to where we were going to meet. We participated in the demonstrations, but the scale of what was happening was so beyond me. I will never forget the army of skateboarders I saw chanting “Apple Store! Apple store” as they stole their way through SoHo. I watched some guy conduct a riot of one on a deserted side street—flipping barricades and smashing up cop cars with an oversized rock. So many police vehicles were rendered inoperable those first nights, the ones that were still capable of driving went around with PIG and FTP painted on the side.
\n\nPotlatch: a crowd joyously looting an Apple Store in SoHo the night following May 31.
\nIt was truly a humbling experience. At a certain point I had to re-evaluate what kind of impact I was making and how I could be most helpful. I’ve had over a decade of relevant experience, but I’ve never seen anything on this scale. To put this in perspective: until now, the most confrontational tactic anarchists have employed has involved showing up with a hammer and breaking windows. By the second night in New York, countless people who couldn’t be bothered about Bakunin were looting with shovels. It was everywhere. Never in my life have I thought that anarchists should be the vanguard of revolution, but now much of what I had to offer was just a drop of rain in a tempest.
\n\nI started showing up with extra gloves and jackets. Militancy can occur spontaneously, I reasoned, but safety precautions less so. Given the climate of conspiracy theories about bricks and accusations about outside agitators, I was a little nervous to offer supplies. Thankfully, they were well received.
\n\nThere’s a lot that people with experience in the street can teach first-timers. If someone is attracting a lot of attention from police or cameras, cover for them. Make sure they get rid of identifying markers and get away safely. At the same time, we should learn from the newcomers who are pushing things forward. One can develop a comfortable reserve after years of conflict. It’s good to challenge that. There are kids going from zero to sixty in a single night. Don’t let yourself be stuck at forty.
\n\nThe long game of upheaval involves knowing when to push and when to minimize risks. Supporting arrestees is invaluable in times like these. Those who donate time, supplies, and money—who wait outside the jail with food and phone chargers—make waves of resistance possible. I imagine we will continue to see an array of charges pressed across the country. Our ability to support defendants will dramatically shape the future of revolt to come.
\n\nBy the middle of the following week, police repression was taking its toll. Reports were circulating about mass arrests, beatings, interrogations, the suspension of habeas corpus. The boot was dropping. People had won the streets by sheer numbers. The curfew declared Monday night stunted the number of people in the streets. By 8 pm, the main bridges connecting New York were heavily guarded by police. Comrades would open their homes to protesters who were trapped in other boroughs. Being out past 8 generally entailed a long odyssey home.
\n\nBut let’s get one thing clear. By no means was the power and beauty of the first few nights suppressed by the police. Neither was it co-opted by self-appointed, beret-clad leaders. The truth is that no one had ever imagined that revolt could be possible on such a massive scale in modern-day New York. Each night exceeded the last. Friday night, multiple precincts in Brooklyn were ransacked and a police van was set aflame. Saturday, Union Square was wrecked and looting began. Sunday, Soho was completely gutted. Monday, the looting moved uptown. Decentralized looting continued for several nights, despite curfew. By midweek, nearly all Manhattan was boarded up. Businesses were empty. Certainly no police cars were left unattended.
\n\nThe exponential growth and strength of the protests took the authorities by surprise. As I said, De Blasio, Cuomo, and Trump all alleged that the uprising was a coordinated effort by outside agitators. In reality, the riots involved a very wide range of participants. The targets were luxury stores and police—this was so obvious there was no need for prior planning. It was just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. Luckily, it was happening all the time, everywhere. The unrest persisted until all the obvious targets had been exhausted. Left without a clear next step, the rioting stalled.
\n\nBut the wave of resistance that took place the first few nights is only a small part of a much longer history of abolitionist and Black power movements. It represents a high water mark that is sure to be surpassed by yet another wave. As I write, New York is still experiencing massive daily protests. The energy continues to this day, astonishing and inspiring.
\n\nOne of the most surreal aspects of this whole ordeal is trying to adjust back to \n“normal life” again. For me, this means trying to reset my sleep schedule and clean my room as I get acclimated to the boarded up, war-torn streets of Manhattan. I ride my bike around and take pictures of the leftover graffiti on the shuttered buildings. I know that at some point in the future, these images will be so prevalent that they will no longer be spectacular. The thing that really sticks with you after the looting stops is not the random clothes that you don’t even want, nor an accurate account of which windows shattered when—it is the lived experience that life could be different. It’s a collective knowledge and we’re still learning.
\n\nAs far as I can tell, the general consensus among anarchists in the US is that “No one thought this would happen here.” In fact, no one ever knows if anything is going to happen anywhere. All you can do is come prepared, dream big, and hope for the best. History is determined by those who decide to act. When the window of opportunity comes crashing open, you can have anything you want, but you gotta act fast. It’s remarkable how easy it is to step across the threshold.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/5.jpg\")
New York City.
\nWe live in a midsized Midwestern city: Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s named for the river that runs through the center, although the river has long since been tamed by colonialism. White settlers used the river as a highway, mass-cutting timber and floating logs down it. These logs fueled the furniture industry and its exploitation sparked the furniture riots of 1911. In 1967, poverty, poor housing, and redlining driven by racism sparked riots that erupted in the shadow of Detroit’s better known rage. That year, 33 fires were set on the southeast side in predominately Black neighborhoods. This is char from decades ago and its echoes are still felt today.
\n\nOn Saturday, May 30, 2020, we summoned ghosts. As with so many towns across this stolen land, our city took to the streets in calmness and attention toward formal leadership seeking to tell us what to do and how we ought to behave and channel our rage. We milled about for hours in the sweltering heat, trying to locate and identify our friends in the sea of masked faces. We found them holding a banner with eager strangers that read “Attack White Supremacy,” we found them wearing helmets, wielding shields, and passing spray paint from hand to nervous hand.
\n\nAfter hours passed, you could feel the crowd growing antsy; our packed bodies were pushed in a direction by who knows what, circling the police station. Something happened. Bodies pushed, fists pumped, shouts cried out in an incoherent choir of rage. It just took one arm to lift a can of spray paint to change things. “Fuck 12” emblazoned on the side of the historic police station. To the point. The crowd cheered louder.
\n\nA couple of dumb white people tried to use their bikes to protect the building out of fear that we would only get injured. I get into a screaming match with one of the young men. The crush of bodies instilled fear and seriousness. Then more arms reached up, brandishing spray paint. “Burn The Plantation” and “Shoot Back!” These arms were diverse. No one particular race. All kinds of folks of various identities. This was one of the more diverse events to ever happen in downtown. We were there not just out of the goodness of hearts, but because we are fucking families and best friends and partners and of course we’ll fight shoulder to shoulder for and with our loved ones. In the past, one could be certain that peace police or cop apologists would make some kind of physical intervention, but that Saturday was different. The page had been turned and we were in a different time, seeing a new tradition born.
\n\nCheers greeted each sloppily painted statement on that building that houses the Grand Rapids Police Department, Secretary of State, and parole court, which takes up a whole block of downtown. At the same time, people were building barricades in the city’s cardinal intersection. Ornamental pots overflowing with flowers, garbage cans set ablaze, street signs, dumpsters, garbage, you name it… all of those were dragged in for reinforcement. The parts of the road that we couldn’t close off were blocked by sympathetic motorists blasting music from their vehicles. A dance party broke out. People were jumping up and down. The “Attack White Supremacy” banner was moved and hung on the barricade.
\n\nWe held this space until nightfall. Until the first crash of glass was heard and cheers rang out. Yeah, we could have held that intersection and danced all night, but the people’s energy demanded something more. Why not take things further?
\n\nEvery window of the police station, gone. When all of the windows were broken on the first floor, people went after the second floor. A banner was taken down and set on fire; people carefully walked it into the Secretary of State office and set it on a desk. Someone wielding a stop sign chopped at he security camera on the outside of the building, hacking at it until it fell. After every brave moment, a roar of cheering echoed through the corridor of buildings. Finding my friends and crying, not because of the clichéd poetry of tear gas, but from tears of joy, laughing so hard. Our town? Seriously? Yes. The crowd snaked around through every downtown business and establishment, smashing. Over a hundred storefronts, they say. Fires lit, business looted. The fancy men’s clothing store. “Anyone need a belt?” asked someone carrying a rack of them. Magic cards from the comic book shop were shared, sushi from the fancy sushi place distributed, the jewelry store completely busted, the bridal shop, the art museum, the news station… everything under the moon that night, destroyed.
\n\nI guess 2020 will be added to our small list of uprisings. I’m still taking it in. Now downtown is a sea of blonde particleboard patching up and reinforcing the windows. Bandages trying to heal the contusions. What a joke. That’s not how it works. Now we will haunt the future.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/8.jpg\")
Minneapolis.
\nIt finally happened.
\n\nIt finally happened. After years of liberal recuperation, after years of the siren song of reformism, after years of community “self-control” as a result of fear of police rage and retaliation, it finally happened… and of course I was not there to see the uprising blossom in all its glory. Instead of being in the streets, inhaling tear gas and dealing with the rubber bullets, I was sequestered in a secure location, helping to run the backend logistics for medics and other support people, watching all of this play out on livestreams and police scanners… in a moment, though, our support crew became blind and deaf as the livestreamers were pushed out of a downtown transformed into a warzone and the police scanners went dead.
\n\nAs day turned into night and the action moved outside of the downtown area, the city became wholly unrecognizable, illegible, not just to the police, but to the support people and participants as well. The lines of activism, the lines of identified spaces of discursive action, collapsed in direct confrontation between the community and the people who were there to occupy our communities with military force. Finally, people had abandoned the political “leadership” of established activist groups and entered into the realm of direct action, direct intervention in their own lives.
\n\nI left the safety of that secure location to meet up with the rest of my family unit, which was safe across town. The roads were deserted. Columns of cops blocking bridges and exit ramps dotted the landscape. In the distance, the smoke of burning cop cars was still visible on the horizon.
\n\nAt nightfall, scouts started to hit the streets, seeking confrontations, looking for spaces in which support and intervention were possible. That night, I helped get the kids to sleep, said my goodbyes, and steeled myself to enter the unknown. Those were some of the hardest goodbyes I have ever uttered, telling the young ones that everything was going to be fine, that that was what a fight for liberation looks like, that I would be safe—while not necessarily being totally confident of that safety.
\n\nThe National Guard was on the way, the city was officially on lockdown, the curfew was in place, and off we went, into the abyss, with only the speed of our vehicle as our only protection.
\n\nDarkness. Street lights out. Around the corner, you could see trash in the streets from overturned trash cans. The police scanners were back up, broadcasting calls about looting. Caravans of cars with red, black, and green flags flying could be seen in the distance. Every turn, every side street, every commercial district held the possibility of occupation or liberation—and at the same time, everything seemed empty, tense, full of possibility and hazard.
\n\nThat night, it became clear that, at least for a while, the rules of engagement had fundamentally changed. Power dynamics were realigned. The nice smooth world of liberal reformism and naïveté collapsed under the weight of the rage of the people. Nothing has been the same since. Everything occurs in fragments now—everything is momentary, material, grounded in the dynamics of conflict, constant, exhausting, energizing, and dangerous at the same time. The drudgery of life in the city evaporated. The very streets of the city seem to be standing up, fighting back in the face of the police—flipping the middle finger at police choppers, spraying “Fuck 12” across a police station. Standing tall with all of the dangerous possibilities that this moment contains.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/18.jpg\")
Cleveland, Ohio.
\nOn Saturday, a march that started at the Philadelphia Museum of Art found itself blocked by police at the entrance to the highway. Kids started jumping on the cop cars, dancing on them and kicking the windshields. I couldn’t see what was happening through the crowd, but when a of cloud milky gas shot up at the front, people backed up quickly, fearing tear gas. In fact, some kids had taken the fire extinguishers from the cop cars and turned them on the police to block their pepper spray. Maybe fifteen minutes later, from a block away, we could see smoke billowing up from the cop car that had served as a dancing platform.
\n\nThe march moved on. Several bank windows were smashed. The Starbucks next to City Hall caught fire along with unmarked police vehicles. A statue of one of Philadelphia’s most racist mayors, Frank Rizzo, was vandalized in front of City Hall; it has since been removed. After a few tense moments with the police around City Hall, a large section of the march instead headed to the main downtown shopping strip. Dozens of shops were looted, their goods distributed to anyone who might make use of them.
\n\nOn Sunday morning, I went out for a walk with my partner. Approaching Spruce, we heard helicopters nearby and checked social media. There were reports of riots near 52nd and Market, so we walked that direction. As we got closer, several residents on their porches greeted us, some telling us to “be careful” heading that way.
\n\nAt Chestnut and 52nd, the first thing I saw was an armored police vehicle blaring at the crowd of mostly young men in the streets. The men keep walking toward the police, yelling and occasionally throwing water bottles at what was essentially a tank. Off to one side, two guys were hammering at some concrete to make more effective projectiles. The cops headed north to cheers—there was smoke up there. Maybe a cop car was on fire? But rather than disperse or head toward the heat, more people gathered while clusters of folks went door to door tearing open the metal gates guarding each business. A young Black woman could be overheard shouting, “That’s a Black-owned business!”
\n\nA group of five middle-aged Black women chastised her: “Man, we been giving them everything for years, where that got us, fuck that shit.”
\n\nFirst, a dollar store was wrenched open. All of the women, young and old, walked over and then ran out carrying pillows, bedding, shirts, and various cosmetics and household items. Another group of kids started knocking over the street stalls filled with water, candy, and fragrance bottles. Next they hit the pharmacy. Candy was distributed freely to anyone passing by. At some point, a police helicopter started flying low above us, blaring its sirens. Traffic was trying to make it way through the intersection. I realized that some of the drivers were locals who had gotten their cars and were coming through to fill up on goods. Soon a dumpster was in the street, further disrupting traffic.
\n\nAs we walked home, we were half a block behind a guy carrying a huge trash bag full of looted goods. Three blocks away from the action, he turned off the sidewalk and let himself into his house. “Outside agitators,” I thought.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/16.jpg\")
Cleveland, Ohio.
\nAfter finally prying the boards off of the Shell station across the highway from the local police headquarters, kids were running in and coming back out carrying the most ordinary things like trophies. One teenager brought his girlfriend a giant bag of Takis. She had such big heart eyes and said “Baby! You brought me Takis!” as if it were the greatest gift she had ever received.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/13.jpg\")
Cleveland, Ohio.
\nFort Lauderdale, Florida: probably not high on your list of riot capitals. But beyond its reputation as a glitzy beach tourist destination, there’s a notably brutal police and sheriff’s force and a substantial population of poor and angry people. We’re here to show solidarity and we aim to be prepared for whatever may come. Phones left at home or in the car, one fully charged burner phone in case of emergency. Plenty of water, sunscreen; bandannas with apple cider vinegar; spare masks; hand sanitizer; a change of clothes. Legal numbers written on skin, meetup place and time arranged in case we get separated. We’re ready to roll.
\n\nAs we round the corner of the parking garage, two cops are loading a stack of bricks into a police pickup truck, apparently connected to an incomplete repair job on the brick sidewalk. Later, the media picks up the notion that somehow all over the country, anarchists have been driving around leaving piles of bricks everywhere for convenient use while rioting. Even if we had, that would be an awkward place to leave them; there’s nothing here worth throwing a brick at. Ironically, though, it turns out that this is exactly the spot where the police will start the riot a few hours later.
\n\nAs we arrive at the departure point, the march is already swelling out of the park and into the street. We’re taken aback at the size of the crowd—it’s massive! At first glance, it appears to be well in excess of the one thousand participants that the organizers optimistically predicted. The street is too small for us. We’re swarming all four lanes in both directions, both sidewalks, and spilling into parks and side streets in a mass several blocks long. What a dream, seeing nearly everyone in a march masked up! The energy is high: chants, raised fists, laughter and chatting among the demonstrators, near-constant honks and yells of support from passersby.
\n\nThe crowd is extremely diverse, though solidly majority Black; there are people of all ages, but an especially strong showing from young folks, including high-school and even middle-school-aged people with hand-drawn signs. Some of them try to start chants of “Fuck 12!” though some of the adults are less comfortable with this; “No Justice, No Peace” and “Say his name—George Floyd!” elicit the loudest responses. A snazzily-dressed young man on a shiny red scooter weaves in and out of the crowd honking, pumping people up, and yelling, “C’mon, y’all! FUCK the POLICE!” Hawk-eyed volunteers in neon vests roam the outskirts. As we pass businesses along the main artery, there are lines of protestors standing with raised fists facing the crowd: supportive bystanders taking a break in the shade, or peace police to make sure we don’t get out of hand?
\n\nAfter many long blocks marching under the hot sun, finally we arrive: the police headquarters. Someone is standing on the sign at the entrance to the parking lot, waving a large black and red flag. Another person leans against the building’s wall and fires up a blunt in the shade. There are over a thousand of us; the parking lot (strategically emptied of cars by the forward-thinking police) is full and surging with people. Apart from two pigs with binoculars on the rooftop, there are no police in sight—none. We press up to the front wall. Someone is yelling on a bullhorn, but I can’t make it out. Someone lowers the American flag from the pole by the front door of the station, to cheers. A minute or two later it’s raised again, spray-painted with “FREEDOM FOR SOME,” to a few weak cheers; is that the best we could think of? Most of us are just milling around. What are we going to do?
\n\nNothing, apparently. Before we know it, a cluster of people from the front are streaming back to the street. We only just got here! Most people stay put, clearly wanting more of a confrontation, a stronger statement, something. Earnest marshals wander through the discontented crowd, urging them back to the road to return downtown. “Marched all the way down here, for all of seven minutes,” complains one woman. “We ain’t even been here long enough.” The crowd is annoyed and disappointed, but not rebellious. Our little cluster stays put and tries to chat with others around us, but before long it’s clear that whatever possibilities might have been presented by the large numbers are slipping through our fingers. We picked up the vibe ahead of time from the organizers that this will be a heavily self-policed situation, despite the “woke-washing” rhetoric of not riot-shaming people… at least people who riot elsewhere, that is.
\n\nAfter deliberation, we head back into the street, but try to hold it by the station as the march stretches out. The highway lies just a couple of blocks in the opposite direction, and there are a couple hundred people still milling about, hungry for something else. But informal proposals to head to the highway don’t gain traction, and with the bulk of the march now blocks ahead and police behind us forming a line of cruisers and motorcycles, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do. Sighing with frustration, we amble our way back towards the rest of the march.
\n\nThere are knots of people clustering around conflicts as protestors scream at one another. A middle-aged man with what seems to be heat stroke chats with a couple of paramedics seated on the sidewalk. Police are still carefully keeping their distance. We’re only blocking one direction, and cars going the other way nearly all honk in support. But our energy is low. More conflicts between protestors heat up, then dissipate. Up ahead, we see a small crowd clustering around the entrance to a CVS. By the time we get there, it’s clear that a debate has broken out between people who want what’s inside without paying for it and others who want to stop them from getting it. The peace police carry the day. Two middle-aged women are yelling at each other, debating whether someone’s grandmother gets her prescriptions filled there. Across the street, a small knot of locals, unmasked and unconcerned, speculate on targets. “Hold on, yo, there’s a fucking BANK,” says one, swaggering over to a building. WHOOMP, goes a window. The handful of stragglers stroll back to the street and continue on their way.
\n\nWhere are we going? Hopefully to the courthouse, the town hall, the jail, or somewhere where people can at least vent some more rage. But no, the final destination is just the same pleasant grassy park we started from. By the time we arrive, the original march has circled the block across and back over a bridge, and is spilling into the park. We sit in the grass, out of earshot of the self-congratulatory speeches of the organizers. A lone man climbs to the top of the bandshell, prompting cheers, and leads chants of “Black Lives Matter!” and, briefly, “Fuck 12!” though the latter proves less popular. People roam around chatting, flirting, filming videos and snapping pictures. I see a drone hovering over the crowd and try to think over how to disrupt it—then realize, as it lands, that it was brought by one of the protestors, a nerdy looking man sitting on the lawn. There are well over a thousand people still around in the pleasant late afternoon sun and hardly any police in sight, though we know they can’t be far. The appointed dispersal time passes, the organizers conclude their speeches, and crowds begin filing back to their cars. Most people aren’t in a hurry to leave; many are likely enjoying their first mass public outing since COVID hit. A guy is walking through the crowd pulling a red wagon full of ice and plastic bottles: “Margaritas, rum punch, edibles! Cash, Venmo, Paypal!” We rest and snack, and consider how much longer we should stick around.
\n\nThen—something shifts. I feel it before I see it: a new energy, a tension, then murmuring rippling through the seated crowds. A few people, then more, start walking towards an intersection and down a street towards the parking garage out of sight. Then suddenly dozens and then hundreds are walking, jogging, sprinting that way. We decide to join them and see what’s going on. And then—BOOM. A flash-bang grenade echoes in the distance. BOOM, BOOM. Screams and yells. We walk faster.
\n\nRounding the corner into the street, we see a tense crowd surrounding two police vehicles. In the distance there are flashing lights, yells, commotion. Around us, many curious onlookers are hovering, some moving towards the conflict, others jogging away from it. Everyone looks pissed. People are yelling at the vehicle containing two cops trying to turn out of a parking lot into the street. CRASH—someone busts out the window of the police SUV and tinted glass sprinkles the ground. The busted vehicle zips down to the parking garage and retreats into its depths, where angry shouts and more flash-bang explosions are echoing.
\n\nWe duck into a corner and change our outfits. Back on the street, people are milling about, fuming and cursing the cops. What happened? We hear rumors, but the crowd seems clear on one thing: the cops started it. “Why’d they even come out here all dressed like they ready for war, when we ain’t even do nothing? Okay, then! Y’all want a war, you got it!”
\n\nWe will find out later that the “riot” began when an aggro white dude with a badge shoved a young Black woman who was kneeling on the ground with her hands in the air, prompting screams of outrage and a flurry of thrown bottles. A video that made it to CNN noted a Black female cop as she followed her white colleague back into the police line, screaming at him in fury for his senseless escalation. The white officer, Stephen Pohorence, would be “relieved from duty” (i.e., paid the same salary to sit at an air-conditioned desk until the affair blows over) for his action, prompting the head of the police union to lash out. Pohorence, not surprisingly, has a history of violent arrests, drawing his gun on people, and accusations of racial profiling—which no one other than his targets seemed to notice until now.
\n\nIn the distance, there appears to be a white woman in yoga pants sitting in lotus position in the middle of an intersection in front of a line of riot police. Sure, why not—diversity of tactics, right? In the street we’re holding, there are cars trying to escape from the area but held up by the throng; on one of them, a woman in fashionable sunglasses is sitting in an open window holding a Black Lives Matter sign. The guy on the red scooter is zipping through the crowd, urging people to take a stand and yelling, “FUCK THE POLIIIIIICE!!!” A few people are chucking rocks or water bottles at the police line, but most are waiting to see what happens.
\n\nMore explosions. People are screaming, sprinting past me from the police line. My blood is boiling. “Fuck you!” people are bellowing at the police from all sides. BOOM, and again, BOOM go the flash-bangs. A hiss, a swirl of colored smoke, and the acrid whiff intensifies—OK, that’s tear gas. A young woman runs by sobbing. I am too angry to think. The canister is right there on the ground. I run up to it, lean down—some remote part of my brain knows this is not a good idea, but it’s right there and it needs to GO!—and then my hand is grasping the canister, gripping as loosely as I can while still lifting it aloft, arm rears back, and it’s flying through the air. I feel nothing but exhilaration! Fuck you, pigs! Take that! I’m on fire!
\n\nOh, wait—my hand is definitely on fire. I look at my thin glove, which still looks intact, but the burning sensation has arrived and is throbbing harder every instant. That was stupid, stupid. Still, that canister had to go. Wait, the burning is in my eyes, too. Another cloud is wafting towards me. Police aren’t charging, though, so I’m walking calmly back towards the intersection where an anxious crowd is milling. The same guy with his red wagon selling margaritas is still walking through the crowd, tears streaming down his face. All around me, people are pouring liquids into the eyes of others, coughing, sputtering. Plenty of graffiti going up all over the wall of—whatever this building is. I can’t even tell. I can’t see.
\n\nBlinking, tears streaming, burning. OK, this is unpleasant, but I can handle it. Is my hand OK? I’m not sure. Are my people OK? People are rushing up to me, beckoning me to bend, look up, open my eyes. No, I’m fine, I shake my head to say. Wait, no I’m not. OK, yes, please, I nod. Someone holds a bottle of milk aloft; I try to keep my eyes open. Wait, milk? Isn’t it supposed to be Maalox or something? Whatever, I’m in the moment.
\n\nI blink furiously. Anxious faces look at me expectantly. “Guess I’m not vegan anymore,” I gurgle in a raspy voice to the medic and observers. They politely chuckle, mostly glad that I’m speaking and smiling. I ask the medic if they have anything for burns; they don’t, but picking up what I’m putting down, they pull out a heavy heat-proof glove and offer it to me. We share a meaningful look.
\n\nMy eyes are still burning. I stumble a few steps further and another medic rinses my eyes. The burning has diminished, but now my T-shirt mask is sopping with milk and water, and as I try to keep the mask concealing my face I feel like I’m being waterboarded.1 This isn’t going to work. Fortunately, an affinity group member is holding out a clean N95 mask—good planning. I keep the wet t-shirt on to cover my head and neck, but slide it down from my nose and mouth and strap on the mask. I can breathe again. Still burning a bit, and my hand is killing me, but I’m back in the game.
\n\nOK. Where are we? Where are they? We retreat briefly to a side street and assess the situation. Another rush of people—“They’re coming, y’all, watch the fuck out,” someone yells while jogging by. Yes, there is a line of riot cops advancing down the other street. But they’re single file, not in formation, and only a couple dozen deep. Why are people panicking? We’re still a few hundred strong, but spread out. I have to keep remembering that most of the people here, even if they have plenty of experience with individual police, have mostly never been in a group conflict situation like this.
\n\nAs they assemble a line on a nearby patch of grass, an angry man bellows at them, “Y’all faggots! Y’all are a bunch of cocksucker motherfuckers!” He’s clearly on our side and feels the rage that we feel, but this is a bit… off message. A friend walks towards him and pipes up in a friendly voice, “Hey, I hate the cops too, but I like sucking cock!” He’s not sure what to say. We keep moving.
\n\nNo one is sure what to do. The cops are just standing there, on a downward slope on a patch of grass off the intersection—a comically bad position from a tactical point of view. If we wanted to, we could easily chase them off. But every time someone chucks a bottle at them, a dozen protestors angrily yell at them to stop. Instead, a cycle begins; the protestors form a line in a semi-circle facing the police line, but don’t get close enough to confront them. People take a knee, or start a chant, or yell things; photographers click away; people indignantly tell others what to do and not do.
\n\nOne young woman, a White Ally extraordinaire, strides back and forth yelling at everyone the usual platitudes about not putting people of color in danger, etc. She doesn’t seem to realize that well over 80% of the people here appear to be Black, not to mention that nobody appointed her savior of the masses and peace police head deputy. Beware of Woke Karen: throw a bottle and she’ll ask to see your manager.
\n\nAnother cycle of kneeling, yelling, chanting, waiting. “We are not afraid of you!” I yell at the police line. It doesn’t catch on. I don’t know how to try to convey the sense that we are actually more powerful than them in this moment. The fear on our side is palpable. Yet it also swells and recedes; in brief moments, the scales tip towards collective bravery.
\n\nLater, I learn that shortly before this, a riot cop shot a Black woman in the head with a rubber bullet, fracturing her skull.
\n\nI feel something swelling behind me, and turn to look with a flash of alarm. But what greets my eyes immediately flips me to excitement. The white sedan that has been lurking amidst the protestors is blasting a popular hip-hop track on the stereo and the crowd has ignited with delight. Suddenly dozens, now well over a hundred people clustered around the car in the intersection are chanting along and moving in unison with huge grins on their faces. This is my favorite moment in the demo—a brief flicker of genuine revelry, of absolute joy at sharing collective exhilaration together in the street despite the violence, against the fear. When “Whose streets? OUR streets!” feels like more than just a slogan, but a bodily reality. It’s probably only ninety seconds before the song changes or people get distracted by something else. But I will remember it for a long time.
\n\nThe crowd is slowly thinning. A person in neon tights on one of those annoying Segways is slowly zigzagging through the crowd, telling everyone that the police will be charging in ten minutes. She’s not a cop; what is she basing that on? C’mon, rumor control! A Black woman in her 20s with amazing nails screams, “Who the fuck side you on, anyway? Someone needs to knock that bitch right off her damn scooter.” We all cackle. A beefy white guy, who mentions that he was recently released from the local jail, laments, “What we need is some meth up in this, so people can really get rolling!” I knew we’d forgotten something.
\n\nFirecrackers snap; a firework zips toward the police line. Anguished shouts from the protestors. Then—WHOOSH—more tear gas. I’m ready this time. I’ve been waiting for this. I rush for the first can. “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve—” Another guy has beaten me to it; gym shorts and a tank top, no mask—I don’t think he even has gloves! But he’s leaning, grabbing, throwing. “OK, you’ve got it!” A second one skids across the ground to my right, and the remaining demonstrators scurry away. I rush over, lean down, grasp it with my heavy-duty mitt, and chuck it back towards the police line. I hear rubber bullets whizzing, though it’s hard to see and the gas is starting to burn again. I turn and sprint diagonally backwards towards the park, out of range. There’s no crowd cover and I stand way out. But they’re not charging; the riot cops haven’t taken advantage of the ground they’ve cleared, only advancing a few yards out of the grassy slope they were on and still on the far side of the intersection.
\n\nOh shit, where is my affinity group? I got so zeroed in on getting those canisters back where they belong, I lost track. Strafing laterally to stay out of police view I scan the trickle of demonstrators on the sidewalk by the museum. Oh great, I see one of us. Skirting the edges of the park, I jog across the street and intercept them. Here we are. There’s one of us still missing—scanning, scanning—there they are, hustling this way. We’re reunited.
\n\n“You OK?” “Yes, you?” “Aargh, I took a fucking tear gas canister to the face!” Oh shit.
\n\nWe round the corner away from the police line and crouch against a wall. They lift up their mask; there’s a lot of blood. “How does it look?” “Uh, kinda bad.” Is there a medic around? Medic? No medic. Someone’s got more bottles of milk, but nothing past that. We find a clean bandanna and rinse the wound with water. It looks gnarly, but isn’t actually bleeding that heavily, and the pain is manageable. Whew. Mask back on. What’s next?
\n\nMore police vehicles are pouring in. No charge yet, but they’re swelling their forces, while our crowd is trickling away. The street and intersection are still clogged but some cars are getting through, and there appear to be more police in the street than us, with remaining demonstrators lurking on the sidewalks taunting the cops or waiting on the edges to see what happens next. As we lean against a wall, the protestor who was calling the cops “faggots” earlier asks my cocksucking friend to borrow a lighter, and they share a smoke and a friendly moment. A small victory.
\n\nWe heard rumors of people massing by the courthouse and decide to check it out, as things seem to be wrapping up here. It’s fake news, though, and now we’re isolated from any crowd. I think we’re done here. Pop into an alleyway for a fashion moment. With our outerwear changed, we’re back in civilian drag and walking back to the parking garage where the conflict kicked off, where our car is hopefully still waiting. We climb a stairwell to the second floor, then pause to look out over the street. The angle offers a perfect view of a low wall spanning the sidewalk across the street, along which a massive message in gold spray paint reads:
\n\nTHE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN <3
\n\nIf so, it certainly has a long way to go. But it’s a start.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/Dakarai_Turner/status/1266549838788902914\n\n\n
\nhttps://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1267641851215036416\n\n\n
These two tweets give a sense of the kind of footage that conservative television stations were compelled to broadcast during the uprising—and, incidentally, of the uselessness of police.
\n\nAfter the clashes on Friday [May 29], the crowd continued to gather at Centennial Olympic Park for a few days, even though many of the adjacent stores and bars had already been smashed and looted. At first, it seemed stupid to keep going there, but there was also a special charm. When the city government declared the curfew, they established a guaranteed moment of conflict; many people would arrive in the hour ahead of curfew, just in time to clash with the police.
\n\nThe first volley of tear gas had been enough to disperse the crowd the previous night, but on this evening, many people had arrived prepared to respond. Within a few minutes, hundreds of people were dragging construction equipment into Centennial Olympic Park Drive, constructing a tremendous barricade against the National Guard and police. All around, people were throwing rocks and bricks into the road for others to use, while some pummeled the National Guard with them. Some people I took to be college students were telling people to stop throwing things; meanwhile, the front lines were building a second layer of barricades many feet high. I heard someone tell the white college students to break bricks if they wanted to help—simply being there wasn’t enough.
\n\nMedics were treating people for tear gas exposure, but many people were quickly throwing every canister back. I saw a fairly large group of Black people approach a smaller group of non-Black people at the front barricade. “We want to go loot some stores up on Peachtree Street, but we need the cops to stay down here. Can you guys hold this up?”
\n\n“Yeah, 20 minutes at least.”
\n\nAnti-oppression activists went on yelling that white people were endangering Black people. The police were pinned at the site of conflict for 40 minutes before they could disperse the crowd. No one was arrested that night on Peachtree Street.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/4.jpg\")
Minneapolis, May 30.
\nFrom the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Occupied Coast Salish territory.
\n\nThe most joyous occasion I experienced took place in the hours following the shooting at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). Everybody’s response was a perfect illustration of the fact that we don’t need police to protect us. One of the front-line demonstrators who have been at the demonstrations every day helped to stop the attacker from driving his car into us. The driver shot him, and the street medics began applying a tourniquet before the assailant had even gotten out of the car.
\n\nWithin hours, every street that led to the demonstration outside the precinct was blocked by repurposed police barricades, boulders, people’s cars, and lines of people standing with their bikes. The numbers of the demonstration swelled to even greater attendance. In the face of increasingly violent police repression, as well as reactionary attacks from behind, those of us in the streets showed our dedication to each other to prove that a world without police isn’t just a political statement, it’s a possible solution to the violence of our lives.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/17.jpg\")
Seattle, Washington.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/15.jpg\")
Seattle, Washington, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
\nSome years ago, the police tried to ruin my life. They led me to a room in their police precinct, angry and joyous about catching me, smiling with their gaping teeth. They locked my feet to the floor and then they beat me. The experience of being at the violent whim of something or someone so powerful is something I will always struggle with. At any random moment, I can still feel like I am covered in blood. Alone. Crying.
\n\nI will never forgive the police. I’m not one to make bravado-filled proclamations about violence against cops. I would prefer they simply leave their posts. But if I saw one of the cops who beat me on the ground begging for his life while having a stress-induced heart attack, I’d step over him without hesitation.
\n\nFor hours, outside the room, the police concocted a story to use to charge me with a crime. They came in from time to time, screaming and threatening to beat me again. Breathing in and out, I sat there telling myself that I had to prepare for it. Imagining the punches, preemptively tensing my whole body in anticipation. Fortunately, more beating never came. But the criminal indictment from a grand jury came just a day later.
\n\nTwo years later, after dozens of court appearances, I was acquitted. I was lucky. I didn’t end up dead or locked up.
\n\nI know that as an anarchist, this is just the way it goes. We fight political, social, and economic authority in all the forms they assume. We come up against the forces of domination and we shouldn’t be surprised when they respond with brute force. Still, it stings. And even though my mind and body can often be in this state of war, it is ultimately something I want to be released from.
\n\nIn a lot of ways, the repression we experience can only be healed through the process of revolt. Mass refusal is the complicated release of our repressed longings—influenced by the various personal and systematic traumas we experience. These longings cannot be placated or understood by political campaigns or reform. Sadly, mass refusal often only occurs after a resonating event that is extremely painful and traumatic—a police murder, in this case. It can be an opportunity for the release of a freedom that is always struggling to break through the seemingly hopeless daily façade we call “normal”—liberation from racialization, patriarchy, capital, politics, school, or religion. The police are usually the ones who repress our efforts to shake free of all of these. But when things pass beyond their control, the release of energy feels infinite.
\n\nThe uprising in Minneapolis after the murder of the George Floyd was such a release. An exit from this reality, from the hopelessness that history imposes on us. It represents the possible return of the repressed as actors against the various levels of invisibility that are imposed upon us. Against the reality that can push you down for being poor and black and then kill you for trying to pass a bad dollar bill as real. The same one that can also kill you without using the police—be it through the virus or the stress of private property, race, class, or social stigma.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/11.jpg\")
Minneapolis.
\nOn May 28, a window opened. It was like a jubilee. A great leveling. Many stores in Minneapolis became free—especially around the Third Precinct. The free movement of formerly locked up goods at Target and Cub Foods—what is called “looting”—was a sight to behold. I think of the times I’ve nervously shoplifted and I think of all the times I and others like me have been caught by security. I also think of all those who have been murdered over the theft or perceived theft of commodities.
\n\nWalking around the diverse crowd, there was poetry everywhere—both on the brick and mortar and in the actions of everyone present. I wanted to see it all. A car was on fire and people were going to the Target to grab what little was left of flammable materials to add to the fire—mannequins, display tables, and the like. Some churchy couple was playing guitar, singing Leonard Cohen songs, and people were singing along. A medic tent, presumably full of supplies looted from Target and Cub, was handing out water and providing first aid. Cars were streaming into the parking lot, so much so that there was a constant traffic jam. Thousands of people were going in and out of Target and Cub Food and filling up their cars with liberated goods, many of them with shopping lists. They were smiling.
\n\nI heard one man in the store asking a friend on the phone where exactly the kitty litter was. At some point, someone tried to drive a car into Cub food, but failed. A liquor store was also being looted nearby and folks were sharing the spoils. The floors of these former stores were flooded with water and soggy paper from the sprinkler systems—but that did not stop some of them from eventually catching fire. A nearby bank drive-through ATM was meticulously broken into by a large group of people cheering each other on. It was all very cordial, no conflict in sight—besides with the police.
\n\nI had numerous conversations with people. I can’t count the number of times random people would walk by me and we would catch each other’s glance and both say something like “IS THIS REAL? ARE WE DREAMING RIGHT NOW? WHAT IS THIS?” One mom and her young son came down from a suburb to just see it. She was a sociologist and we started discussing the reasons for it all. Her son wandered off into the Target and she rushed off to find him. Another guy was talking about how what was happening was straight up anarchy. The range of people was extremely diverse—yet I saw none of the conflict around race that I’m used to seeing in similar situations.
\n\nLater on, as the sun went down, there was another attack on the already smashed up Third Precinct. From the roof, the cops responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, but then they stopped and abandoned the roof. In the adjacent parking lot, they were firing gas and rubber bullets as the rest of the cops that could fit into cars were getting in them. The others who couldn’t fit crowded together into a riot line, periodically shooting at onlookers in order to protect the ones getting into the cars. Eventually, all the cops made their way to the gate of the parking lot. The cops on foot struggled to open the gate by hand, then eventually gave up. One officer used a car to ram the gate, bursting it open. A line of cops and cars spilled out, from cruisers to bearcats—all abandoning the precinct. It was incredible. Rocks were being thrown at them, laser pointers shined at them. Just like that, they were gone.
\n\nThe crowd went wild. It’s the happiest you could be, running the police out. A fire appeared in the lobby of the precinct. There was no effort to stop it and no need to stop it.
\n\nSeeing a police precinct burn is a much-needed release for all those who have been forced inside one, for everyone who has been beaten inside it, for everyone who loves someone who has been murdered by the police. Seeing cops run scared from a righteous crowd is a release. It’s healing.
\n\nAt some point, a USPS van showed up, all of its windows busted out, covered in graffiti. The driver was doing burnouts and donuts. People flipped it and set it on fire. Another banged up van peeled around the corner five minutes later and the driver nearly hit a few people doing donuts again. People eventually convinced the driver to chill and to reverse it into the burning police station; but in the confusion, people kept getting in the way, so the driver rammed it into the other burning USPS van and it, too, went up. Another one showed up five minutes later, too, set on fire down the street.
\n\nWhen we are given free rein, what comes out is beautiful—creative and destructive. When we destroy the halls of power, where we are so often forced to speak in tongues or body rhythms that aren’t for us (law, social justice, reform), other paths of experimentation open up before us. Ways of living that already existed in the shadows of capital and authority can bloom freely and new ones that have yet to be created can emerge.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/17/10.jpg\")
\nEditor’s note: Along with many experienced street medics and animal liberation advocates, we strongly recommend using water rather than milk to treat exposure to tear gas. ↩
\nTo emphasize the artistic aspects of the uprising against police and white supremacy that has spread around the country from Minneapolis, we present a mural recording some of the names of the dead, which appeared immediately after the murder of George Floyd. Painted on the side of a derelict house in a St. Louis neighborhood devastated by imposed scarcity, it memorializes twenty-one people whose lives have been taken by police or vigilantes. Below, we explore the context of the mural and offer some background on those whose names are recorded on it. Remembering means fighting.
\n\n\n\n\n“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
\n\n-Zora Neale Hurston
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/1.jpg\")
\nIt is significant that this mural appears in south St. Louis, only a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri, the site of the historic uprising of 2014. In many ways, the uprising in Minneapolis and the worldwide wave of revolt that it catalyzed are simply a continuation of a much longer struggle that re-entered the public consciousness with the rebellion in Ferguson in response to the murder of Michael Brown. We can trace a thread from the riots in Oakland in January 2009 in response to the police murder of Oscar Grant1 through a series of similar revolts around the US culminating in the uprisings in Ferguson and Baltimore in 2014 and 2015.
\n\nIf we follow the roots of these upheavals, we can go back further still—to the riots of the 1960s and all the way to the struggle against chattel slavery in the 1800s. As long as racialized disparities in power have been imposed from above, people have struggled against them from below.
\n\nIn the current cycle of struggle, we are seeing many familiar dynamics play out once more. The movement in Minneapolis took off as a consequence of the courageous, confrontational action of outraged ordinary people who for the most part did not think of themselves as activists. Once it became clear that brute force would not suffice to put down the ungovernable rebellion, the authorities mobilized the National Guard, while liberal “community leaders” and police departments shifted tactics, attempting to present themselves as friends of the movement on the condition that the participants abandon the unruly strategies that had given them power in the first place.
\n\nNow self-described organizers are seeking to regain control of the streets, encouraging people to wait for a “justice” system that offers no guarantees. But as Alton, Illinois native Miles Davis admonished us decades ago, “When you’re creating your own shit, man [sic], even the sky ain’t the limit.”
\n\nIn fact, all of these things that are happening now happened before in the Ferguson uprising. To be oriented in the present, it can help to go back and learn about the past.
\n\nWhile the 2014 uprising crested without breaching the fortifications of the police department, the movement of the past two weeks has attacked and shut down police stations from Minneapolis to Ferguson. In the words of Guy Debord, this kind of poetry “brings back into play all the unsettled debts of history.”
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/stlcountypd/status/1266947767630548993\n\n\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/2.jpg\")
The Ferguson police station on May 31, 2020.
\n\n\n\n“Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.”
\n\n-Maya Angelou, one-time resident of St. Louis
\n
As Milan Kundera put it, “The struggle of man [sic] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” In remembering the dead and the resistance that they inspired, we preserve a space for defiant grieving and a vision of a world without hierarchy.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/3.jpg\")
\nContent warning: some of the following heartbreaking stories include graphic detail.
\n\nGeorge Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020. Officers pinned him to ground and crushed the life out of him, despite pleas from both Floyd and bystanders that they were killing him. Protests in response to his death have catalyzed rioting, looting, and fires on a scale not seen in decades.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/4.jpg\")
A mural memorializing George Floyd in Minneapolis.
\nKiwi Herring, a Black transgender woman, was shot to death by St. Louis police on August 23, 2017. Before police arrived, Herring had been using a knife to defend herself against a transphobic neighbor. Police used Herring’s knife as justification for killing her, then pressed trumped up charges against Herring’s partner, Kris Thompson, in order to keep Thompson from testifying against them. The charges are still pending. Herring’s death sparked local protests.
\n\nMike Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. Brown’s death ignited weeks of protests, riots, and looting, precipitating anti-police struggles throughout America.
\n\nIsaiah Hammett, a white 21-year-old, was killed by a St. Louis SWAT team during a no-knock raid on June 7, 2017. After he secured the safety of his disabled grandfather, Hammett was shot to death by police, who fired over 100 rounds at him. In response to his death, Hammett’s friends and family led rowdy protests for days throughout south St. Louis, using their home as a base.
\n\nAiyana Stanley-Jones, an 8-year-old African-American girl, was killed by a Detroit SWAT team when they raided the wrong address on May 16, 2010. According to her grandmother, a flash grenade set Aiyana on fire before police shot her to death.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/7.jpg\")
A mural memorializing Aiyana Stanley-Jones and Malice Green, a Black man who was murdered by white police officers in Detroit.
\nVonDerrit Myers, Jr. was killed by Officer Jason Flanery while Flanery was moonlighting as private security in south St. Louis’s Shaw neighborhood on October 8, 2014. Within hours of the shooting, a riotous crowd drove police from the scene of the Black teenager’s death. Occurring between the Ferguson uprising in August and the announcement in November that Michael Brown’s murderer would not be indicted, the killing sparked two nights of protests during which demonstrators attacked police, burned flags, and marched down the wealthy block that had hired Officer Flanery as security. Though the SLMPD had no qualms employing Flanery after he killed VonDerrit Myers, Flanery was fired in 2016 after he crashed his squad car in a wealthy neighborhood while drunk and high on cocaine.
\n\nKajieme Powell was killed by St. Louis police officers Thomas Shelton and Ellis Brown August 19, 2014, ten days after the killing of Mike Brown. Powell, a 25-year-old Black man, had been pacing around holding a knife during a mental health episode. Instead of assessing the situation or helping Powell, police killed him within moments of arriving on the scene.
\n\nSandra Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, died under suspicious circumstances in a Weller County, Texas jail on July 13, 2015. Police claim she hanged herself; others doubt this narrative. Whether police killed Bland outright or simply held her against her will, causing severe distress, they are responsible for her death. Police are a danger to anyone they come in contact with, especially people of color, poor people, and those suffering mental health problems. Bland’s death catalyzed protests across America.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/6.jpg\")
\nVanessa Evans, a 37-year-old Black woman, died in police custody on November 5, 2010. Guards and medical staff in St. Louis’s downtown jail ignored repeated pleas from Evans that she was having an asthma attack and could not breathe. The jail is notorious for killing people by preventing them from accessing medical attention.
\n\nJesus “Chuy” Huerta died in police custody in Durham, North Carolina on November 19, 2013. Police claimed that the 17-year-old Huerta shot himself while handcuffed in the back of a police car. Huerta’s death drove protesters to march to the Durham police station and smash out its windows, precipitating weeks of conflict.
\n\nMansur Ball-Bey, a Moorish teenager, was killed by St. Louis police on August 19, 2015. Ball-Bey was killed while fleeing a raid of his home. Rowdy protests ensued. Ball-Bey’s death occurred on the one-year anniversary of police killing Kajieme Powell. To make matters worse, the killer of VonDerrit Myers, Jr., Officer Jason Flanery, was spotted with a tactical unit sent to quell protesters.
\n\nBreonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed by Louisville police during a no-knock raid on March 13, 2020. Many people have invoked Breonna Taylor’s memory during recent anti-police demonstrations. Inspired by the Minneapolis revolt, on the night of May 28, protesters in Louisville trashed buildings, set fires, and looted for eight hours as a way of honoring Taylor and others the police have killed or harmed.
\n\nCarlo Giuliani was shot and killed by an Italian police officer on July 20, 2001. As a participant in the anti-globalization movement, the 23-year-old Giuliani had been engaging in combative protest against the G8 summit in Genoa.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/8.jpg\")
Graffiti remembering Carlo Giuliani in Piazza Vetra, Milan, Italy.
\nFrancis McIntosh was burned to death by a lynch mob on April 28, 1836 in modern-day Kierner Plaza, St. Louis. Police had arrested McIntosh, a Black steamboat worker, earlier in the day, after he refused to help them apprehend a shipmate of his. Officers William Mull and George Hammand told McIntosh he was going to be lynched. Fearing for his life, McIntosh stabbed them to death and fled, but was quickly captured.
\n\nIf in the 1830s, white racist St. Louis had a stereotype of the “dangerous Black man,” it was the river worker. Enslaved or free, river workers were strong and independent. They traveled the waterways of the Midwest socializing, plotting, expropriating, and getting a sense of the world both North and South.
\n\nAfter the thousands-strong mob took McIntosh from the jail, they chained him to a locust tree, piled wood to his knees, and burned him to death. Although McIntosh pleaded with the mob to put him out of his misery during the half hour it took the flames to kill him, an unnamed alderman stood guard with a pistol to make sure that no one did.
\n\nTrayvon Martin was shot to death by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. Though Martin was simply walking home, Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, assumed that the teenager was up to no good. Zimmerman stopped Martin and killed him. Martin’s death enraged people across America, ushering in a new era of protests against police and vigilantes.
\n\nDonnel Dortch, a Black teenager, was killed by a Kinloch police officer in September 1962. Dortch’s death sparked days of protests, riots, and fires throughout north St. Louis County. The suburban municipality of Kinloch borders Ferguson; these riots were a precursor to the 2014 uprising.
\n\nJoseph “Bam Bam” Long died in Meacham Park on July 5, 2005. Meacham Park, a Black working-class neighborhood in the suburbs of St. Louis, is surrounded by the affluent and white municipality of Kirkwood, which has a long history of exploiting Meacham Park while cutting off resources to it. At the age of 12, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long collapsed from a preexisting heart condition. When police arrived on the scene, they took advantage of the situation to search the house for Long’s older brother, Kevin Johnson, rather than administering aid to Long. Later in the day, after Long had died, Kevin Johnson killed one of the officers who had let his brother die. Johnson is currently on death row in Missouri.
\n\nAlexis Grigoropoulos was killed by Greek police on December 6, 2008. The 15-year-old was out with friends celebrating his feast day in the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens when police shot him to death. The killing of Grigoropoulos provoked weeks of riots, looting, strikes, occupations, and fires throughout Athens and beyond.
\n\nJohn was killed by vigilante slave owners in Lewis County, Missouri on November 2, 1849. The elderly John had helped plan and execute the mass escape of between 30 and 40 people in northeastern Missouri. The runaways were friends and family of John’s who were enslaved to five local households. Though they managed to collect provisions and a number of their masters’ wagons and carts, the group stalled fifteen miles short of the Mississippi River, which marked the divide between “free” Illinois and enslaved Missouri. John was shot to death while attempting to negotiate, after which the runaways surrendered. Their masters re-enslaved the runaways and sold at least one conspirator, the medicine woman Lin, down river.
\n\nAmadou Diallo, a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant, was shot to death by four New York City police officers on February 4, 1999. Diallo was returning from a late dinner; when the police stopped him, he reached inside his coat to remove his ID. The four officers responded by shooting 41 times in the span of just a few seconds, hitting Diallo 19 times. The killing sparked protests in NYC. Diallo’s name has come to evoke the vicious and cruel racism of the police.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/06/08/5.jpg\")
A mural in memory of Amadou Diallo.
\nCary Ball, Jr., a 25-year-old Black man, was killed by St. Louis police officers Jason Chambers and Timothy Boyce. After a brief chase through downtown, Ball crashed his car. The police then shot him 25 times.
\n\nCountless others. We could fill whole city blocks with the names of those killed by police, vigilantes, and other perpetrators of systemic violence. In America alone, the police have ended the lives of about a thousand people per year for several years running now. While this mural emphasizes Black people killed locally and recently, it also includes a range of other people of various genders, races, spaces, and times, a mix of high-profile and relatively unknown cases.
\n\nAny such mural will always be incomplete. Even the scorched walls of all the worlds police stations and government buildings could never suffice to fit the names of all the people murdered by those institutions.
\n\nPart of the anarchist presence in the first Oscar Grant riots was organized by the group UA in the Bay, a holdover from the countrywide Unconventional Action network that had helped organize the anarchist mobilization against the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities in summer 2008. Everything comes full circle. ↩
\nFive years ago today, a police officer murdered a black teenager named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Police officers kill young black men every day in the United States, but that day, people rose up in response, generating a countrywide groundswell of resistance to police and white supremacy. We revisit the Ferguson uprising today because it still has things to teach us. One way we can start is by trying to distinguish between the events that occurred and the ways they have been mythologized since.
\n\nTo observe this anniversary, we are publishing the complete diary of an anarchist from St. Louis who participated in most of the major events of the uprising. This valuable historical document illustrates the tensions within the movement from its outset and poses important questions about what it means to act in solidarity. It has not been made public until now.
\n\nBe warned that this narrative includes a tremendous amount of violence and tragedy. Also, it represents only one of the countless perspectives from the struggles that emerged in Ferguson; in the future, we aim to publish other accounts, from other vantage points. If you wish to communicate with the source of this account, email lootingback@riseup.net.
\n\nIn one passage, the author describes a harrowing scene in which a friend was hit by stray gunshots during a confrontation with police officers. The text does not describe what happened to the friend afterwards, so we will do so here. For days, a bullet remained lodged in his heart as he lay in the hospital on life support at the threshold of death. Miraculously, he survived. He owes his life, in part, to the courage and generosity of strangers who helped to make sure he reached the hospital, as well as to all the friends who supported him through the arduous recovery process.
\n\nOthers were not so fortunate. Six people who played an active role in the uprising have passed away in the five years since Michael Brown was murdered. Deandre Joshua and Darren Seals were both found shot inside of burned cars. MarShawn McCarrel shot himself outside the front door of the Ohio State House. Edward Crawford, Jr., made famous by a photograph showing him lobbing a tear gas canister back at the police who shot it, committed suicide. Danye Jones was found hanging from a tree in his backyard. Bassem Masri, a Palestinian American, is the only one among the dead who was not a young black man.
\n\nSome of these deaths took place under suspicious circumstances, but there is no need to look for a secretive conspiracy. The conspiracy is out in the open: it is the all-too-familiar workings of a society that dehumanizes, impoverishes, incarcerates, and kills youth of color via a wide variety of interlocking mechanisms. We remember these six people not as victims, but as fighters who joined hundreds of other people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities in confronting the system that inflicts these tragedies.
\n\nOf those serving time for convictions related to the uprising in Ferguson, Alex Irwin has just been released, leaving six political prisoners still held captive. You can learn about their cases and how to support them here.
\n\nThe struggle continues.
\n\nThe world is fire: a sun, hot, elusive, exploding and yet constant at the same time.
\n\nThe world is water: carving millions of pathways through the land and our bodies, distinct and subtle, converging and diverging.
\n\nConfounding all algorithms, it violates all commandments, moralities, and religions, contradicts all political ideology, and constantly defies description.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/33a.jpg\")
\nConversations blended together. Stress was more than a feeling; it was bullets ripping through someone’s precious body, a vigil, gunfire, flames, police, a riot, tear gas, a mob, an argument, racial tension, and a pre-existing interpersonal problem, all of it boiling over at once.
\n\nWe lived moment to moment through those times. By day, we took over the streets in ways we had thought impossible. At night, we lobbed back tear gas canisters, threw rocks, fought off police and the activists who attempted to control us. At times, the cops, the preachers, and the activists lost all authority over what was going on; that was what opened the way to something bigger. It was a chance to confront all the people and systems that maintain a stranglehold on the world.
\n\nIt was all so short, but it went on long enough to burn deep scars in me and in so many others. These are both a curse and a blessing.
\n\nThe people who filled the streets of West Florissant, South Florissant, and Canfield after Mike Brown was murdered were driven by too many different motivations to summarize. We came out for Mike Brown, for ourselves, for a world without police and racism, for and against “whiteness” or “blackness,” for freedom, for reform or revolution, for the riot and the loot, for the hell of it. It all depended on who you asked.
\n\nWhat follows are my observations of the events and the dynamics at play during the uprising. Much of this is derived from personal experiences during the first week and a half after the murder of Mike Brown in August 2014. I recount my participation in the rebellion from my vantage point, including my white racial coding and my anarchist commitments. Without a doubt, there are differences in perspective and lived experience that distinguish me from many of those I met—but there were also many things that connected us across race and experience. In many ways, our lives exceed the confines of racialization and political identity. In other ways, they don’t, and many believe so fervently in those categories that they will use violence to enforce them.
\n\nThroughout history, people have responded in a variety of ways to different forms of control and domination—to colonization, racialization, slavery, and more. Some respond by making peace with their oppressors and cooperating with them. Others hide in the hills, making themselves inaccessible to those who seek to assimilate or enslave them. Others resist, collectively or individually. The point is to figure out what you want to do and find others who are doing the same. People who experience the same form of oppression will not necessarily react the same way.
\n\nI shared a multitude of enemies and struggles in common with many of the people I met. However, our experience of these enemies as well as our place in these struggles was often very different. Repeatedly, black people who were unafraid of the consequences of throwing down chose to go much further than I did.
\n\nMy experiences with the police and the world they enforce are often structured differently because I am defined by part of this world as “white.” But I have my own reasons to fight. I don’t only want to fight for freedom for others, but for myself as well. This perspective feels more genuine than claiming to fight for a large racialized group of people, people who have equally numerous and possibly antagonistic perspectives that I can’t speak for or homogenize.
\n\nIt’s easier for academics, politicians, media figures, and other dominant mouthpieces to speak for those who have been killed precisely because they cannot speak for themselves. At the same time, the creative ways that ordinary people resist in their daily lives are not given much attention. When this daily resistance becomes a mass rebellion, those who are afraid of losing their power or money seek to kill it. In an uprising, people come alive against the limitations and separations that are forced on them in their day-to-day lives. An essential function of the repression of rebellion is to enforce the boundaries that keep things the way they are.
\n\nMike Brown’s name was used both to disparage the uprising and to support it. Lots of people wanted to speak for him, to expand their platforms or suppress others’ narratives. In doing so, they obscured the fact that people fight for a diversity of reasons, whether motivated by personal experience, or frustration with authority or oppression, or the realistic fear that what happened to Michael Brown could easily happen to them or their children. We didn’t need to know Mike Brown to know that what happened to him happens daily.
\n\nIt is not only the police who kill. The police are just the last line of violence and repression. School, family, capitalism, the church, and race itself produce most of the daily battles that people fight long before the police get involved. Often, the police enter the scenario when someone is perceived to be violating some kind of barrier.
\n\nThe exploitation and murder of black and poor people built the foundations of much of what is called civilization today. We should not forget this, nor the prolonged and powerful resistance to it. This resistance often takes forms that are not considered part of the sort of “fair and civil discourse” in which we talk things out with those who oppress us. A classic example of civility is voting for those who oppress you. Those who control all the land and capital would prefer that we debate them peacefully than ransack the wealth they have—wealth they gained from our labor and the labor of people like us. The proponents of civility remain the greatest slave masters in the world.
\n\nIn Ferguson, resistance to exploitation and murder took avenues that challenged the false peace of the “social contract” of civil society, the supposed agreement that we’re all willing to live peacefully together in exchange for the supposed security and liberty provided by police and other state institutions. This contract was not created for poor people, but to protect those with power, capital, and property.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/1a.jpg\")
Police bringing out the dogs in Ferguson on August 9.
\nI am at the ocean. I don’t know how it works, but sometimes the water is so cold and then, for some reason, it’s warm. Sometimes I find pockets of warmth. Something about the wind blowing either from the ocean or from the land heats the water, or so I hear from my favorite uncle. Today was one of the warm periods.
\n\nSt. Louis lies across the country in another time zone. I’m avoiding the city, like I usually do in the summer. There are no beaches to swim at there, really no water to swim in unless you want to feed the flesh-eating bacteria. The air itself is toxic. If you ride your bike around, you’re liable to encounter various horrible smells from off-gassing factories. Cancer calls your name. Not far from my home, there is a smoldering underground landfill fire that is heading toward a buried cache of uranium from the Manhattan Project.
\n\nIt’s hard to comprehend the ocean, this expanse of both nothingness and voluptuous life that flows and ebbs right in front of me. It’s beautiful and I can’t help but stare into it as far as I can. It makes me contemplate what’s out there and then, inevitably, wonder about myself. This water has life beyond my imagination. The waves crash over and over upon themselves, feeding the next one and the next one and the next one. The water never tires.
\n\nWe gather our things and leave the beach for the day. At my aunt’s house, I read the news from home. Mike Brown, another black kid, has been gunned down by police. My mind races through the countless posters we have made and wheat-pasted about people murdered by police. I think about all the times cops have fucked with me, arrested me, beaten me. I think about all the times my friends and I held demonstrations to support people—friends or comrades or strangers—who were beaten, locked up, or murdered by the state. I think of all the bullshit we’ve had to deal with from the police, never getting a chance to stick it to them. We’ve written letters to prisoners, yelled outside the jails, supported struggles inside prisons, broken things. Sometimes it was fruitful, but often it felt like a mere whimper. It always felt like we were yelling at a brick wall. Often we were.
\n\nI go on with my day, but first, I make sure to ask friends back in St. Louis about the killing. They have heard the news; they are going to a vigil that has been called in response. Hours later, they tell me how they stood around a bloodstained patch of asphalt with hundreds of people, many crying, trying to figure out what to do. The gunfire of angry people kept the police away for many hours. Eventually, in a show of force, the cops brought out the dogs.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/2a.jpg\")
On August 10, black nationalist leaders Anthony Shahid and Zaki Baruki seek to pacify protestors on S. Florissant so that Ferguson Police Chief Jackson can speak. They fail and the chief leaves the stage. The police station is located on S. Florissant; this is where peaceful demonstrations, civil disobedience, and press conferences organized by activists and non-profits take place. The two crowds—the W. Florissant rowdies and S. Florissant organizer types—are often at odds with each other.
\nMy emotions run wild, exaggerating and extrapolating. This ocean is an abyss that only grows darker once you stare into it. Now it strikes me as an endless expanse of cold water, a powerful force that could kill me with little effort.
\n\nThe world is beautiful, or it could be, but it all just feels like a sea of misfortunes. On land, we’re like an ocean of bodies, moved by waves and tides, a crowd in a space that is too tight. We push and pull against one another. Some of us eat; many starve. We all breathe, or try to. But there’s not really any unity beyond this. Some people profit off others’ deaths, and they breathe like the rest of us. Many of us struggle against it in our own ways, collectively or individually. But we tire easily—history runs its tide right over us and washes everything away. Is there no escape?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/3a.jpg\")
After the vigil, people confront police and run them off of W. Florissant.
\nLater that night, texts and calls come in. The streets of Ferguson are exploding. An unruly crowd is disobeying calls for peace. The police and the usual political organizations are at a loss. The police bring in reinforcements. They bring out the dogs like it’s the 1950s in the South.
\n\nThe old world of past black rebellion that we saw in black-and-white photos is in front of our eyes in full color. It never disappeared; it only morphed into something more powerful—the new ghettos, overflowing prisons in which slavery is legal, police murders, wage slavery, speeding tickets, gentrification, evictions. It’s hard to imagine life in the 1950s. The 1950s days of fire, the 1950s water cannons, the 1950s dogs barking and mauling protestors, the 1950s lynchings: we think of them all in black and white, relegating them to the past. “You wouldn’t understand the troubles back then. Things weren’t as vivid then as they are now.” I can’t imagine the world before, but I know that people saw as vividly then as they see now. They fought tooth and nail. We will too.
\n\nThe media talks about a vigil turned “violent.” A friend calls me, in shock, describing what he calls a riot. People are angry. It’s not a protest so much as a release. Cop cars driving through crowds while a gauntlet of people throw things and kick them. Friends tell me that some people in the crowd are firing guns, which has the effect of warding off the police. Everything is getting smashed. Stores are getting looted. A chasm has been crossed, but from what to what I’m not sure. The local established black activist political organizations are perplexed and scared, ready to disown it. For a while, they will find people to blame for the riots, for going beyond the usual respectable protest methods.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/4a.jpg\")
Looting.
\nThis world is experiencing a moment of rebellion. The endless, monotonous waves of salt water are not so oppressive now. Before there were no exits; now some are opening up. But they aren’t in the form of a designated exit door. They’re more like rugged gaps in that unbreakable brick wall we have been knocking our heads against. You’re free to leave now, if just for a moment. Leave! This is a moment, an opening, before our enemies kill, suppress, politrick, disperse, or arrest us. Hurry! The old world is behind you!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/5a.jpg\")
The QT on fire.
\nCops mobilize to protect property and capital. Liberals scream about police militarization. The reality is that cops were attacked and a gas station was looted and burned. It should not surprise us that they react this way. Cops uphold class society; they are the first line of defense when we directly attack capitalist and state property.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/6a.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/7a.jpg\")
\nI’ve walked into something and I don’t even know.
\n\nI will soon learn that lots of people are here to rebel. We’re all taking advantage of the situation, because this situation doesn’t happen every day. The demands of day-to-day life—bills, raising kids, rent, police, and the grind of work—are hard to challenge. We rarely get a chance to fight back.
\n\nThose who speak about “outsiders” alienating the “community,” including those who talk the radical talk about the “colonization” of such moments by outside forces, are often seeking to erase the inevitable conflict between those who want peace and dialogue with the state and those who want something else. A diversity of experiences and actions creates mass rebellion. For some, anyone outside of Ferguson is an outsider. For others, anyone outside of North County (the conglomerate of suburbs around Ferguson) or outside of St. Louis is an outsider. For still others, anyone who is not black is an outsider.
\n\nThere is something to explore in all of this. Is this moment the product of one “community”? Is Ferguson the only place, the only “people” who experience the police and the misery they enforce? There is no wall separating Ferguson from other places; the police do the same thing everywhere there are poor people. Ferguson is not a tight-knit family with a singular character; it’s an alienating suburb where people are just as atomized by capitalist and state relations as they are in any other suburb.
\n\nEven if people start off as outsiders, spatially or racially, that isn’t necessarily permanent, either. Outsiders can meet each other. “Outsiders” can be just as rightfully agitated as those who are “inside.” They can learn from each other. And some who are assumed to be outsiders aren’t outsiders at all. For instance, take white teenage kids who go to school in North County, many of whose friends are black. They might go to the streets of Ferguson for shared reasons; they might go there for their friends and even for themselves. Or take someone of any race who lives miles away, but shares family ties with someone who lives in Ferguson and is affected by the same police and the same racism that killed Mike Brown. There surely are differences in experiences and histories, but this doesn’t make one entirely an outsider. All political geography that designates “inside” and “outside” is about control.
\n\nFor many people, from all around St. Louis and the US, what is happening in response to the murder of Mike Brown is an opportunity to finally seek justice, or to get even with the police or another enemy, and everyone has their own methods for how to do that. It is insulting to reduce all this to mere opportunism.
\n\nI meet some friends and we head up to Ferguson. It’s a ten-minute drive from my house. The summer heat is at full blast, turning my mind to sweaty mush. We walk around; a friend recounts the events of August 9 and points out the places where things went down. We run into some people they knew from the previous days. There’s some talk about the coming night and what’s going to go down. My friend tells me stories about tear gas, about small crowds of people fighting what sounds like urban warfare.
\n\nLater, after the sunset, the atmosphere is tense. Not surprising, considering that folks collectively looted and burned the QT a few nights before. Some are terrified of the repercussions of the riot a few nights ago. They are looking for someone to blame because they are worried about what the police are going to do if we riot again.
\n\nWe drive from the QT to a church on Chambers where Al Sharpton is speaking. The police are lurking in the shadows, blocks away—and possibly within the crowd—and there’s a mostly male security force of Nation of Islam members (NOI), New Black Panther Party members (NBPP), and others out to contain the unruly crowd. They’re trying to calm people, arguing with the ones who don’t want to follow their rules. This is compounded by the fact that Sharpton is speaking inside the building 50 feet away from us. So no, there won’t be any riot outside.
\n\nStill, where I am, there’s got be 500 to 1000 people on the street. It’s getting dark and I’m not clear exactly where I’m at geographically.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/8a.jpg\")
Outside the church where Sharpton was speaking.
\nDown the street, a group of kids are setting off firecrackers. People are chanting the now-familiar “Hands up, don’t shoot!” The later oft-heard “Black Lives Matter” chant has not made its appearance yet. It won’t for a while, not until things calm down and become more palatable. At one point, the former leader of the NBPP, Malik Shabazz, gets up and calls out, “Hands up! Shhhoooot back!” The “shoot back” is almost a whisper, if you could even do such a thing on a megaphone, and it’s pretty perplexing, not knowing who this man is.
\n\nThere aren’t a lot of white people around. In the first days, most of the woke white people left after dark or didn’t show up in the first place. For the more politically sympathetic, it was because they felt it was not their place. Still, while not a majority, there are white people around, though not many of the easily definable or “respectable” white people.
\n\nAmong supposed anti-racists, there’s a lot of people re-invoking “whiteness” as a justification not to participate. This framework obscures the ways that a homogenous or reified notion of “whiteness” breaks down under scrutiny. The desire for a strict definition of “whiteness” is strong.
\n\nThere’s a group of men who have it in for my friends. They see us as instigators of the rioting, of the arson. One of them, Tef-Poe, has ties to the mayor of St. Louis and a column in a weekly tabloid. Every pale face they see is not welcome. This might be enough to make us want to leave. But the confusing thing is that this contradicts many of the other interactions I’ve already had in this big crowd, where my color, still forever present and distinct, does not necessarily mark me out as unwelcome, even if things are occasionally uncomfortable.
\n\nWho should we listen to? The people from the political intelligentsia trying to keep the peace? Or the people who are rowdy and have none of those connections?
\n\nA white friend is confronted by these men and accused of starting fires. A contradictory crowd forms; some people defend him, while his accusers surround him, pushing him and yelling. He leaves. Tef-Poe is yelling: “If you’re an anarchist, get out! We don’t want you here!” It’s hard to know what to do. An unruly crowd is not the best place to discuss nuances. Yelling matches do not offer us much when it comes to understanding each other.
\n\nIt’s a rare thing to be in a crowd that is not seen as legitimate. Unlike a concert, a sports event, or the bustle at a shopping mall, where our experience is centered around consuming or spectatorship, this is a situation in which anything can happen. This seems to dismay those who want peace or a throwback to 1960s-style disciplined black militancy. The crowd is rife with anger, trauma, sadness, power plays, whims, and dynamics that I can never really understand.
\n\nThe people who were yelling were erasing the mostly black folks who engaged in the rebellion. They are worried about the media portrayal that will re-entrench racist stereotypes of the black looter and the violent black criminal; this is why they feel the need to conceal the reality of what happened. Instead of challenging this stereotyping and describing the looting and fire according to a different narrative—for example, critiquing the structural violence of capitalism and property rights or pointing out that the same laws that protect property once protected the authority of slave masters—they blame the acts of rebellion on someone else or downplay them completely.
\n\nLater in the night, at home, some of us argue with one another. The experience of being kicked out, of being singled out because of our whiteness and our anarchism, sparks a whole array of strong emotions. What are our motivations? Are they “pure” or are we just in it for adventure?
\n\nWhat is happening is real, it calls so much into question; it’s more real than anything I have ever felt. We want to fight back against the police because that’s what many of us have been doing for most of our lives. When others are fighting back, we can’t just stand back and watch. We want to engage in social revolution, but this moment isn’t something we can romanticize with shallow rhetoric. Our own limitations, our differences, our bad dynamics come out among ourselves for us to confront. And we should confront them. This scares me because it’s not something I’ve ever really seen in my friends. In me. There’s yelling, a temporary schism, then cooling off.
\n\nWe confront age-old oppressions and personal insecurities: the nightmare of racialization, the alienation people feel on account of being left out or because of their assigned gender or lack of experience. It feels both horrible and necessary to open these wounds right now. This moment is not pure or glorious. It’s the result of yet another vicious police murder that brings all the oppressive underpinnings of this society to the surface. It’s no surprise that this brings up the real tensions that exist among my friends. Power and oppression rear their heads in every situation.
\n\nLater, I hear that police and rebels clashed once again in the night.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/9a.jpg\")
The police continue to gear up. There are more clashes. Some people employ Molotov cocktails.
\nThe next day, I feel pretty hopeless.
\n\nIf this is all that will happen—roving patrols of police imposing order from outside while a mix of old-fashioned leftist and black nationalist (NOI, NBPP) political organizations enforce it from within—I’m not too interested. They might as well be working with the police. Case in point: later, I see people posting photos of my friends on Instagram alleging that they were looters and arsonists on the night the QT burned and calling for people to report them to the police. Some of the people in the photos weren’t even in town that night.
\n\nWe hear on the news and on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media about the “outsider agitators” or “white anarchists” from St. Louis who started all this. People talk about it is as if it’s an organized group with a leader; in fact, some make allusions to a supposed leader. I read about black and white “community members” and police telling anarchists to get out, to check their privilege.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/10a.jpg\")
A white anarchist?
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/11a.jpg\")
White anarchists lighting a Molotov cocktail?
\nThose who seek to rule would rather treat us like children, would rather see us remain downtrodden and scared, easily rallied against invented enemies.
\n\nIn moments like this, it’s powerful to see people become much more than the usual identities that are imposed by the state, politicians, and even revolutionaries according to assigned race, gender, and ability. By taking action in such moments, people are refusing to be defined anymore. This is not to say that those imposed identities or (dis)abilities completely disappear—but a difficult path away from them can emerge, at least for a moment.
\n\nThis is why many cannot admit that the rioting and looting is coming from groups of black, non-black, and white residents from Ferguson and beyond. Some of these, you could argue, are “community members”—but they are not the ones who matter in the eyes of the commentators, because they don’t have any economic or social sway, or else because they don’t fit into a preconceived conception of what an “oppressed identity” can do. Those commentators, be they liberals, black nationalists, white anti-racists, or old-fashioned leftist organizers, seem to see struggle as a matter of being victimized, in which we cower and look for an authority figure to save us—someone whose voice is heard more clearly than ours in the halls of power.
\n\nWhereas in Ferguson, in fact, struggle means an amalgamation of people (including a few anarchists) refusing to be victimized, defending ourselves, and sometimes taking the offensive against the police.
\n\nIf there were never anarchists in Ferguson, the police and political cults would have to invent them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/12a.jpg\")
More white anarchists?
\nIt only took a day or two after the QT was burnt for the town to be invaded…
\n\nEvery political cult one could imagine is here—from the RCP, Socialist Alternative, New Black Panthers, Scientologists, anarchists, and Christian mime troupes dancing to inspirational music to militia groups like the Oath Keepers seeking, so they say, not to suppress protest but to protect “free speech” and private property. Alongside them, representatives of every media outlet are here spewing lies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/13a.jpg\")
Wingnuts everywhere.
\nI learned a long time ago to rein in any assumption that I can manifest revolt merely on account of my political position. The flowery words I speak do not manifest revolt. Usually, my political cult has little influence when actual rebellion starts—and the same goes for all the other cults. This doesn’t stop the others from inflating their agency as they vie with each other to get in front of any struggle that surpasses them. That includes many well-worn political organizations with “revolutionary” pretentions.
\n\nThe script plays out like this: politicos look for the revolutionary subject to harness in this moment—or else, in some cases, the reformist subject. For some Marxists, it’s the (black) working class; for some anarchists, it’s the (black) lumpenproletariat; for liberals, it is just (black) people regardless of who and where they come from. But none of them ever actually find this subject, let alone “organize” it, because you can’t find an abstraction. Historically, they seek to discipline and mold these “subjects” to their wills, whether via mythology disguised as theory, concentration camps, policing, propaganda, or violence. And if history is any indication, they usually fail miserably, though this does not stave off the resulting misfortune.
\n\nLooking around at the scene, it’s immediately apparent how problematic most of the other pre-existing political and religious formations are; they are all so quick to tell people what they should be doing. Dozens of groups from diverse racial and political backgrounds have descended on Ferguson to “help” or “save” people. It feels like a political and religious market economy, with everyone competing to be heard. There are groups getting into megaphone-powered arguments with each other, forcing us to listen to their competing tirades, each of which is really just someone’s glorified inner monologue.
\n\nThe national media have been playing scenes of a violent and tense police siege of a suburb.
\n\nScenes from Ferguson are starting to have the effect of delegitimizing the police. A debate about the militarization of police is raging among politicians and in the media, both locally and nationally. Liberal patriots are outraged: “This is America, not Iraq.”
\n\nIn a PR move, the governor reins in the county police and temporarily hands over control of policing the protest to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The St. Louis County and Ferguson police forces are comprised of mostly white officers. The governor chooses a black highway patrol sergeant, Ron Johnson, to head the operations. Ron Johnson is from the area around Ferguson and is an incredibly nice guy—or would be, if not for his being a cop. Unlike the St. Louis County and Ferguson police, Johnson promises to allow people to protest, to heal, and to gather. This works like a Jedi mind trick on some people, but it doesn’t quiet other people down. Instead, it creates a slippery slope, a situation in which anything goes because Johnson wants people to “freely” express themselves, to have space to heal together. Little does he know that the way many of us choose to express ourselves and heal involves breaking a lot of laws.
\n\nW. Florissant, the main drag just a block away from the site of Mike Brown’s murder, looks something like a victory parade. The QT serves as a meeting point for people. There’s a large barbeque pit going. People are taking selfies in front of the burnt out QT. Kids are chalking anti-police graffiti into the parking lot. I see little kids with FTP painted on their faces. Everyone and their grandma is wearing a mask of some kind. People are dancing, there’s a drummer busting beats between obsolete gas pumps covered in graffiti. People are drinking, smoking weed. Cars overloaded with people inside and out are honking their horns unrelentingly, blasting music.
\n\nThe crowd is huge. A vast cross section of black St. Louis is here, as well as a diversity of non-black folks.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/14a.jpg\")
The QT liberated.
\nI wander through all of this, mostly on my own. Every few feet, something new is happening, unrelated to the last thing. It feels like an out-of-control party, a release after so many tense nights, like anything festive goes. “We burned this shit down and we want to be heard, don’t fuck with us anymore… or else.” Today, the police have momentarily ceded us some territory. Conversations are taking place. I can’t count the number of times someone, probably alluding to my whiteness, innocently asks me why I am there as I wander around the vast crowd. Every conversation is rewarding, a temporary melting of racial barriers.
\n\nThere are soapboxers soapboxing, but they’re on plastic milk crates… and instead of unamplified voices, they have megaphones—that oft-used tool of counter-insurgency—to yell over us plebeians. Crowds are listening to them. Some compete for listeners; I wander from one to the next. The Revolutionary Communist Party, the Nation of Islam, preachers, others I don’t know. It’s odd and kind of comical, in our atomized and digitized world, to see people doing real-life 1900s-style agitating.
\n\nI get into an argument with a RCP member who tries to give me a paper. He’s so damn beguiling it’s creepy.
\n\n“Y’all are just vultures, a cult coming here to recruit for your party. It’s sick!”
\n\nIn a way that sounds charismatically cultish he lays it out for us, “We aren’t a cult. We need people who study revolution. When you are sick, you go to a doctor who has studied medicine. When you need revolution, you go to those who have studied it for us!” So their leader, Bob Avakian is like a revolutionary doctor you call when you’re sick. Like a doctor, he has the solution to your ill. It’s particularly creepy but it also describes a lot of political ideology—theoreticians who are basically business managers who study human movement from above, in order to move us around like chess pieces.
\n\nI counter:“When I’m sick I usually don’t go to the doctor. I have friends or family who can take care of me, I have a tincture that clears my throat, I can rest, I have all these people and methods and much more! It doesn’t take just one person to heal you. They might make some contribution, but they are among many who help me. This is like what’s happening right now.”
\n\nHe can only give me an eerie smile. The conversation ends there.
\n\nLater, I run into some of the younger RCP people and we get into a similar conversation. It seems like they are a little more disgruntled now. I mention how odd and cultish their group is. Both of them are black. They tell me that they don’t worship anyone, especially not a white European man. In my head, I’m hoping this means they’ll quit the party.
\n\nRegardless, the RCP is useful in some ways. Unlike the conservative groups (like the NBPP or the Nation of Islam), they allow anyone who wants to speak to use their megaphones. They don’t shame people for wanting to fight the police. They add to the chaos of it all. But fuck them and their cult all the same.
\n\nAt some point, a contingent of New Black Panther Party members walks through the crowd in a military line and takes the median of the street in front the QT. Some of them are trying to direct traffic, which is pretty useless because people aren’t following their guidance at all. It’s literally bumper to the bumper. It all seems like an act. They’re dressed in garb straight out of the 1960s and ’70s: berets, combat boots, flak jackets, leather jackets. They line up in military formation and march in place. They raise their fists and chant “Black Power!” over and over. Some people chant it back, but most people just stare. I see a few others laugh. I get the sense that a fair amount of the crowd is put off by how out of place this group is. The clothing style and revolutionary discipline seem like a caricature. It feels fake, like they’re fronting in a crowd that is much bigger in scope than they will ever be.
\n\nThe NBPP and the Nation of Islam have an “organized” approach that aims for some kind of strict discipline. They aspire to have authority in the crowd. Beneath their militant rhetoric, they maintain a conservative agenda. They preach homophobia, anti-Semitism, patriarchy, and racial separatism, and they aspire to black capitalism. They want black people to serve as cannon fodder for their cause. In this moment, all these authoritarian groups can do is scream into a void that no one can fill. Years later, when they appear in documentaries or run for office, they will be able to talk about how they organized during the Ferguson rebellion. For now, the cacophony of everything overpowers the possibility of a disciplined force. Still, these groups are tenacious.
\n\nThe useless effort to direct the traffic on West Florissant feels like a ploy to show that they have some semblance of control when they really don’t. The people in the cars aren’t even listening to them. Basically, they ultimately aim to do state and capital better and be more just. They are in this scene to show people that they can do it better. The hope is that they will recruit people who will become enthralled by their discipline. In the days coming, their lack of influence will become much more apparent.
\n\nThere are many, many others who are part of this vast crowd that are doing something totally different. They might not even be aware that the NBPP is performing for us because they are physically somewhere else where they can’t hear or see them—this crowd goes for blocks. It’s hard to pin people down or define them, because unlike the political cults that seek to distinguish themselves with fashion, banners, and insignia, most people are not in strict groups. There are some loosely defined groups—friends, family, relatives, crews—but most people aren’t holding their own political banner hoping to make a name for themselves. This does not mean people aren’t political, that they aren’t arrogant, or that they have totally “pure” intentions. Maybe if some had the chance, they’d try to form something similar.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/15a.jpg\")
This lineage, inscribed towards the beginning of the uprising, functioned like a prophecy, or a spell.
\nMedia tents are everywhere. I see some famous news anchors whose faces I recognize, even if I don’t know their names. Is that… Anderson Cooper? They’re reporting live. I try to photobomb them. Large groups of people are surrounding their tents. We’re watching TV in real life. Some big media outlet is interviewing Ron Johnson while we yell at them. He’s good with words, but whatever he says is not the answer to the questions and feelings we have. What could he answer to our satisfaction? He’s literally the badge and the gun that holds it all together. I can see the August sweat dripping down his face, and it’s especially shiny in the bright lights of the media cameras. He’s really trying to be a good guy. I saw Jesse Jackson walking through the crowd earlier, a large entourage following him. Later on at home, I see a video taken earlier at the McDonalds parking lot down the street of some guys confronting him, yelling at him to get out, to take his exploitative shit somewhere else.
\n\nThere are uniformed police in the crowd; they are all black and seem to be only higher up officials. For the most part, they prowl around safely and get in conversations with folks. One black police lieutenant talks about how there’s a need for more black-owned businesses, that if black people controlled their own economy, they’d be fine. They’d stop killing each other, blah blah blah. He makes some racialized generalizations about other ethnic groups he considers more business-minded. “The Arabs, they run a tight ship. They’re quiet. Now the Asians, they work hard, and when they leave work to go home, they keep to themselves. You never see them! They don’t do crime; It’s like, where do they even live? You don’t even know where they live because they are so quiet and unobtrusive. It’s because they have something to do.” People are laughing at his racial tropes.
\n\nEvery once in a while, people yell at the police or throw something, but it’s pretty chill. Not entirely a lawless zone.
\n\nOver the last few days, one of the most interesting developments is the number of people wearing masks. Unlike the fashion of the NBPP, masks seem to resonate with a lot of folks in the crowd. The facelessness of the moment, the lawlessness of the situation, and the feeling that what happened to Mike Brown could happen to many people here makes the masks come across as a statement against being easily defined and corralled.
\n\nThe range of ages of people wearing masks is broad. Little kids, old people, moms, teenage kids. It’s crazy.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/16a.jpg\")
A parade of cars on the main drag, W. Florissant, where much of the combative stuff went down. It’s only a couple blocks long, but that’s enough to feel like another planet. It became a sort of victory parade of cars and people after the governor’s instruction to rein in the local police.
\nNight falls. I’ve been here for hours and it seems like it will never end. I’m starting to tire and lay down on the sidewalk to rest. A helicopter flies overhead and shines its spotlight on us. A lot of us flip it off and yell at it. A black guy laughs at the white kid—me!—flipping off the ghetto bird with his bird and offers me his blunt. I take a few drags and, and, and… whoa… The scene takes on a whole new atmosphere.
\n\nWe talk a bit about this whole scene, bonding a little over our annoyance at the helicopter and how happy we are about the wildness of this night. Eventually, he gives me the rest of the blunt and heads off.
\n\nI’m walking through the crowd. The cars are still honking—they never stopped; it’s pretty unnerving, amplified in my haze. Large groups of people are everywhere. A sound system is playing from a box truck reading “No Shoot! No Loot!” I read this as a subtle expression of support for the looting: if you don’t shoot, we won’t loot. People are dancing to hip-hop radio songs. Every once and awhile Lil Boosie’s “Fuck the Police” comes on. The music keeps cutting out because people are streaming it from the internet. Every time it cuts out, the crowd goes wild jeering at the DJ.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/17a.jpg\")
\nI wander and stand around, soaking in all the impossible moments. I’m stoned: “I’m in this historical vortex and, man, I can’t even conceive of what this time or space is. It’s so vast!” Eventually, I meet up with friends. We go to the car and think about leaving. We are sitting in the trunk of the hatchback, talking about the scene, when a bunch of people in a car—well, inside and on top of it—stop in front of us and start to serenade us with some song that I don’t know. It sounds amazing. We all laugh and smile. It’s beautiful.
\n\nAs the night wears on, the Nation and the NBPP try to impose their people’s “curfew.” It’s a pathetic attempt at “community policing,” and it doesn’t work very well. They drag some cones in the street, tell people to go home, announcing that the party is “over.” You’ve had your fun, now go to sleep. Lots of arguments ensue. Usually, in the end, people just drive around the cones. At one point, a man gets out of his car and throws the cone on the sidewalk and drives through. These wannabe police, just like the other ones we’re fighting, don’t really want us to dance.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/18a.jpg\")
A train makes an appearance.
\nThis moment was inconceivable days ago, but now it isn’t. Black and poor people are not given space or attention in this part of the world. People are finally getting some power in their own way, in their own words, unapologetically, with a middle finger to the law, refusing to be just another #hashtag or death for activists to use. Instead of listening to the preachers and revolutionaries telling you to go home, instead of getting locked up, policed, or killed for being who you are, you should be able to be who you are. How terrible that it takes a combative moment for many simply to be.
\n\nNo matter what the police do, it just enrages us.
\n\nToday, it’s clear that the more PR-savvy police higher-ups are battling to regain the legitimacy they’ve lost over the past few days. Like yesterday, they continue to walk through the crowds and mingle. Some cops even have the gall to say that we can police ourselves—that this is a space for grieving and the police should back off. They’re admitting their lack of legitimacy, but also are still policing us by proxy by deputizing those who want to volunteer. By “policing ourselves,” they mean letting political and religious cults like the NBPP and the Nation of Islam police us.
\n\nRon Johnson makes an appearance later that day and we surround him. In a surreal scene, many people are singing his praises while many others are doing the opposite. We’re screaming at him to get us some kind of justice. I can see that endless sweat rolling down his forehead. He’s nervous and it is hot out, too. He can’t answer any of our questions. The police killed Mike Brown, they murdered him, and now they want people to be calm and civil, to wait—to wait for something we all already know: that the cop who killed him will get the benefit of the doubt.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/19a.jpg\")
Sweating bullets, Ron Johnson speaks in soothing ambiguities.
\nWe’re the crazy ones, the irrational, emotional ones calling for blood. The police are cold, logical, and legalistic. “I can’t answer that. It’s a process. You’ll have to wait, let justice take its course—please—please—be patient until the grand jury is over,” he says to us. Soon more people surround him and he starts to walk briskly back to his car. He’s hot, he’s stressed, but not angry, just scared—the longer he’s here, the more incensed we might get. He’s trying to keep our anger from spreading. We surround the car for a moment and its sirens buzz at us. Some of us continue to shout insults, asking him to release the name of the cop who shot Mike Mike, while others yell about how they want the cop put in prison. Some call for his death, for the cops to “bring him to us.”
\n\nContrary to the chant that one hears at certain demonstrations—“this is what democracy looks like”—this is definitely not what democracy looks like. This is a firm challenge to it. The democratic state has voted in and enforced some of the vilest acts in recent history, including the genocide of native peoples and chattel slavery of black people. Democracy and the avenues of political change it offers us have never really served anyone except those who own everything—including, in the past, those who legally owned many of the ancestors of people in this crowd.
\n\nMob-like, we are asking for the head of the cop who murdered Mike Brown, saying that if we don’t get an indictment, we’ll shut everything down. There’s a veiled threat of arson and gunfire implied. There is something very powerful about this. If the supposedly neutral justice system doesn’t deliver, many places might burn. They tell us to let justice take its course, but we know it’s just us in the end.
\n\nIt’s amazing to be in a situation in which the police and those in power can’t do anything right. Right now, it’s dangerous for them to think on their toes, because they can’t do anything rash, even if they’re getting attacked. They can’t fight back in the ways that would be effective, even if they want to. They’re being forced to follow a chain of command. In the crowd, we don’t have one of those, at least not formally, so it’s hard for them to manage us. They seek a leader to groom who could calm us down, a disciplined and predictable formation to stand off against, but they can’t find someone to calm us down nor a uniform formation to strategize against.
\n\nThis conflict cannot be stopped right now because there are too many of us. Without a doubt, this gives us some advantage. They must move slowly in this situation so as not inflame us. But they can’t help but inflame us simply by being there.
\n\nSo today, they plead with us to wait for all the facts, to let justice take its course, to calm down, to engage in productive conversation. They tell us that they understand our sadness, our anger, our lives. What a trick: they’re the ones with their fingers on the triggers that put some of us in coffins, the ones with the keys to the jail cells we find ourselves in so often. All the solutions they propose lead us right back to… them.
\n\nLast night was festive, but it was still tense. No one forgot that Mike Brown was gone. They’re letting us congregate, letting us process our emotions in this space, but it’s not enough to bring Mike Brown back. The police don’t yet know how combative some of us want be. We can never be satisfied because they really can’t give us what we really want.
\n\nThey might have to bring back the tanks and tear gas.
\n\nAround noon, the Ferguson police release surveillance footage to the media of Mike Brown supposedly shoplifting cigarillos from a corner store, Ferguson Market and Liquor, blocks from where he was murdered. The grainy footage shows him slipping over the counter and grabbing something. The storeowner seemingly confronts him, but Brown pushes him away. Alongside this footage, they release the name of the cop who shot him: Darren Wilson, a man who lived a pretty uneventful life before this. The name doesn’t make anyone happier, especially because of the release of the footage.
\n\nTonight, the police are guarding the market…
\n\nThe shopkeeper alleges that he didn’t know the police were going to release the footage. He’s surely afraid of getting his market looted again and maybe this time burned entirely. When they release the footage, the Ferguson police say that Darren Wilson had no idea about the “robbery” when he stopped Mike Brown on the street. He had merely stopped him for walking in the middle of the street. It’s clear that the release of the footage is meant as defense measure for Wilson, a way to delegitimize Brown.
\n\nMike Brown was not an angel. No one is. Angels don’t exist. People do what they want regardless of what the law says. Some of it might be reckless. Some of it might be for survival. Of course, it’s hard to say what his motivations were. Whether he stole the cigarillos means nothing to me. If he did, more power to him—I value life and theft more than I value a capitalist business.
\n\nWe surround the Ferguson Market, where the parking lot is filled with police. They’ve become used to us not confronting them over the past few days. All of a sudden, we surge towards them and they scurry away. We’re chanting at them, yelling at them to get out. Some of them come to a low fence and they’re climbing over it, scurrying to their cars. We’re putting them in a place they’re rarely in—it’s comical to see. At some point, the chain-link fence pole breaks from the weight of their bodies. I laugh at the terror they feel. We’re about to surround them, there’s so many of us. They rush to their cars and speed off.
\n\nA minute later, in the distance, I see that the whole street ahead of me is now lined with police tanks full of riot police advancing towards us. They come closer and tumble out as quickly as they can in their full riot gear. Then, from the riot van, a piercing continuous BEEPING noise. Prepared, I put my earplugs in. I’d never seen—or rather, heard—these before. It’s a Long Range Acoustic Device—LRAD, as they call it in police jargon. With earplugs, it doesn’t sound too bad; anyway, no one is that fazed by it. It really just makes us more pissed and we just yell louder.
\n\nRon Johnson’s false peace is coming to an end. After all, some of us don’t want peace. As long as we are here, they are going to need police to put this rebellion out. Riot police line up in front of us on Ferguson Road and W. Florissant. We’re yelling at them, throwing things at them, charging them. An RCP member is either reading something or soap-boxing. It just adds to this chaotic moment.
\n\nMedia photographers stand between us; there are so many cameras flashing that it’s blinding. Most of the photographers are white, most of their subjects black. Fleeting thoughts rush through my head: is this really how these people participate—voyeuristically, through a lens? Their photos make good riot porn; maybe they do this to illuminate the problems of the world—but that’s what every fence-sitter says! In the end, whether they like it or not, they act as a seeing eye of the state. Where do they draw the line? Will they ever put down the camera and help in the fight? Or are they in it for the prize, the prestige? And what about all their riot gear? Their new gas masks and the bulletproof vests that let them stay in the fray with fewer consequences. We need those more than you do, you fuckers! In hindsight, there should be more people who take their things.
\n\nPeople are posing for the cameras. No one knows what’s going on; the police are flustered. We could get tear gassed at any moment, but it’s like we’re on the red carpet surrounded by riot paparazzi. Souls are being stolen for the perfect shot. But we’re not movie stars, we’re nobodies to be forgotten, stored on a memory card, identified by the police to arrest us later, maybe put in a random clip in some documentary, a coffee-table book or some DOJ report.
\n\nStill, the presence of these voyeurs acts as a physical buffer between the police and us. Liberals are freaking about how the media is being suppressed; this is one of the reasons why the police have been hesitant to take the steps they would need to take to control the crowds. (This… and how many people are carrying.) At some point, the riot police tell media to leave the area. This is a sure sign that they’re going to gas us. Considering their PR image, they probably don’t want to gas “neutral” reporters. Some are leaving and going behind the riot line, but a lot of them are staying and it’s making the police hesitant to shoot. Goddamn, they really must want that photo.
\n\nPeople are throwing water bottles. Glory be, from the anti-oppression heavens, a white ally is screaming:
\n\n“STOP THROWING SHIT! The community doesn’t want this! They’re gonna kill us all! They’re gonna shoot us all! STOP IT!”
\n\nThey’re really distressed. I want to tell them to go home if they are scared, and that it’s totally fine if they are, I’m scared too. Right now, it’s not helping anyone. It doesn’t help to scream at us like we’re children. This is a tense situation. There is indeed the real potential that one of us could get hurt. Some people know this, but others might not because they are caught up in the moment. People are acting recklessly. Sometimes when we act recklessly, we open up new avenues… and new traumas.
\n\nA black man standing near me scolds the screaming white ally. He asks:
\n\n“If you’re not ready to die, then why the fuck are you here?”
\n\nIt knocks me out. It’s not something I feel entirely, because I want to live on my feet, to follow a path that leads to collective joy, not collective death. But what he’s saying is real. People will be harmed in a struggle for joy, for a world without chains, and there will be death. Needless to say, it shuts the white ally up.
\n\nI’ve overheard people talking about death and talked with so many people over the past few nights about it, about confronting police, about spilling blood, about feeling pain. As far as I can tell, none of them are politicos, none of them claim membership in any cult. I don’t know who they are. But they are people who have chosen to be out here and I want to be around them right now.
\n\nA sign of social control is rearing its head. It’s not coming from the police.
\n\nWe’re in a standoff with the police. Wearing gas masks, they are pointing their assault rifles at us. Clips that are usually full of metal bullets are now full of—please god—rubber bullets. The peacekeepers are trying to calm us down. Black nationalists Anthony Shaid and Malik Shabazz, St. Louis City Alderman Antonio French, clergy, the NBPP, and the NOI are among them. They are making a human chain, but they’re not facing the police, they’re facing us, trying to fend us off from the police. Exasperated, they are yelling at us to go home, to get on the sidewalk, telling us that if we want the police to leave, we should go home. People are yelling back at them: “Leave? Why should we leave? We were here first! We want the police to leave first!”
\n\nThere’s a segment of the crowd that is not complying with anyone who is telling them to calm down, be it the police or the elected officials, the clergy, the obsessive anti-racist liberals and social media radicals who blame white anarchists for rioting, the so-called revolutionaries who are physically blocking our way to the police. The practical-minded fools, surely trying to save our undisciplined souls, are preaching their political or religious dogmas like broken records. They are telling us that we are endangering ourselves, that we are asking for it, that now’s not the time, that we need to calm down because the community needs to heal and they don’t want a riot. They always invoke their fictitious “community.”
\n\nWhen groups like those blocking us can’t get through to us, when we resist their pleas for calm, they redline us—our rocks, our violence, our trauma, our screams, our personality—out of history like a speculator who bought stock in uprisings years ago and is now reaping all the social and political capital that they can. Now they’re trying to flash their power, trying to sell, sell, sell because the market is right and they have a good chance of coming out on top with more recruits and social capital, but some of the stock is still unprofitable, robbing them of extra profit. They need the epic black freedom fighter story, but not with the unrepentant non-homogenous blackness and crassness that comprised it.
\n\nOn the internet, on the streets, on the news, people resort to the usual racial tropes: the black people in this crowd are criminals, thugs fulfilling stereotypes of lazy welfare recipients. Or, from a more liberal angle, black people are just standing there and the police are shooting gas for no reason—the outright desire for destruction and the acts of violence against the police is only represented by a couple of people.
\n\nBoth an innocence narrative that pities black people and the revulsion with which people respond to unapologetic black rebellion are perspectives that resort to racial tropes. One perspective separates “bad” criminal black people (the insurgents, the ones who loot, the ones who aren’t “protestors”) from the “good” black people. The other portrays an eternally victimized and homogenous black people who can’t take the initiative and fight for themselves, who therefore are swayed by anyone, especially white people. White people have no place in this struggle unless they accept black leadership—specifically, the black leadership in front of us forming a physical and mental human chain to stop us from attacking the police who keep the world the way it is.
\n\nNot surprisingly, the police have picked up this discourse, too, leveraging both the criminal and pity narratives to their advantage. It’s laughable. Ron Johnson, at one point, blames most of the violence and gunfire on the “Canfield Boys,” a possibly mythical gang of black kids who live on Canfield Drive. The infamous St. Louis city police union spokesperson, Jeff Roorda, will later write a book called Ferganistan about his Ferguson experience, including invented stories about the “anarchists” who supposedly brought guns for people in the streets to use. It’s laughable, that as an ex-cop, he ignores that this is St. Louis, where getting a gun—legally or illegally—is easy for most anyone. He also writes that white anarchists taught black people how to burn down buildings in a way that leaves no trace. There really is very little distance between the supposed anti-racists and the police.
\n\nIt’s scary that, in this situation in which people are fighting against race and class society, even those who are sympathetic to the fight want to re-impose the material and ideological controls of racialization and class. They will go so far as to re-victimize or criminalize those who are resisting the very institutions that make them victims and criminals: race, capitalist property relations, the church, the police. It’s as if they don’t want things to change.
\n\nThere’s a sense of urgency that I feel. I fear that if we lose this space tonight, we may very well disappear again back into the world of daily miseries. It’s like we’re being sucked down a drain in a whirlpool and we don’t have anything to plug the hole.
\n\nAfter a long period of tense negotiation, the police start to leave. We cheer, telling them to fuck off.\nNow we’re celebrating. They’re pulling away, but before they’ve all loaded up, one of the pigs walking backwards to the van slyly rolls a tear gas canister and a flashbang grenade towards us. He grabs on to the van as it peels off. The grenade explodes and we scatter. We’re all screaming. “What the fuck!” It was like a firework sending sparks every direction. My ears are ringing.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/20a.jpg\")
The grenade exploding.
\nI run to a parking lot with a friend. Fifteen feet from us, I see a man put a gun out of the window of his car and shoot it up in the air. I hide behind another car. I come upon a mother and her crying child. He’s shooting all the rounds in his clip. Interspersed, I hear the mother screaming—pop! pop! pop!—into a phone, terrified—pop! pop! pop!—of the shots, telling whoever to come get—pop! pop! pop!—them, get them the fuck—pop! pop! pop!—out of there. It scares me, too.
\n\nI’ve never been this close to gunshots on the street before. I hear them almost every day in my neighborhood, but they always seem far away; I don’t usually stop to think about them. This man shooting is terrifying a lot of us, but it’s probably making the police think twice about coming back.
\n\nSome people are making fun of others for hiding: “He shot up in the air, it isn’t no big deal, y’all!”
\n\nA voice of reason responds: “I don’t know what you’re sayin’ man, bullets do come down!”
\n\nIf you see an opening, take it!
\n\nAs the police leave, some kids are smashing out store windows. The first to go is a beauty store. (The next day, I will see a news story that interviewed the owners of the store. Befuddled, they’ll remark, “We wondered why people were buying so many handkerchiefs.”)
\n\nBoards are coming off of other stores. A lot of people are getting excited.
\n\nA middle-aged black man catches my eye and starts to talk to me. He laments that people are looting again. He seems pretty lost about what to do. I tell him that I think this is all for the best. A woman behind me is screaming about how much she hates this place:
\n\n“Ahhhhh, hell yeah! Fuck this strip!
\nBurn it all down,
\nI honestly don’t give a fuck,
\nit’s all a
\nbuncha fuckin’ bullshit anyway!”
The Ferguson Mart gets it, but not without an internal struggle. The New Black Panther politicos and their allies—who media outlets later called “gang members”—are guarding the store, physically stopping people from getting in. One of them definitely has a gun. He’s brandishing it around and people are running from him. This asshole values this snitch business for some reason. But like the true customers that we aren’t, we’ll take our business elsewhere, thank you very much! A few stores down, people are breaking into another liquor/convenience store, Sam’s Meat and Liquor. The exasperated and outnumbered NBPP & crew are too busy guarding the Ferguson Mart to notice the crowd moving to another place.
\n\nToo scared to go in—also, I’ve neglected to bring a mask—I stand outside. Crowds are coming in and out of the place; some people are carrying more bottles of alcohol than I ever thought a person could physically carry. One of them falls right next to me. I consider drinking it, but, unsure if the police will raid this area at any moment, I decide I don’t want to risk being caught with it. Little did I know they would never come that night.
\n\nThe media are taking photos of those who are looting, getting their money shot. Friends go up to them and scream at them to stop—their photos are going to help the police make arrests. One member of the press talks about the First Amendment; another is shocked that we’d want to defend anyone’s “right” to loot and commit felonious acts! The photographers don’t want to leave. At some point, one of the people looting threatens to pull a knife on one of them. After that, they leave quickly.
\n\nFor hours, people loot and drink. I see cars pull up, fill up, and leave. Some even return. I’m yelling at anyone I see who is not wearing a mask to put one on. Most people smile at me and pull their collars over their faces. It’s not just young people or people that would fit the stereotype of “criminals” or “gang members,” as the media and police want you to believe; it’s a large cross section of people, both young and old. At some point, my friends and I cross paths encounter some middle-aged guys and share a drink. One of them asks me what time it is, then stops me: “No, don’t tell me! Fuck, I have to go to work so soon…” The riot seems to stop time.
\n\nI was hungry and thirsty. I had a few drinks, ate some chips, gave some food and drink to other people—all from unknown locations, of course. Later on, the turn lane on the street will be lined with empty liquor bottles.
\n\nIt’s 4 am and I’m starting to get tired. Someone has tried to set fire to the Sam’s. I watch a small flame burn, grow a bit, then die down, then grow again. I start to think it might be a good time to go home. The crowd is small and I certainly don’t need to be standing near a burning building—bad optics. Some activists might click a random blurry picture of me smirking with—if you cross your eyes ever so slightly—what appears to be a lighter in my hand. But before the fire can spread, the NBPP and an alderman, Antonio French, put it out with some soda.
\n\nAfter a while, the small crowd starts what sounds like a protest chant, but it’s not like any I’ve heard before. “WAL-MART! WAL-MART! WAL-MART!” As people chant, we get into our cars. Many speed off really crazy and another car nearly hits ours. Surely many people are wasted. And like that, the strip of W. Florissant is cleared. I never learn whether people made it to the Wal-Mart.
\n\nThe release of the footage of Mike Mike allegedly stealing from the Ferguson Mart inflamed a lot of us. The hands-off policing policy that had been instituted the day before the video was released has backfired. The festiveness of the last two days helped us gain more numbers, emboldening us—even though it’s hard to know who this “us” is, anymore. This strategy of letting people blow off steam failed. It didn’t stop us from doing what we wanted to do. The community police force who blocked us from the police last night failed to stop people from taking over the street, attacking the snitch business, and looting goods. I can imagine the hawks on the police force wanting blood now, chiding the more liberal-minded cops for not coming in guns blazing, for being naïve.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/21a.jpg\")
The police were unable to stop looters, so the owners of Sam’s Meat and Liquor came packing.
\nToday, the police hold their press conference and hang their heads, stern, poised, and befuddled all at once. They’re disappointed in us. They are at a loss as to how to discipline us. They emphasize that no one’s life was lost last night. It’s the only victory they can claim: they didn’t have to kill someone. They kill and imprison people every day and then scold us about the value of human life.
\n\nLater, there is a march organized by Mike Brown’s family. Thousands are there. We march to the Ferguson police station. It’s a long walk and the heat and humidity is too much for some to bear. When we get there, the police have already amassed to guard the station. We’re yelling at them with all we can muster. People are calling the black cops Uncle Toms, saying how they’re often worse than the white cops. For what seems like hours, we stand in the hot sun, sweating and getting burned, yelling at lines of stoic cops.
\n\nTonight, the police want to impose a bedtime on us. Midnight curfew. At the press conference, Ron Johnson and crew thank the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panthers for trying to keep the peace last night. Governor Nixon is there, too. He authorizes the deployment of the National Guard if anything gets out of hand.
\n\nA few organized political groups, including Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) in particular, call for people to violate the curfew, citing the fact that the police are violating our right to free speech. The state of Missouri declares that they are going to call in the National Guard.
\n\nDrops of rain. If the god of the Christian evangelicals exists, he clearly doesn’t want us to be here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/22a.jpg\")
\nPeople talk about a gentle loving god and a jealous vengeful god—a god conflicted about giving us free will, because he is already aware of what will happen if he lets us act freely. We will violate his commandments. The last few days have demonstrated that. The gentle god wants to keep us safe—maybe using the rain to give us soggy clothes, to force us to go home so we can sleep in our blessed beds in the comfort of our homes, if we are lucky enough to have homes. God might tell us that we’re fighting the good fight, but we need to do it with forgiveness, patience, peace, and love, or other keywords people use to signify civility. When we don’t listen, he becomes both angry and pitiful. He deploys the representatives of his will against us. He threatens us with eternal guilt, purgatory, hell, sin, death, fear, thunder, lightning, prison, rubber bullets, tear gas, arrest, traffic tickets.
\n\nTalking about God’s will used to be one of the ways that people justified genocide, slavery, Manifest Destiny, and submission. This sort of religious repression is waning in some parts of the world, but it is still very strong in others. In the US, the state and its laws are no longer described as representing the iron will of God. Instead, God controls us through self-imposed discipline.
\n\nThe law and the various secular ways that it is enforced—police, drones, surveillance cameras, ankle bracelets, helicopters, prisons—are directly descended from the religious pursuit of purity and control. Like God, the law is above us, objective, with the cold and calculating formality of legalese. It can be both oppressive and repressive, depending on who you are and how you act against it. It is born from fear, from the desire to direct the infinite possibilities of life into a few well-worn paths.
\n\nThe law comes from the same tradition as the Lord, a set of rules intended to dictate behavior for the benefit of those who rule us—those with the most guns, the most votes, the most money. The law stands behind the police, warning us, using the velvet glove and chiding us in a language that alludes to our “safety.”
\n\n“Safety” is Orwellian doublespeak for violence. Tonight, the riot police warn us about the consequences of not following the curfew. If you do not leave, you will be subject to chemical munitions and arrest. You can be here until midnight, and if you want to leave just before that, here are the routes you can safely take.
\n\nMalik Shabazz is here again tonight to keep the peace. He’s telling us to go home, roaming the crowd with his posse, trying to calm the people who react to his words. Shabazz is a lawyer. He’s good at debating.
\n\nOver and over, he aims his megaphone at the individuals who are staying: “We cannot guarantee your safety tonight. Come on, black man, go home, we aren’t strong enough to fight them now! If you stay, they will arrest you and you won’t get bailed out. You will spend 90 days in jail for this.”
\n\nWhat? We can’t guarantee your safety? Do we even know you? Who asked you to guarantee our safety? Are you sure you don’t belong on the other side of the police line?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/23a.jpg\")
Malik Shabazz talking with Ron Johnson.
\nThe aforementioned MORE has called for people to violate the curfew. For a while, the organizers argue with each other over their megaphones. Sadly, MORE eventually capitulates and starts telling us all to go home, as well.
\n\nThe supposed revolutionaries and progressive politicians who claim to support the demonstrations pontificate and lie. They want us to go home, just like the cops want us to go home. The way they talk, they act as if they are the ones who brought us out here in the first place. They are used to managing the crowds at the demonstrations that occur in their activist bubbles. They see any crowd as a mass of bodies to direct.
\n\n“Go home. Gone. Get. Git. Skedaddle. Beat it. It’s not time for you to be here yet. We need to get all backroom deals, all the theatrics ready before you can come out and be part of the production. It’s not the time yet.”
\n\nThe rain continues and a lot of people leave. The crowd before was huge, now we are fewer. But there are still a lot of us. The clock strikes midnight and nothing much really happens. The NBPP party leaves, but not before saying, “This is your last chance, we warned you!” The representatives of MORE have either left or stopped speechifying. A crowd of us are ready for whatever. I’m talking with a few random people, asking what we’re going to do next. Should we stay or go? Should we act like we’re going to stay and then leave at the last moment before the police tear gas us?
\n\nThe crowd moves back and forth towards the police line and away from it, throwing rocks here and there. The police intercom on their bearcat tank tells us that we have to leave or else we will be subject to arrest. Everyone is like, “FUCK YOU!”
\n\nI see a lone cop car come up from behind us. Its lights are flashing. Or else, I think they were—memory gets mixed with trauma and adrenaline at this point. Other people notice the cop car. “They’re coming from the back, they’re coming up on us from the back!” A lot of people start to run. I run back and meet up with a friend. I say that we should probably run for it and we take off down the road.
\n\none thousand emotions
\n\nSomeone in the crowd starts to shoot toward the police car—
\n\nI see my friend I think we’re going to be fine just keep running don’t look don’t look just run I don’t know where the bullets are coming from I just know we gotta run and take cover for a minute and then we can be OK we can all go home and rest and eat and sleep and love each other struggle snuggle more fight our battles and see another day laugh until we grow old remembering the moments the things we were proud of the things we regretted the ways we contributed to this beautiful ugly moment the ways we wish we could have but alive alive hearts beating breathing breathing still working forever to defy gravity
\n\nWe’re running he’s right in front of me five steps away I hear his scream he’s on one leg hobbling the other one in the air collapsing burning forever into a deep memory falling to the ground his stomach on the sidewalk screaming for an instant and then silence an inert body collapsed fetal position in pain shock a bullet to the heart
\n\nThe gunfire is still happening I can’t tell the line of fire I run over grabbing him the shots are firing still shots fired shots shots shots toward the police car fuck fuck get low get low over him turn into the smallest ball I can please don’t hit me too hit the police hit them not me
\n\nOn the ground covering him putting my mouth to his ear shocked not sure why but I’m whispering whispering in shock like I don’t want to startle him asking what happened what happened are you OK please are you OK are you OK no response a moan I grab his arm shake it I look over and see muscle coming out of his leg an exit wound no blood but he’s not responding not moving no blood anywhere
\n\nThey run out of rounds I don’t even notice
\n\nPeople surround me friends come up to me I say he’s shot my friend asks by what was it a rubber bullet I look him in the eyes about to burst to lose it no a fucking bullet I want to cry to scream but I stop myself I can’t lose it right now in this moment if I do he might die but I don’t even know what to do
\n\nA protest medic comes up to me my name is I don’t remember is it David Phil John Adam he says you’re going to be OK can you tell me what’s wrong can you hear me can you see me I focus on the medic I cant imagine he’s ever been in this position he’s probably only dealt with tear gas Maalox pepper spray rubber bullets but he’s helping me center myself in the chaos that is what I need right now to lose composure could mean losing my friend I hear him moan what’s wrong what’s wrong we haven’t stopped trying to get him to talk to us my stomach my stomach
\n\nThe human need to help everyone wants to it’s powerful it’s meaningful but it’s too much it’s like we all want to help but we are all talking over each other we are all scared for my friend who is on the ground in pain dying
\n\nPeople are grabbing me pushing me telling me to do things I can’t do I’m overwhelmed they’re in the way everyone is talking at once I can’t hear them all at once I can’t tell how many people are around now they encircle me the medic my comrades and my friend who is passing away right before us the crowd wants us to move to get him out of here
\n\nA man yells at me he’s pacing back and forth he yells over and over no ambulance is gonna come we gotta do this ourselves we don’t need no fucking police we gotta do this ourselves we don’t need no fucking police we gotta do this ourselves we don’t need the police
\n\nwe gotta do this ourselves fuck the police…
\n\nI’m telling everyone get back get back give us some space please please please the medic is lost this is out of his league a car pulls up behind us I ask him what should we do should we lift him is that OK will that kill him what should we do what should we do the medic doesn’t know but he tells us to lift him we grab him the man who was screaming about the police pushes me away from my grip I fall to the ground the man grabs my friend and rushes him to the car with others
\n\nAnother friend arrives in her car she screams put him in my car put him in my car no no no that’s my partner that’s my partner put him in my car no no no no put him in the fucking car a struggle ensues for his body and the man who was screaming is pushed away from our friend he ends up in her car the car speeds off the car leaves
\n\nEverything is amplified we are all pacing running around I wander inside myself lost what just happened to us our beloved friend it’s OK there wasn’t really any blood it’s it’s it’s OK he’s OK please no no no I just saw that I just saw I just saw I just saw that I can’t get rid of that stop stop stop go away please please
\n\nBut I can’t have any privacy or safety in my trauma a police tank pulls up loud a monster blinding lights revving engine with pigs pointing their guns at us from the top I think you did this you did this all this fucking pain with your bullets tear gas batons jails prisons death I want it all to burn for it all to go down in flames with you all inside tortured for all the bullets you fire at us to explode to backfire into your mechanical hearts I hate you and the law you protect what you really are now is bare your gloves are off and some rebels in the haste of it all albeit with a lack of skill want to shoot back and give you back some of what we feel
\n\nA friend’s car pulls up the doors fly open everyone I came with climbs in and now I’m sobbing sobbing body shut down we don’t know where to go we don’t know where to go in this place where is he going where did our friends go with him
\n\nwar on misery
\n\nI sit for hours crying alone and with friends terrified about what could happen you might die and I might have been one of the last people to talk to you before you went under I can only stare into space not thinking replaying over and over
\n\nI remember in the hours before how inspiring it was to be in this zone the police and us some of us in the back watching some throwing rocks some pontificating or scolding us
\n\nWhat are we doing what’s the next thing we gotta do to make this rebellion go on forever
\n\nWe talked minutes before you were shot I remember you were on top of a utility box one of those boxes that regulates stop lights you were talking to old friends new friends up there telling us what you saw the police were telling us to go home over and over we mocked them and thought about our exit strategy
\n\nThe crowd moving back and forth relative to the police line I was a little bit scared but most everyone else was too so I didn’t feel alone you comforted me from up on your vantage point we joked about the curfew with others how we were going to stay like we were never gonna leave put up a front like we got this you can’t make us leave but really we’re gonna leave because we only have rocks
\n\nIs it better to lose valiantly with a little bit of bravado or courage than immediately to admit defeat
\n\nI can’t go back today.
\n\nI have never cried so much. I’m surrounded by friends who are doing the same. We all assemble at his house, sleeping in a pile together and crying, hoping that everything will be OK. We’re trying to shake out the emotions and the moment the bullets were flying. It replays over and over in my mind, and all I can see is someone just a couple of steps from me falling to the ground. In shock, I stare into space, withdrawn from the world. I guess this is what it means to process trauma, to struggle to get back to some kind of equilibrium so I can navigate in this world.
\n\nTrauma builds inside of us and we don’t get to work it out in a healthy way. Whether it’s because we don’t have a support network of caregivers or we don’t have time to deal with it—something else comes along to knock us out again. Trauma also becomes normalized, making it easy to lose empathy for others because it feels like the world is full of traumatic histories and situations.
\n\nLater, I watch TV and see that people are attempting to attack the staging area of the police and National Guard. Folks are breaking up cement blocks to make smaller rocks, throwing Molotov cocktails. The police later describe this as one of the most intense nights they faced.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/24a.jpg\")
\nThe political power that comes from a barrel of a gun is not something to take lightly. The person famous for that turn of phrase, Mao, helped to bring about the deaths of millions of people. Yet leftists and radicals still rally around the cult of the gun. Guns are often seen as the strongest means of resistance—rather than just one tool in the vast toolbox of resistance that requires collective power, not cadres of revolutionaries.
\n\nIn response to the events in Ferguson, there has been a call by some to take up arms, to militarize the struggle, to build an army, to get all the “lumpen” black people to be disciplined armed soldiers for the cause. This would give the state a more legible struggle, one involving generals and soldiers. This is exactly how the state organizes to defend its power every day—in militarized formations. We often see this strategy employed by people who want to wield state power over others themselves.
\n\nIt might be necessary to employ guns for self-defense in the process of building the world we want. It might be inevitable. It is important to know how to use them in collective struggles, to get comfortable with them, just as it is important to learn how to steal electricity, how to work together to grow food or produce propaganda. We have to be multifaceted, to develop a wide variety of skills. But any effort to militarize armed struggle around the sole use of guns will immediately end in failure, because in a militarized war, the state and its lackeys have more firepower.
\n\nI don’t want reckless gunfire in which my friends and other rebels are shot by our own. Nor do I want disciplined military formations with their patronizing talk of defending “the people” as if they are something separate from us, above us, and we (“the people”) should watch from the stands as they play revolutionary army. The “people” are not a mass to protect; we are active, creative, and smart in ways that do not always fit into the prescriptions of ideology or military strategy. Many of us defend ourselves every day without need of formal protectors. History shows those protectors are often more dangerous to us than the things they are supposed to protect us from. Cops are the perfect example of this.
\n\nRather, we should seek to nourish individual and small group defense so it can grow into something bigger, acknowledging the diversity of ways people take action. Rebellious situations like the one in Ferguson help us to see each other. Some of us might bear arms to defend ourselves, but mostly the power of such a moment emerges from our shared determination to keep this space alive.
\n\nThis struggle is populated by many different groups of people who are meeting each other and figuring out what it means to be in this space together as some of us learn how to defend it from police, how to sabotage capitalist infrastructure and carry out attacks on property. Some folks do have guns, but the police do not know who does, and that seems better than them knowing, because this makes it harder for them to pin down their adversary, predict our response to their actions, or plan the best way to repress us.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/25a.jpg\")
The mercenaries of the National Guard praying that they will be able to reinstate the rule of law and order.
\nThe police really want this to end. They’re trying every means at their disposal in their press conferences. They have a pastor awkwardly praying for it to end, they have Ron Johnson giving lectures about the value of peace and patience, and then—shaking their heads—they show the table of seized evidence from last night: Molotovs made from 40-ounce bottles, handguns, chunks of concrete, bricks.
\n\nGovernor Nixon declares a State of Emergency and calls in the National Guard to protect the police command center. The police announce that they will not allow crowds to assemble, that all protesters will be forced to continue moving along the street or be arrested. However, the curfew on the city of Ferguson is lifted. Police block off W. Florissant to cars and set up checkpoints at both ends of the strip. Many of the side roads through the neighborhoods that lead down to the strip are also blocked off. This new tactic is aimed at those who had previously used the side roads to flood onto W. Florissant and escape once things got too hot.1
\n\nEarly in the afternoon, the rapper Nelly arrives on the scene to tell people they have options besides rioting. Someone in the crowd shouts back: “You have options, you’re rich!”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/26a.jpg\")
A citizen peacekeeper tries to keep us back.
\nAs darkness approaches, the crowd swells and people begin to march in the streets defiantly. A standoff with the police line develops; rocks and bottles fly through the air. In response, peace marshals link arms and form a line between the crowd and the police, attempting to push people back off the streets.
\n\nDespite the efforts of the peace police, some continue to confront the police throughout the night. One woman rips a “DO NOT ENTER” sign from the ground and carries it into the road to face off with the police, occasionally setting it down to go back into the crowd to check on her baby. The police are almost enjoying this. They start to use their intercom to try to get us to disperse. As someone tries to pull another sign out of the ground, they warn: “IF YOU ARE DESTROYING OR REMOVING STREET SIGNS, YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST!” People respond with laughter. “IF YOU ARE HOLDING CITY PROPERTY, YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST!”
\n\nIn the midst of it all, I’m sitting on a curb watching the scene with some friends. A black woman who happens to be holding a knife is speaking her piece to a part of the crowd watching and it’s powerful. I’m sitting with some friends, a little group of white people. She comes up to us—still holding the knife—and starts to talk to us about how we all bleed the same blood. Over and over, we all bleed the same blood. If she cut us, she yells, if she cut us, we’d all bleed the same fucking blood. As she says this, she makes a cutting motion with her knife.
\n\nThis discourse is so unlike what I have seen on the internet or in guilt-ridden activist circles. Sure, the truth is more complicated. The rich, the poor, the black and non-black bleed the same blood—but depending on your circumstances, you might bleed or get cut down a bit less or slower than the others. Still, some of these identity descriptors don’t necessarily tell us that much about people and what they’ve been through or what they feel. In the midst of an active police state, this woman is not trying to create sympathy for the police or rich; she’s talking about those of us who have chosen to be out here.
\n\nWhat is one to do with such comments? It’s clear that white supremacy does not melt away just because a black person says we all share the same blood. The important thing is that a comment like this suggests the possibility of a fissure in the reifying category of “race” itself, which is a framework that gives more centrality to concepts and roles than experiences. In many political circles, the current racial analysis seems based on a totalizing political rhetoric that does not present a real challenge to the institutions that maintain a racialized society or the way of seeing the world that those institutions promote.
\n\nThat discourse paints over the joyful or traumatic details of all the stories that people have around resisting those institutions. When I look at people, I have no idea what they have been through on an individual level; this reality can undermine nationalisms and ideology. These simple historical constructs we are given or forced to use to describe ourselves do not serve us. This is not to deny the existence of all the forces that privilege some people over others based on identity or ideology—it is to emphasize that we must be irreconcilably opposed to those forces, that we have to struggle against a world order that depends on imposed identities to go on enslaving and exploiting.
\n\nRacialization has created a nightmare that has origins in a nationalist—and therefore ruling class—understanding of the world. People are divided into supposedly homogenous groups under the banner of a state or an identity. The racialization and color-coding of people serves the same function—and using class as identity is no different.
\n\nOn the one hand, we see the oppressive ways that the narratives and institutions of power have imposed race, constructing and privileging or disempowering different identities and relegating them to certain areas of activity. On the other hand, we see the glorification of race from those who have bought into racial nationalism—be it white nationalist, black nationalist, or nationalist in general. This mythology makes gross generalizations about everyone according to their “historical” ethnic roots, whether those are the “white” European civilizations of Rome and Greece or the “black” African ones of Egypt or Nigeria. The reality is more complicated. Most European societies are not really descended from Rome and Greece, and “whiteness” and “blackness” are very recent inventions. Most “European” or “African” serfs must have had little interest in being seen as Roman or Nigerian or for that matter “white” or “black.” The ones who identified themselves with those constructs were usually the ones who lorded over, enslaved, and exploited the others, colonizing people and forcing them into an enclosure of nationhood.
\n\nCivilizations write their narratives in the blood of those they rule through conquest and enslavement, a process that whittles down our being to the categories they force us into. The rulers of previous civilizations oppressed their populaces according to frameworks similar to “race,” but distinct from it. They too enslaved people and forced them to do their bidding, to work their lands, to build their infrastructure and pay their patronage, effectively forcing people to become something other than they were, eliminating their potential to be what they wanted on their own terms. We do a disservice to our ancestors when we look for nationalist or cultural roots in these bloody stories. We might be able to find regional identification, perhaps, but the problem of history is that it reduces us to what our masters say we are—not our actual lives and experiences. What they say we are is what creates the unrest we feel within ourselves, because we aren’t reducible to it and we can’t help but not be even when we try. Repressing these inherent contradictions requires police and prisons. It’s what they are for.
\n\nTaking all these details seriously is the opposite of all ideology. Creating an alternative political framework would be a vast undertaking; it would threaten all politicians who seek to represent. Not to be able to define large groups or give a narrative to “history” would undermine all political projects. What is the solution?
\n\nWe aren’t history. We are caught in the crossfire of feuding factions; the rhetoric of some of the anti-racists makes this clear enough. It is another re-imposition of being that appears different, but really isn’t.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/27a.jpg\")
\nAllegedly in response to a rumor of shots fired, the police eventually fire a barrage of tear gas into the streets. People fearlessly throw the gas back, but the quantity of gas in the air makes it nearly impossible to stay on W. Florissant and we fall back towards Canfield. More canisters are fired, more tear gas fills the air, and some in the crowd work together in an attempt to set Red’s barbeque joint on fire with Molotov cocktails and gas. Some people are throwing Molotovs, but rather poorly. A kid gets one from a friend and throws it, but it’s an awkward throw and only flies 10 feet. We all laugh, like, damn, nice throw. Someone runs up to the building and throws one in, but the fire goes out. I see someone else running to Red’s with a container of what looks like water. He gets to the broken window and pours it in and the fire goes whoosh! Actually, it’s gasoline, not water.
\n\nA friend and I strike up a conversation with two people. They must be 18 or 20 years old. They’re asking us what our deal is. They tell us they’re gonna be out here tomorrow, that they hope to see us later, that we gotta get more organized, that we should all get gas masks and keep fighting.
\n\nThe police are still telling us to leave. They drive up in their Bearcat, the equivalent of a Brinks armored car but bigger. They beam the lights of the Bearcat at us, but then someone shoots at it. We all scatter. As we go home, remembering the nights before, some of us yell, If you’re gonna shoot, shoot straight!
\n\nTo add to the misery, another black man by the name of Kajieme Powell, who is mentally ill, is killed by police in the Riverview neighborhood of St. Louis City. He went into a store and allegedly stole some drinks. A video comes out, showing him armed with a knife. The police arrive and shoot him dead within 20 seconds. Powell was more than 20 feet from them and the motherfuckers shot immediately. There are the usual calls for calm. Antonio French, the alderman whose ward is nearby, once again encourages us to let justice run its course. He even goes so far as to congratulate the STLMPD for being transparent and releasing the video immediately, in contrast to the Ferguson PD. This has the effect of placating a lot of people.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/40.jpg\")
On August 19, it hadn’t quite died down yet in Ferguson, but steps were being taken to neutralize the last vestiges of that stage of the rebellion.
\nFinally, on August 21, for the first time since they shot Mike Brown, the police and their political counterparts succeed in imposing order. The number of arrests coupled with their slow learning curve has finally caught up with us. The cops have blocked more and more of the suburban side streets that gave us a tactical advantage.
\n\nDespite the intimidating police presence, we continue to demonstrate our anger and sadness by marching up and down the street. The police have parked their cars along the sides of the streets, creating a barrier that makes it impossible for us to get in the road. They’ve basically created a circle we have to stay in. Members of the Nation of Islam, church leaders, and liberal activists are helping them to enforce this. They are shouting and pushing people onto the sidewalks and away from police lines. Some small conflicts erupt, but none of them get out of control.
\n\nA young black kid is yelling at the clergy. “Y’all oldheads have been on this peace and love shit for forever and it’s got us nowhere! The 1950s, you were on it! The ’60s, the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, you’ve been on it, look where you’re at now!”
\n\nThe eventual and inevitable exhaustion has finally arrived. During the next weeks, until November 24, there are a few notable flare-ups, but a general peace compared to those hot August days. The passion, anger, and power many felt has not disappeared entirely. But those of us who have to hustle, who can’t be in the streets forever, are forced to return to work, to school, to childcare or eldercare, to coping, to whatever it is we do to scrape by. Unfortunately, this leaves an opening for those whose role in society is to handle management, reform, and representation. The narrative of the rebellion is increasingly taken over by non-profits, politicians, clergy, and some new activist organizations that have emerged over the past few months. Many of them have resources in the form of social networks or finances with which to continue and represent the fight that initially got ahead of them. The narrative becomes simpler. Much is erased. It’s inevitable.
\n\nThis is not necessarily malicious. Some will charge that these groups are getting rich off “the struggle” or mismanaging their funds. There were non-profits that were literally getting hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend to build their names. And yeah, some of it was George Soros money—he does fund organizations that counter unfettered rebellion. But those resources were not reaching random people on the street.
\n\nIt was counter-insurgency in action. But this isn’t a conspiratorial critique. This is about the role of non-profits and money. Most of us will never see any of the Ferguson money because money is finite and there will always be too little. Because there is too little, these groups rarely invest in anything or anyone that won’t give them results and more brand power—which is to say, in most of us, with our plethora of problems: poverty, debt, prison, trauma, un/employment, eviction, and so on. From a purely capitalistic standpoint, we are not a good investment. Inside any economic model, our appearance doesn’t make people with political power feel safe, whether it’s because we’re black, poor, were not educated in a respectable institution, or speak in a language that doesn’t compute within the system. Often, what we say is alienating and seems unstrategic to those who learned their sense of strategy in a university. We’re full of passion, a multitude of voices that cannot be commodified or compressed into a neat political constituency or issue.
\n\nIn any real rebellion, there is no center to find, no center to fund. There is no coherent narrative, no single legitimate voice that represents the identity in question, no “most authentic” voice from “the frontline,” no one who can speak solely in the name of “community.”
\n\nEven when a lot of people know each other and have some sense of community or collectivity, there are still the usual challenges and atomization imposed by capitalism, racialization, policing, class status, the state and its politicians, and the day-to-day challenges of individual survival. This seems obvious, but it’s useful to remember, because when things cool down and the professional activists become “the movement,” when they make their documentaries or write their books, you might wonder what happened to all the combative folks that you shared this moment with.
\n\nYou might not be able to find us because we don’t all meet in one big room. Nor do we often make it onto camera or into publications.
\n\nSeptember 10 - Organizers call for the shutting down of I-70 in solidarity with Michael Brown and to put pressure on the prosecutor to indict Darren Wilson. Police respond with an overwhelming show of force, with roughly 300 officers deployed. A crowd of protesters gathers in the street and boldly marches towards the police line in an attempt to break through and shut down the highway. The police succeed in stopping protesters from reaching the highway, but they are unable to calm the crowd; bricks and bottles are thrown at them. Police make a few arrests but fail to catch some of the culprits, who escape through the crowd into the surrounding neighborhood. One middle-aged woman exclaims to the crowd, “Start saving your shit, put it in a plastic bag and throw it at these motherfuckers!” and “Now is a good time to rob a bank!”
\n\nSeptember 23 - Mike Brown’s memorial burns in the early morning. Residents blame police or white supremacists. Throughout the day, supporters clean up and rebuild the memorial. Meanwhile, tension builds as word spreads about its destruction. When night falls, the streets are once again filled with people, this time without “peacekeepers.” Police are met with bottles and rocks as they force people off the streets and into the neighborhood. After a brief standoff on Canfield Drive, which the police are still too scared to enter during protests, shots ring out as someone fires towards the police. In the morning, two high-ranking officers complain about having to dive behind cruisers to avoid being hit.
\n\nSeptember 28 - A large crowd of protesters throws bottles and rocks at officers outside of the Ferguson Police Department.
\n\nOctober 2 - Police evict a protest encampment that had been occupying an empty lot on West Florissant in protest of the murder of Mike Brown.
\n\nOctober 4 - Protesters briefly disrupt the St. Louis symphony, singing “Which side are you on?”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/39a.jpg\")
American flags are taken from the homes of the rich people who hired the off-duty cop who killed Vonderrit Myers and burned right outside their doors for them to see.
\nOctober 8 - Just before dusk, an off-duty police officer working for a private security company in a wealthy area of the Shaw neighborhood shoots and kills 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers. Within a few hours, hundreds of people have gathered at the intersection. Police offer the usual story that the kid had a gun and shot first. Many witnesses and friends claim that the “gun” was actually a sandwich Vonderrit had just purchased. The crowd’s anger grows. People begin to surround the nervous police officers, shouting abuse and taunts. The police, realizing that they are outnumbered and the situation is beginning to be unsafe, try to leave the area in their cruisers. People surround the cars, smashing out their taillights and breaking the window of a detective’s car as he drives off.
\n\nOne officer, as he hastily retreats, realizes one of his fellow officers is missing. “Where’s Joe? We’re missing Joe,” he shouts over and over to replies from the crowd that, “Joe’s dead, man, we can’t find him either.” After the police leave the area, protesters take to the street and block traffic on the major boulevard in the area, Grand Avenue. A few minor scuffles happen throughout the night, with police attacked any time they approach the march. It is a sign of the climate in the city that when officers’ cars are attacked, they flee the area rather than calling in backup. The city is clearly scared of escalating events and having a “Ferguson” on their hands.
\n\nOctober 9 - For the second night in a row, a large crowd gathers at the intersection where Vonderrit Myers was killed. The crowd marches down to South Grand and proceeds to shut down the on- and off- ramps for highway I-44. The police keep a safe distance from the crowd, trying to de-escalate the situation. Eventually, the crowd starts to march down Flora Place after one woman points out that it is the wealthy residents of that street that pay for the private security guard who killed Myers. As the crowd approaches Flora Place, the energy starts to grow—people bang on cars, scream at the residents, and blare air horns. Protesters steal American flags off of front porches and a few houses receive bricks through their windows. The crowd gathers in an intersection and burns the collected flags. The crowd marches back towards Grand Avenue, weaving through the neighborhood along the way. When protesters reach the main intersection, three cops boldly run into the crowd. The officers are immediately surrounded and shoved out. Within minutes, roughly 100 officers flood the area to rescue the three officers, spraying the crowd with mace.
\n\nBrief scuffles follow, but the crowd is mostly dispersed by the large police presence.
\n\nOctober 12-14 - Under the banner “Ferguson October,” activists call for a weekend of disruption in memory of Mike Brown and to push for an indictment against Darren Wilson. The weekend is full of demonstrations. During the day, protesters shut down or disrupt various events including political campaign rallies, the Rams game, and multiple Wal-Marts, to name a few. At night, people gather outside of the Ferguson Police Department.
\n\nThe events of the weekend, while relatively peaceful, do achieve the goal of disrupting the normal flow of life in St. Louis and bringing attention to the case.
\n\nNovember 17 - Ahead of the announcement about whether Darren Wilson will be indicted, Governor Jay Nixon preemptively declares a State of Emergency. National Guard troops move into the area and guard 43 locations across the city, including electrical substations, police stations, shopping malls, and government facilities. An eerie tension descends on the city as residents await the verdict while the National Guard drives the streets in armored cars.
\n\nNovember 21 - Two members of the New Black Panther Party are arrested for allegedly buying pistols under false pretenses. It’s an FBI sting operation. In the investigation that follows, police accuse the two of a plot to murder the prosecutor, the governor, and blow up the St. Louis Arch.
\n\nLater, they each pled to four federal felony charges and were sentenced to 84 months.
\n\nNovember 23 - While people are still waiting for the verdict, protesters depart from the site where Vonderrit Myers was killed and march through South St. Louis. The march shuts down major intersections and disrupts traffic throughout the city.
\n\nThe days are tense leading up to the announcement of whether Darren Wilson will be charged. The city is on edge. It’s easy to strike up a conversation on the street about the topic with anyone. In the courthouse, paying a traffic ticket, you might run into a guy who talks to you about strategy and what we should do next—“Idiots, don’t tell the police you’re gonna block the highway, just do it!” At a medical study, you might hear from the phlebotomist, who happens to be Mike Brown’s aunt, “We as the family didn’t go out there, we didn’t want to give any support or appearance of support to what went down.” Or just walking around your neighborhood, it isn’t uncommon for some random person to yell, “Justice for Mike Brown or nah?” All you have to do is put your hands up and that is enough.
\n\nI am a little lost. It feels like years have gone by; my eyes are dry of tears, my head and body are still full of shock, my hair is even starting to grey. Organizers have brought in many people from out of town, but where are all the rowdy people I ran with? The ones who defended themselves, who threw rocks and looted stores? They seem to have disappeared, the same way I had for those months. The trauma of what has happened is not lost on me. We do have to sleep sometimes. For a while, I don’t expect much to happen when the decision comes down, because much of what has happened between August and November has been in the framework of civil disobedience; many have sought to scrub the riots from the narrative completely. But I am prepared for anything.
\n\nIn the days before the announcement, Ron Johnson was on the news talking about how he had met with “gang members” who said they would keep the peace. He told the reporter confidently: “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what’s going to happen.” Indeed.
\n\nA coalition of activist groups forms to issue “rules of engagement,” demanding safe spaces from police, that police should not wear riot gear, not use tear gas, or have rifles. The most problematic demand is “Every attempt will be made to pinpoint arrests so that only individual lawbreakers will be arrested. ‘Kettling’ and mass arrests will not be used.”
\n\nPart of me hopes that this rules of engagement thing is a trick to make the police as unprepared as possible, that our “safe spaces” would actually be bases for us to prepare our next moves against the police, if they agreed to our rule of no riot gear or rifles. But obviously, it isn’t a trick. It seems odd to expect the police to comply with demands that are about keeping us safe. Why would they ever do that?
\n\nThe disparity of their force relative to ours is not to be ignored. But we shouldn’t be groveling and begging. Compared to them, we have few ways to defend ourselves, but the reality is that the state needs weaponry to protect its wealth and power because without them, things could easily spiral out of control. In August, people were shooting at them, throwing rocks, burning things, tearing things apart, and it could grow.
\n\nWhat is going on is not just a matter of over-militarization. When the police needed more military force in past rebellions, they just called in the National Guard, who sometimes fired live rounds—for example, in Detroit in 1967.
\n\nWhat we’re seeing here now is a two-pronged attack, in which the police and their reformist sympathizers create rules and demands that separate “good” protestors from “bad” protestors. Intentionally or not, these “rules of engagement” serve to conceal the reality of the situation. The police have tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear for a reason: we are a real threat to the wealth and supremacy they protect. This fight is dangerous. It can result in trauma, arrest, and potentially death. Many of us were more than willing to take that risk. We are ultimately safer when we confront this reality and support those who want to engage in combative actions.
\n\nS. Florissant, Ferguson Police station
\n\nI go down to the Ferguson police station to be there when the verdict dropped. No one in the crowd expects Wilson to be indicted. We have known what will happen from the very day the grand jury started. It is stressful to wait for something you already know.
\n\nEventually, the moment comes. The prosecutor is reading the verdict. Someone has rigged up a PA system to broadcast the speech. It’s cutting in and out. I can barely hear it.
\n\nI see people shaking their heads. The verdict is clear: no indictment. Word is spreading through the crowd. Folks start to yell at the police line guarding the station. Mike Brown’s stepfather is screaming for people burn the police station down: “Burn this bitch down!”
\n\nSome people throw things at the police. I heard later that the first thing thrown at them was a bullhorn. This has all sorts of meaning if you think about it. We yelled at you for too long, this thing has proved to be useless. The time for talk is over! At this point, there are only something like a dozen riot police there. Some of them start to back away frantically, almost tripping over each other. It is nice to see the righteous terror inspired by a crowd of angry people.
\n\nA woman comes through the crowd, sobbing. I try to comfort her. She screams, “We’re so far from ever getting any justice! Why?” We hug. Another woman comes up and holds her. I let go just as CNN comes over to record this moment. I get in front of the camera and yell at them for being vultures, for not letting this woman have this moment in peace. They eventually leave. The antagonism towards the media is pretty strong. Earlier in the night, some media figures had been robbed and others had been threatened with violence.
\n\nSuddenly, gunshots ring out and people surge over to where they are. People run towards the gunshots. Windows start breaking all around us. Some peace police are trying really hard to guard the businesses. It’s impossible.
\n\nWhile that is happening, a large part of the crowd is marching to a formation of riot police down the street to confront them. People start to break up blocks of paving stones, concrete, anything they can find to throw. The sound of rocks hitting riot shields is constant.
\n\nA cop car is parked about 15 feet in front of the line of cops, where most of the crowd is. Folks start to trash it. Windows are smashed and anything loose in the car is grabbed. I hear later that someone popped the trunk and took an AR-15 out of it. No one is stopping anyone; if anyone wanted to, they’d be outnumbered. Nearby, I hear two young girls yelling expletives at the police. One of them, embarrassed, says, “Oh, I’m sorry! I don’t usually cuss. I go to church every Sunday!” They laugh, pick up rocks, and throw them at the cop car. There are numerous cameras around and they aren’t wearing masks. I try to warn them, but they just shrug.
\n\nThe police yell over the intercom “PLEASE STOP THROWING ROCKS! YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST AND/OR OTHER MEASURES! STOP IT NOW!” People start to rock the car to try to flip it. “PLEASE STOP TRYING TO FLIP THE POLICE CAR, OR YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO ARREST! STOP NOW!”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/29a.jpg\")
Life skills in action. Teamwork, they tell us—in school, at work, or in daily life—is what makes the dream work.
\nThe cops are firing rubber bullets and pellets. Beside me, there’s a man yelling; suddenly, he screams and covers his eye. A pellet has hit his eye, blinding him. As more pellets fly, we’re rushing to pull him away to safety while he screams. Some people grab the man and rush him to the hospital. Later, I hear that he lost his eye.
\n\nAt a loss, the police fire tear gas and beanbag rounds. As we run from the gas, I see an older black man asking younger kids if they’re leaving.
\n\n“You all leaving already? Or are you just taking a break and gonna go back for more? Yeah, take a break, but don’t leave! Keep your strength. Go back for more.” Sage advice.
\n\nPeople wait until the tear gas dissipates and come back and throw more rocks at the line. The cop car is totaled and there is nothing really left for people to do but to try to flip it again. In response, the police shoot more tear gas, this time a whole choking lot of it.
\n\nFinally, the crowd disperses into the neighborhood as the police advance towards the police station, firing gas into the side streets. Some folks loot a BoostMobile store and other shops. Further away from the police line, a trashcan is on fire. I run into some folks who are looting pricey hair extensions and getting into a car. I warn them about covering their license plates and they give me a smirk from under their masks: “This isn’t our car, we’re good.”
\n\nMy group decides to circle back to the police line where our cars are parked. We walk through the neighborhood. Someone near us pops off a few shots in the direction of the police, pretty nonchalant. In return, the police fire more gas. We loop back to S. Florrisant, where the cop car is now on fire. It is a beautiful and rare sight. Later I hear that another police car behind it was set on fire too.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/30a.jpg\")
\nW. Florissant
\n\nWe get to our car and drive to West Florissant. As we pull up, people are looting everything. All the boards have been taken off the businesses.
\n\nAs usual, photographers are taking photos of those looting. Some folks go up to them and tell them that they should stop for their safety. Two of the three stop, very nervous. I tell them, “Don’t pull that shit where I leave and then you’re back taking photos! We don’t want people to get arrested later for this. This is for your safety and for the safety of everyone.” Terrified, they leave. The other guy looks like he could hold his own against us. He tells us he isn’t a snitch.
\n\nWe walk down the street. Lots of alcohol flowing. Lots of consumer goods no longer being consumer goods. A group of what seems like middle-school kids comes up to us and asks if we want any candy, because their purses are too heavy. In return, someone offers them some fancy cognac and one of them yells that they are underage—and yeah, give me some!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/31a.jpg\")
The looting of the Ferguson Mart.
\nWe had distributed masks and gloves earlier. Spray cans are being passed around for anyone to use. Food and liquor are shared, fires are blazing. People are getting drunker and drunker. Cars are starting to get a bit more wild and out of control on the streets. It seems like as people go from one store to the next, fire is following.
\n\nI’m standing in the crowd. The fire is blowing up the night. The police and fire department can only wait until we get tired and those with guns move on or run out of bullets. Pop-pop-pop-pop! I hear the noise and scan my surroundings. I watch the fires burn. The flames are so high. What is normally a sterile and controlled reality is transforming into its essence: toxic smoke. The material that is burning came from the earth, violently extracted to feed capitalism and transformed into bullshit strip malls. We frequent these places, we shop and shoplift there; they hire us, they exploit us, they take our money. Now, it’s a billowing cloud permeating the air. I remember the woman in August screaming for people to burn all this shit down. Her demand has been taken to heart tonight.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/32a.jpg\")
A release after a long wait for the inevitable non-indictment of Darren Wilson.
\nThe police slowly move in as folks run out of things to loot. The cops are not doing anything other than protecting the fire department, who are not able to put out the fires on account of all the gunfire. Our group decides to leave and go to the south side of St. Louis, where other protests are going on. But the thing is… our car is now blocked off by the police line at the Ferguson Mart. Too sketched out and maybe too incriminated to walk past them, we try to sneak through the neighborhood, wondering if we can make it through the line some other way. We find a street that might work, stash any stuff that might get us popped, and walk slowly towards the cops. They immediately tell us to turn around and fuck off. Our next option: sneak across a train bridge that goes over to the other side of W. Florissant.
\n\nWe sneak through people’s yards and run up the hill to get to the tracks. On one side of us, there are homes; on the other, a grocery store guarded by the National Guard. We walk behind a fence overgrown with vines that gives us cover. As we walk, tiptoeing, avoiding rocks, stepping on the ties, trying not to make too much noise, we hear the soldiers talking among themselves. Eventually, I hear one of them interrupt: “Hey… did you hear that? Sounds like there’s something over there.”
\n\nFuck. They’re pointing in our direction. We all freeze, hoping they’ll think it’s just the wind or the general cacophony of gunfire and explosions. Finally, we start to walk, but again, we hear them murmuring about a noise on the tracks. Realizing how sketchy this all is, that we could easily be perceived to be making an attack on the grocery store and the police command center, we decide to head back to the neighborhood and figure out something else.
\n\nWe meander around the neighborhood. There are really only one or two exits to the main street and cops with assault rifles are guarding them. We walk past a house with people outside; they warn us that there’s a cop up the way. Generously, they invite us inside. As we all drink liquor together, we thank them for their hospitality and talk about what’s going on. The television is on, showing helicopter footage of W. Florissant totally on fire. We see footage of the two cop cars on fire on S. Florissant. One of the people in the house is singing the iLoveMakonnen song “Tuesday,” because it’s Monday and he’s wondering what’s going to go up on Tuesday.
\n\nNext, we see footage of people blocking Highway I-44 down on the south side of the city and then, later, footage of people looting the pawnshop on South Grand, which is more of a bohemian neighborhood. Most notably, someone comes out with a crossbow. The South Grand protests have had a different character; they’ve been more peace-oriented. Some folks who are familiar to us from the previous months in Ferguson are there, including the box truck that reads “No Shoot, No Loot” on it. A friend tells me later that they are among the first people to propose looting, yelling and pointing at the pawnshop. They’re in the wrong space, sadly. Later, I hear from friends that activist organizer types were going around attacking anyone breaking things or trying to loot.
\n\nEventually, friends with a car find a way to get us. We cram into their small car and head to the city via a very long route. When we get to South Grand, it’s general chaos. The police are driving Bearcats around, shining their lights on small groups and tear-gassing every intersection in all directions. They’re trying hard to get us to disperse.
\n\nWe run into eight or nine teenage kids, one of whom I met in Ferguson in August. Some of us shared some chips together on one of the nights the stores were looted. Initially, we sketch them out, but eventually the person I met months ago remembers me and we’re cool. Invincible as children, they really don’t give a fuck; it’s kind of crazy. They talk about whether to loot a clothing store down the road, but I had seen lots of National Guard in the parking lot when I had driven by it earlier in the day. We convince them that it is a really bad idea. They agree and thank us for the heads up. I ask them where they are from and they all respond, “North County.” They kind of regret coming out here; they wish they had stayed in Ferguson where things are still happening and the cops aren’t doing anything to stop it. But it’s pretty amazing that they decided to make the trip out here to express their rage.
\n\nSome of their folks start ripping up metal trashcan lids and throwing them at the nearest windows they can find. Luckily, when the police drive by us, they miss this, because they are so busy dealing with the crowd down the road. But after ten minutes, they pop out on us and we all run.
\n\nWe head back down South Grand to where most people are. Lots of people have now taken shelter in a coffee shop that has been an organizing epicenter for the protests in the city. It is also one of the “safe spaces” that activists asked the police to respect. The police are now standing outside of it firing tear gas onto the patio. There’s something like a hundred people inside and the gas is seeping in.
\n\nIt’s absolutely terrible, but it’s not surprising that the police are not concerned about safe space.
\n\nTonight, there is another rally outside the Ferguson Police Department. The crowd is much smaller than last night. It makes sense; a lot of people were up late and lots went down. But people are still angry and confrontational. The police and the National Guard have increased their presence in front of the police department. They are largely able to maintain control, rushing into the crowd and attacking people every time a bottle or rock is thrown.
\n\nDown the street, there is a presence of mostly white, armed militiamen, presumably the notorious Oath Keepers—comprised of former cops and military. They’re hiding on the roofs of businesses, wearing armor and sporting assault rifles. I join some folks in yelling at them, asking them what they’re up there for.2
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/34a.jpg\")
Oathkeeper old man winter protecting capital and private property.
\nAfter we spend a few hours standing off with the police, someone yells that we should go down the street to Ferguson City Hall. We quickly depart, leaving the surprised police behind. Having marched a few blocks, protesters round a corner and approach the unguarded city hall building. There is a lone empty cop car parked in front of it. Immediately, people begin to attack the building and the police cruiser. People break the cruiser’s windows and attempt to flip it over and set it on fire while others break the windows of city hall with whatever they can find. By the time the police arrive with their armored vehicles and cars, the crowd has moved back towards the main street, South Florissant. A few cruisers have their windows smashed out as the armored vehicles shoot tear gas into the air.
\n\nAs protesters make their way back towards the police station, there is talk of going to the mall to shut it down. Some protesters do that later in the night. The night is much calmer, but mostly because the National Guard is preemptively guarding stores, unlike the previous night.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/35a.jpg\")
The proper way to mask up. This person obviously came prepared.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/36a.jpg\")
The rioter in the cop’s head.
\nclimbing dead bodies so you can get to heaven
\n\nLong lines of symbols like the ones you’ve been reading are often used to obscure flesh-and-blood bodies. Written and spoken words have been used time and time again to deceive and hide. The first writers were an elite class who helped the ruling class to keep records of their slaves, grains, armies, money, sovereignty, and power. Much of what is known about past states comes down to us from these scribes who kept records of state and religious affairs but not much about the day-to-day affairs of ordinary people. There aren’t very many autobiographies of enslaved Egyptian pyramid builders, or of peasants in Africa, the Americas, Europe, or Asia—and there are relatively few from African slaves in the Americas. Scribes helped to carve economic records, laws, commandments, declarations, and myths into stones that many of our ancestors couldn’t read, which were ultimately used to victimize them. The Word was sacred and people were punished if they sinned against it. A fictitious god who saw and recorded all, another kind of historian keeping tabs on us, often played a role in these stories.
\n\nThe world used to hold a vast multitude of different human traditions in countless different languages. We’ll never know what that was like. Was it better? I don’t know. The dominant languages that exist now are dominant because of a few power structures that wiped out other languages and cultures. It could be argued that the languages we speak are not ours—that in some ways, they are opposed to our interests, the products of a long history of whittling down. But being stuck with them, we also subvert them all the time, changing the definitions of words to become freer or elude the authorities.
\n\nOur stories can easily change with time and perspective. Memory is foggy, days and moments can get mixed together or split apart. Sometimes we discover crucial new details—possibly years later.
\n\nIt’s become hard to say “Ferguson” anymore, seeing this name invoked by so many different people to make so many different points. Everybody wants a piece. The state, the police, activists, anarchists, black nationalists, Maoists and other political cults, they all have their interpretations. Most of these highlight a few spectacular, exaggerated elements and downplay the others to fit their framework, often from a very self-important perspective.
\n\nThe legacy of the events in Ferguson has put some activists and leaders on a pedestal to be looked up to. There is widespread pressure to prove yourself in activist circles—and, to some extent, in anarchist circles, as well. How many battle scars do you have? How many civil disobedience arrests or media appearances? How victimized have you been? These are among the ways that some have built their militant cred. In August, some of those same people were out on the street trying to stop the looting, discourage defense measures, and suppress the general combativeness of those outside their circles. It’s not uncommon to hear some people use the fact of having been in Ferguson as clout, to speak positively of burning cop cars—without referencing their own repressive actions—in speeches at universities like Harvard where no one can challenge them.
\n\nI’ve seen yelling matches between demonstrators in which both sides were shouting “I was there from day one!” in reference to August 9, 2014. How petty to try to climb to the top over the thousands of others who participated in the rebellion—people who didn’t make the media sound bite, had no activist safety network, who were not non-violent, whose voices were a little too quiet or whose language was not comprehensible to those who wield institutional power. The truth is that there never was a coherent frontline. People look for names and organizations to build a story around, but that’s not what the story is.
\n\nFerguson has become a symbol. In reality, it’s just one more place among many where fucked up shit is happening. It’s a small suburb of 20,000 people tucked into a sea of 30 different municipalities on the edge of St. Louis City. Strip malls, segregation, suburban roads, flat and boring. It could be anywhere in the US. There is no defining spirit that you can attribute to this place. It’s not a rebel territory that is constantly defended; there is no well-established collective culture of resistance. For some, it’s just another hashtag. For others, it became a struggle laboratory.
\n\nFor the state, what went down in Ferguson has become a workshop for the study of “race relations,” crowd control strategy, and reform. The same thing seems to happen after every uprising in recent times—a federal or state report is put out about what happened and what could be done in the future. Reading the narrative of the police can be funny and useful because often, it frames the situation more realistically, although they still get so much wrong. If nothing else, they’re not trying to conceal the combativeness of those who attacked them in the way that many “radical” politicos do.
\n\nFor many academics and revolutionaries, what happened in Ferguson is something to shoehorn into grand narratives about a revolutionary subject, Marx, or anti-blackness. How frustrating it is when they use their incomprehensible jargon to speak about a situation in which many people passionately fought and we can’t even understand it! It’s as if, even though we were there, we weren’t there in their narrative: we become chess pieces in someone else’s grand theory, to be moved around only when it suits the player. If some of us don’t fit the theory, the thinkers just erase us.
\n\nSome of their analysis might be useful, all the same, but it’s odd how inaccessible it all is considering how seriously some of these folks take “white supremacy” and “anti-blackness.”
\n\nDistrust of the police and the state has led some to develop conspiracy theories about why the rebellion ended. For instance, some people, including some anarchists, believe that some of the people who died in the years after the rebellion were revolutionaries murdered by the state or white supremacists. It is arguable whether most of those who have died would have called themselves revolutionaries. It might be more accurate to say they were people who were caught up in the rebellion but also had past lives that eventually caught back up to them.
\n\nSt. Louis is a violent place, full of intergenerational trauma that can follow you for your whole life. When I’ve talked with (usually working class) people my age from here, it’s not uncommon to hear about how much they want to get out of this place. There are always stories about a friend or family member dying from gun violence or drugs. There’s a legitimate fear of being the next victim of the police and the street.
\n\nThe story about revolutionary freedom fighters being repressed by secretive enemies distracts people from examining daily life in mass society. In our own ways, we all suffer the daily indignities of living in a highly racialized capitalist order, in which interpersonal violence, work, repressive family relations, homophobia, drug and alcohol addiction, depression, and desperation are widespread and often much more deadly than the police. Daily life is killing us, quickly or slowly. The police are often not the most dangerous threat we face. The fight is against daily life.
\n\nDeath is not always the absence of heartbeat. It’s not always a bullet tearing your soul apart from your body. It is not always something physical. Another form of death is never being seen or heard because your existence is too obscure or complicated to be incorporated into anyone’s social or political program.
\n\nYet, to me, this is ultimately a strength. We should not be in a hurry to help anyone identify or oversimplify us. We confound every great narrative, every program. That’s the struggle, in my view: to resist categorization, to build relations without trying to measure up to anything other than the measures we make ourselves.
\n\nAfter the whirlwind, the record slowly becomes set and fixed. Our enemies—the activists, academics, preachers, police, and politicians—recuperate the story they have so desperately been trying to own. The story that exceeded their grasp. They have all the time they need to do this—it’s their job to repress and package rage into something palatable. Some are actually paid to do this; that part is not a conspiracy theory. For those excluded from this show, time passes, memory fades, bills need to get paid, kids need to be raised, the hustle continues.
\n\nThe documentaries and books are written, with notable figures quoted. It hurts to watch. It’s like the twilight zone: in the first part of the episode, we’re at war with the ones who decried the rioting, but later on, they’ve rewritten themselves as the new “frontline” militants. We know the secret, but it’s no use trying to express it, the events are too confusing and the megaphone voiceovers are too loud. The reoccurring memory of many of these people standing with their backs to the police telling people to go home haunts us. It’s hard not to feel like a bitter broken record.
\n\nIn the end, a disconnected “movement” was born, but it is smaller, less proletarian, and limited to theatrical slogans, specialized roles (activist, organizer, politician, white ally or “accomplice”), and trainings that ultimately lead us back the same terrible chasm. Many people recede because the drama and the false sense of community in this scene are not worth it.
\n\nI am often tortured by the past. I find it harder and harder to believe in what I remember in my heart. Those sleepless August nights, the overwhelming and inexplicable moments, only reside in a deep memory that is difficult to access. Still, it waits to re-emerge. When? Tomorrow? Next year? Decades from now? Never again? What was all that really for?
\n\nIn left political circles, it is customary to celebrate the recorded militant ancestors, to look back on radical movements and rebellions, to name names, to highlight organizations, to tell the great story. But these stories are only told because they are visible, and useful to those who tell them. History is the overpowering voiceover, the scenes cut or exaggerated to serve political purposes. Everything else below is a mumbling you can barely hear.
\n\nStill—what those days in Ferguson did to everyone who lived them is deep. It comes up in countless ways that will never be reduced to documentaries or tweets. All the stories from the people I’ve encountered in courtrooms, at parties, shows, protests, or randomly on the street—people who have unrepentantly claimed that they or their friends started a fire, that they were the first ones to bust through the QT door, that they looted the Foot Locker first, threw the first stone, or just that they were there. This sort of folklore is much more powerful than any book or written account.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/37a.jpg\")
Man on a horse, a fixture in the early days of August. For me, he was a classic example of the diverse range of characters out there, making it difficult for any ideologue to pinpoint or homogenize people.
\nIt is only fitting that this has all become a sort of folklore. History is written from above and far away, seeking to synthesize a moment into some kind of grand narrative. Folklore, though it is also limited, is much more personal. It is often spoken, poetically and bodily—and the places we usually tell our stories are not in the halls of power or in front of cameras. Folklore resists the efforts of scribes whose job is to translate our stories for academic or state research. The memory that is both collective and individual is powerful, because it exists in the depths of our bodies—not merely as words, but also in our trauma, our power, our laughter, our love and rage.
\n\nIn times when individual alienation seems to be ever increasing, when it is hard to connect with others, it feels crucial to find that collective memory, to resist the institutions that seek to frame what we experienced according to their own interests. In times of revolt, the fog of memory lifts, giving us a chance to remember our bodies and our agency, our ability to act, to break with the roles we have been given, to do and be the things we are told we never could.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/09/38a.jpg\")
\nThis part of Ferguson does not conform to a grid, making it difficult for police to patrol and giving demonstrators the upper hand. The streets are generally dark and confusing, and the residents of some of them are outright hostile to police—particularly Canfield Drive, the street where Mike Brown was murdered. When the police tear-gassed demonstrators, it was possible to retreat to the neighborhood. Some could just go right home because their yards were right behind the strip of stores. ↩
\nI’ve been having an internal debate about these Oath Keeper folks since I first saw them mingling in the QT lot in August. It’s clear that they are fucked up, but they aren’t entirely the Nazi-white-supremacist kind of fucked as much as they are USA Constitutionalists. They prefer to promote the commandments of the slave-owning founding fathers of this country. Most notable is the Oath Keeper line about the protection of private property and the “right to protest” that doesn’t destroy said property. This line has traction among many people in this country. I have seen these mostly white militia folks spouting this line in largely black crowds and it has worked quite well on some folks. Later the following year, some of the members call for a hundred black men to march armed through Ferguson. In the end, the Oath Keeper leadership purged those who called for it. They still had the march, but it was just a couple of wingnut and conservative black militiamen standing in the rain. It’s worth exploring the institution of private property and how it functions as the foundation of the class and race relations around us. It is clear enough when you realize that the institution of private property was one of the complex mechanisms that made it possible for slavery to be systemized and rationalized. The slave owners who wrote the Constitution surely had this in mind. ↩
\nIn February 2015, after months of confrontations in response to the murder of Michael Brown, a number of anarchists from the St. Louis area gathered to reflect on their experiences in the streets, their role in predominantly black struggles, and the ramifications of arson and gunfire in protests. We had sent some discussion questions to get the ball rolling, but mostly they let the conversation take its own course, speaking with admirable frankness and vulnerability. The result is an important historical document, of interest to anyone who might one day participate in something similar.
\nThis transcript originally appeared in the 12th issue of Rolling Thunder, which examines the movement that spread across the United States from Ferguson in great detail.
\nWhen we talk about Ferguson, it’s imperative that we recognize that what became a beautiful uprising began with a tragic loss, a brutal murder. The endless list of those killed at the hands of the state in St. Louis and elsewhere stokes our rage and fuels our tears. But like those we saw in the streets of Ferguson, we refuse to turn this profound anger and misery inward on ourselves.
\nThe issue of this rebellion, at the heart, is far from a simple one and therefore the answers to questions posed are far from straight forward. The editors of Rolling Thunder put together a compendium of thoughtful and critical questions—analytical and clearly posed from a distance. But because of the nature of our experiences where our lives were ripped open—exposing us to the highest highs and lowest lows—the discussion strayed far from the questions posed. Ultimately, we didn’t answer very many of them.
\nWe, who were in the streets together over the course of several months in some of the most intimate and exhilarating moments of our lives, had a meandering discussion. At times, we started with the questions; at other times, the discussion sparked some of our own. We were more drawn to start at the heart—how does it feel to touch the edge of your dreams? How do you possibly return to life the way it was before? Who holds you when you cry?
\nBecause we did cry: from the intense moments of rage to the unbelievable and unbearable beauty we witnessed and helped to create. Because we witnessed what often seems untouchable—witnessed the impossible—witnessed some of the hope that dwells in our deepest places, and we cried because we touched the edge of great, great loss. And this brought us to perhaps the most important question of all: after all you’ve been through, what do you still hope and dream for?
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/prayer1370.jpg\")
Mourners in Ferguson at the site where Michael Brown was murdered, August 10, 2014.
\nLuca: [reading] “How did you see the future of the St. Louis area before this and how do you see it now? What are the long-term effects shaping up to be? What new social bodies coalesced around the rebellion and the reaction against it or broke it up?”
\nMasie: I was a lot more pessimistic about the world and St. Louis before this.
\nCameron: I definitely was.
\nEmma: It was incredible to be going to things that you weren’t trying to make happen. It was such a relief.
\nLuca: Yeah, it seemed like this place was in a malaise, like much of the country, but here particularly because of how this place is. And so it was totally unexpected.
\nCameron: I didn’t expect this to happen and it was amazing that it happened, but I’m also thinking, is this just the sort of thing that might just happen every twenty years and then we’re just back to nothing happening in between? I’m just not sure that it’s a thing that will keep happening. Because it happened, like, twenty years ago, in 1992, and police have kept killing people for years and years.
\nVera: We have to take into account what was happening just locally in St. Louis. Maybe riots like this only happen every twenty years, but things were happening in St. Louis that led up to it. Like the Trayvon march.111. On July 14, 2013, there was a rally in St. Louis in response to George Zimmerman being found not guilty for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The rally culminated in about 800 people marching through downtown St. Louis. Police barricades were moved and pushed through, graffiti was written on the back of moving buses, things were thrown in the streets. It quickly became the most notable anti-police march St. Louis had seen in recent history. This march took the cake until Ferguson, which took the whole bakery. A short article on the march entitled “The Storming of the Bastille” can be found at the dialectical-delinquents.com page of Ferguson coverage.
\nLuca: Yeah, this is an event on a continuum of events that start way back, before Trayvon Martin and before Oscar Grant, that maybe goes back to the 1992 riots in LA. And how do those things relate to Occupy or the Arab Spring or the popular consciousness of these mass social uprisings? They’re interconnected, even though they’re not connected in an obvious way.
\nCameron: Like, there was one guy at the Trayvon march who was getting pissed because we weren’t marching yet. And he was quoting a Tupac song, “We riot, not rally.” He kept saying that. When I saw him in Ferguson, I felt that there was definitely some kind of continuum.
\nLuca: Yeah, and because that rally that happened before the Trayvon Martin march was so official, there were all these senators and church leaders there that later were also connected to Ferguson. Even though that’s a completely different population, there was some momentum connected in that way.
\nVera: They tried to turn over a police car at the Trayvon march…
\nLuca: Oh, that’s right…
\nVera: …and didn’t know how to do it and people were telling them, “Well, this is how you could do it…”
\nLuca: “And you should be covering your face right now…”
\nVera: I heard those conversations happening. And then to see what happened in Ferguson… I do think there was a connection there beyond just our friends.
\nLuca: The other thing about how this related to St. Louis is that this place is really hard to live in, like a lot of shitty cities or rust belt cities in the Midwest. The quality of life here is pretty low. Even though cost of living is pretty low, too.
\nMasie: Should we list all the ways it’s horrible to live here, so people don’t feel inclined to move here?
\n[laughter]
\nMasie: Air quality, interpersonal violence… it’s terrible.
\nCameron: The police are… brutal. They’re just terrible.
\nMasie: There’s tons of Superfund sites.
\nVera: So much poverty and crime…
\nEmma: You cannot swim in clean water.
\nLuca: The water’s not clean that you’re drinking either.
\nMasie: You’re at least an hour away from wilderness. At least.
\nLouise: It’s crazy segregated.
\nCameron: Even the wilderness is polluted.
\n[laughter]
\nMasie: There’s microchips you have to wear when you’re here. Microchips under your skin…
\n[laughter]
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/policeshooting1370.jpg\")
Protesters gather in Ferguson in response to the murder of Michael Brown.
\nEmma: Do you think people in general hope that when police keep killing people, people will respond again? Or is it just me? Do you think that there is that momentum? Even though we’ve seen people both respond and not respond to police murders since Mike Brown’s murder?
\nVera: I just hope that when it gets warmer that’s gonna happen.
\nLuca: There’s also this question of guilt that plays into it, of how people respond if there’s a gun involved. The question of whether they think the person killed by the cops is guilty. But even that person on Minnesota222. LeDarius Williams was shot and killed by St. Louis police on Minnesota Avenue in St. Louis city. who had a gun, people still responded. Anyway, I feel hopeful. I don’t expect it, but the possibility feels much greater now that something could happen when the police kill someone.
\nEmma: And how do you think it will move beyond people responding only when the cops kill someone to responding to confront the shitty conditions of everyday life?
\nMasie: My hope is—tons of people gathering, being pissed off, spilling onto whatever major street is nearby, maybe confronting police and pushing them out…
\nJane: …burning the nearest QuickTrip…
\nMasie: Maybe people could just start doing that when they get an eviction notice or when cost of living is going up or food stamps are being cut. That would be my hope, but I’m not holding my breath for that to happen.
\nLuca: I think that’s one of things about the limitations of the riot. There’s this disconnect between people being in the streets together and larger or more nuanced social struggle. How does rioting lead to bigger occupations or general strikes or occupied neighborhoods or completely autonomous zones or neighborhoods where the cops can never go?
\nBecause there are these other entities now. To answer the question of how the social terrain in St. Louis has changed, there are more activists now, these politicized people, and they’re still trying to find their way, and there’s more socialists and more Black Power nationalists or people involved in trying to get “police oversight.”
\nCameron: It seems like there’s always going to be a disconnect between those people and those who are not organizers. It’s gonna happen, but during the months between August and November, I was like, man, I feel kinda pessimistic that people are not gonna react like they did in August. The energy was different between August and November. It was more passive, though there were flare-ups from time to time.
\nBut then in November, that happened, and I was like, “Oh, there’s clearly some division or distinction or separation going on and I’m not even a part of that.” I’m not a part of any of those groups of non-organizer/activist people and I’m just as outside of it as the activist groups are. Maybe that also makes it seem like I think there’s some fictional group I need to penetrate and join. But I think that’s really problematic. There’s no inside I can join or a vanguard that meets who are the realest of the real. There’s just people, some who are organized in sketchy ways that I can probably never be a part of, some who just show up and fight.
\nBut yeah, there’s gonna be activists and organizers doing stuff in response to these killings and I think that’s still good. But before this, they were doing the same thing, that is, they were making it their “issue,” but maybe with less people. And now it’s just another single issue. Sometimes I get depressed when I think about that. But then random shit happens, like the rioting in Ferguson in November. And I see people I don’t see at meetings or at the usual organizer protests attacking police.
\nI ran into some people on November 24 that I had seen in August on some of the crazier nights. They seemed prepared; it was a large group and they were just roving the streets and causing havoc. They seemed to have no interest in being peaceful.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/porta1370.jpg\")
Protesters in Ferguson, August 2014.
\nMasie: I imagine by asking about “social bodies,” though, they wanted to hear about what new people had come out of all this.
\nVera: Like, there’s more socialists in St. Louis now.
\nMasie: Yeah, there used to be almost no Left in St. Louis.
\nLuca: And now there’s becoming an established Left. It sucks!
\nCameron: I was starting to have some real in-depth conversations with this socialist person, and then I realized that he’s lobbying to get some alderman elected…
\nMasie: Goddamn socialists…
\nCameron: And I was like, I was really into what you’re saying, and now I realize all you want to do is get to a point where your political party is a contender. Which to me is a waste of time.
\nVera: There was a lot of recruiting going on all around. At some point, it became like a political fair for the different groups.
\nLuca: Yeah, even that first week, by… was it Thursday [August 14]? When it was just like a street party. With the Christian mimes and all the wingnut preachers showing up…
\n[laughter]
\nTodd: And there was even that Christian rap circle.
\nLuca: The prayer circles.
\nVera: The people who would walk between the riot cops and the crowd just saying “Jesus” over and over again.
\n[laughter]
\nVera: But even the RCP [Revolutionary Communist Party]… they were there to recruit people and they did recruit people.
\nLuca: Oh yeah, they were there so fast.
\nCameron: But we were there before them.
\n[laughter]
\nLuca: Cuz we live here! They’re from Chicago! They had to come from out of town cuz there is no RCP in St. Louis. Well, now there is. Great!
\n[laughter]
\nEmma: People who have been arrested since the August and November events… some of us have gone to court for their appearances. And, yeah, the RCP is there, trying to recruit them. When we were there recently, they were trying to get people to come to some phone drive or something.
\nVera: They were even trying to recruit us. They were like, “What’s your website? How can we get in touch with you?” I mean, not that they knew who we were, but… well, they do now.
\nMasie: It sucks, though, because, say you’re not involved in any group, you’re not some sort of politico, you’ve never been involved in any of this stuff before… The way people “get involved” in things is that they become activists or something. So unless anarchists are gonna do the anarchist form of activism, then what do we do? And also, how realistic is it for us to be frustrated with people who go to NGOs, or who go to these socialist organizations? Because it’s not as though they know obscure post-left theory or stuff that our friends have thought about and read for a long time.
\nI understand, too, that those theories come from people’s actual experiences of having to deal with this bullshit and being frustrated with it. So there’s that hope, maybe people will get disillusioned with activism and get more into the stuff we’re interested in. But then, maybe they’ll just write off everything instead.
\nEmma: Yeah, it did make me question going to court because… MORE [Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment] is there, and the RCP is there, and I’m wondering, why am I there? Do I really want to stand in line next to these other groups that are trying to recruit this person? I mean, I’m not there because I know them.
\nSo, yeah, it can be disheartening or something… that outside the riot or those moments I didn’t really make any friends. So I go to court cuz I hate prisons and I don’t want people to be abandoned when they get arrested, but then I don’t really know how we should…
\nLuca: Well, to overgeneralize and to speak as a “we,” I think we were really careful the way we moved through things not to be a group, not to be an entity, not to recruit, not to participate in a lot of the formal activist circles that came afterward, not to try to influence this building of the Left in St. Louis.
\nAnd that doesn’t mean we didn’t align ourselves. We aligned ourselves with people in the streets. But we walked away without having long-term relationships with people, because things were just happening in a moment rather than in this structured environment. We avoided that. You know?
\nIn some ways, it was a benefit to us, in terms of not being identifiable too much by the Left… I mean, identifiable to put blame on us individually. But it does mean we haven’t thrown our hat in the ring as far as trying to influence this thing that the Left is building. We haven’t even been doing the things we normally do, like tabling or handing out newsletters. We’ve stayed away from that for a lot of great reasons, but at the same time it means we’ve missed out on being influential. Often, what anarchists have done in the past is to be an influence. To be like, “Hey shit’s fucked up, shit’s fucked up.” Like pushing… but now we’re pushing in a really different way.
\nCameron: It also seems like a lot of the Leftist activist groups are in a similar predicament. They’re not building. They’re bigger, but I don’t think they’re really blowing up with people. The people still involved are those who have the stamina to deal with being political or being recruited, or being in long meetings.
\nEmma: I did realize, though, that it sucks that the people that maybe I’ll have a real conversation with or build something with… it’s cuz they’re locked up, and then maybe I’ll write them a letter.
\nVera: Right.
\nEmma: And then, yeah, it’s a less than ideal way to have a conversation with someone.
\nMasie: There are some anarchists in town who have gone the activist route. And it’s interesting because some of them were invited to table at Antonio Martin’s funeral, or maybe the dinner afterwards. And that led to one of Antonio Martin’s family members reading stuff that we had written and stuff that other people had written about Ferguson, like, critiquing the police. And apparently the cousin was like, “I can’t believe white people think this, I can’t believe a white person wrote this.” So they actually made this worthwhile connection.
\nLuca: Yeah.
\nMasie: So I don’t know what to do with that.
\nLuca: Well, it’s like, how do we do that more? That’s always been the question throughout this whole entire struggle, since August. How do we create long-lasting genuine connections?
\nMasie: And not just be proselytizing.
\nLuca: And not be trying to get dated….
\nVera: Get what?
\nLuca: Dated. “Hey baby…” People were talking about getting people’s numbers so they could hang out or be friends. You know how many phone numbers I could have walked away with? But fuck that…
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/flip1370.jpg\")
Demonstrators attempting to flip a police car in Ferguson on the night of the grand jury announcement, November 24.
\nCameron: My solution to not being a part of the greater Left is to have autonomous events outside of it that are advertised. I mean, I think we’re still gonna fall into that no matter what we do. There will still be alienated relationships where we’re like “we’re the anarchists,” or “we have this idea.” But I think there are ways to mitigate talking to people like they’re recruits.
\nAnother thing, I wish that… I think the most active thing we were able to do is when things were actually happening. When West Florissant was autonomous in some ways. Pushing that further—that’s what I think my role is. Making that space more powerful, cuz that’s where you actually have some real conversation.
\nVera: But do you think we could have acted more or done more to continue that? Or could we have, like, been out there before the Leftists, before they started coming in and recruiting people? Could we have pushed the rioting further before they came in?
\nLuca: I think that one of the things that was coming up for a lot of us was that we got to act not as anarchists. We got to act as part of a larger social force. It was really refreshing not to be the ones to bring the fight. And so it’s interesting to think… do we have any ability to push that further than it went? I don’t know. It was a tide unto itself that we got to be a part of.
\nEmma: People were already pushing it.
\nMasie: The irony, too, is that what brought all the fucking Leftists, what brought everyone’s attention, was the rioting. It was like, we’re taking a step away from what people normally do. We’ve caught the nation’s and the world’s attention, and so of course all these fucking vultures come in…
\nVera: And rewrite the story…
\nMasie: And then… pushing the riot further, what does that mean? Cuz a lot of the more militant sides of the rioting involved guns. Did we actually want more of that?
\nCameron: I wasn’t saying I wanted to push the riot further, specifically, but to push the situation. The rebellion. It seemed like people were sort of making allusions that this QuickTrip parking lot was the space to be, there was talk of it being dedicated to Mike Brown, but then it got fenced in and it puttered out.
\nEven just the murmuring about that space becoming an occupation was spreading. Some of us who maybe are in this room or maybe outside this room had some say in pushing that. It resonated with people.
\nAnd another thing, in a more riotous situation, people are gonna be on the front lines. Some of us like to be on the front lines, but also, they’ve got it covered, so what do we do while they’re on the front lines? For example, all these cameras and journalists taking photos of people doing illegal stuff, what do we do with that? How do we make that situation safer?
\nLuca: Yeah, that’s part of the learning experience. Watching it happen and participating for the first couple days and being carried away and not wanting to shape it. And then pausing and being like, oh wait, we don’t just want a riot. Something a friend said to me when we were talking about what small ways we might want to influence it, “Remember, what we want is a social revolution.”
\nIt helped reframe that in my brain, because I was just watching it go for so long and thinking, “this is just amazing.”
\nBut we influenced it even in small ways, like with the addition of graffiti. That resonated. I remember seeing graffiti go up that said “we are ungovernable” and watching people read it back and laughing and nodding. Putting those little seeds of ideas out there, helping feed the fires.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/history1370.jpg\")
Graffiti on the gas pump at the burnt QT in Ferguson, celebrating six decades of uprisings.
\nLouise: What we were just talking about speaks to the first question. “What made this different from other anti-police struggles that you’ve witnessed or heard about? Why did it go so far so fast?”
\nWhen you talk about it resonating with people, with the most immediate community, like in Canfield333. The apartment complex just off West Florissant where Mike Brown was murdered, and the original site of the militant street presence that produced the rebellion. and the surrounding area… we’re talking about people who already know that the cops are an enemy. And have for years and generations. Because of race, because there’s so many white cops there and the area’s majority black, it’s really obvious that they’re an enemy.
\nMasie: My take on police struggles in the past in St. Louis is that they fit into one of two categories. They’re either these lone gunman-type attacks against police, which happen all the time, and then probably once a year or so someone actually kills a cop. Or it’s these vigil-type marches or gatherings after someone is killed. Which maybe are meaningful or feel good to people at them, but also maybe it doesn’t feel good to be at them cuz they’re not that powerful, and outside of that, it doesn’t really have a lot of noticeable effects. So, for example, the Scott Perry protests. Every year, the family of Scott Perry, who died in the city jail, protest outside the jail. And that gathering is meaningful, but I feel like outside of that, it’s maybe not having a lot of effects.
\nAnd then there’s all these people who have killed cops, like Cookie Thorton, Todd Shepard, Kevin Johnson. Culturally and sub-culturally, that can have meaning, but in terms of being an actual force that can change things, I feel like there wasn’t a whole lot before Ferguson. Or Ferguson was all these different elements coming together and going beyond the limitations of those two things.
\nJane: As far as it going so far so fast… the first day [August 9] I didn’t think it was gonna get too crazy, but I think because of the police response on the second day, that’s why people rioted. Cuz there were so many police. I don’t think it was gonna get so out of control. People were just gonna march to the police department. I don’t think it was gonna turn into a riot, but then people felt trapped and they had that energy.
\nLuca: So the question is, “Why was this event different than other anti-police struggles, why did it go so much further?” There are all these elements that we can try to put together to answer that question, like seeing this moment on a continuum of social uprisings, extreme repression, warrior culture (which is something that people don’t account for too often)… to create the situation where people didn’t back down this time. But I’m more excited about the notion that it’s linked to all these other moments that create social uprisings, and it’s just part of the social condition that we live under that this can happen.
\nLuca: Yeah, you can’t make it happen, nor is it exciting to me to come up with a theory as to why these moments happen.
\nEmma: Right. Cuz it’s uncontrollable…
\nTodd: I don’t feel like anarchists should be trying to be political scientists. There’s no formula for revolt. It’s been happening for as long as we have history.
\nLuca: Yeah, as long as there’s repression, oppression, there are gonna be these moments. We’re gonna push back, it’s part of who we are.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/handsup1370.jpg\")
Demonstrators riding through Ferguson after the grand jury announcement, November 24.
\nRaul: Should we read another question?
\nLuca: “Was there a tension between the black insurrectional force that erupted in Ferguson and the construction of blackness as a positive identity within the existing social order that suffused the subsequent national discourse? Have you learned anything about how to engage with the existing forms of oppression without falling prey to repressive strategies of definition?”
\n[laughter]
\nEmma: I feel like I have a sense of what they’re asking, but…
\nLuca: Yeah, we have to deconstruct this question before we can answer it.
\nCameron: I think they’re basically saying, “Was there a tension between this undisciplined force against the positive, respectable black community?”
\nLuca: I mean, there was this tension between the black insurrectional force and black forces of identity. I think that was playing out with people who wanted to loot versus Nation of Islam people guarding stores, or the woman guarding the Sam’s444. Sam’s Meat Market and Liquor on West Florissant Avenue, which was repeatedly looted during the rebellion. being like, “This is not what we’re about.”
\nVera: That phrase keeps coming to my mind too, “This is not what we’re about.” That kept coming up throughout all of our experiences there, that people would somehow take ownership of what was happening and make it like there was nothing else besides what they were experiencing. Like, how they were experiencing Ferguson was how it was supposed to be. So when someone would throw a rock at the cops, “That’s not what we’re about.”
\nThat’s continued through to now. That’s consistently the conversation that comes up.
\nEmma: So is the answer to the question just “Yes”? Yeah, there was a tension between the peacekeepers who were sometimes black, and the combative black youth.
\nTodd: It’s also that people are trying to represent blackness or people who have faced police violence or young black people or “the black community,” and then there’s also the other side. But on that side, there are people who think that it’s morally wrong to loot or to respond in certain ways, and then there are other groupings of people who are not trying to affirm their identity in any way to represent other people. People who are just trying to riot, to act out their emotions.
\nVera: And I think it does affect us, because the louder voices of the church leaders or other people who have some amount of power were trying to represent what the “black community” is all about, and we decided not to listen to those voices. We were listening or finding other people, who were maybe involved in the more radical things that were happening. Then we were called out for being racist or white supremacist, or people targeted us with that language because they said that “We weren’t listening to black people,” by which they meant black people with power.
\nLuca: Well, it challenges this idea of allyship. Traditional allyship. They say that we should be “listening to black voices,” but to them that means we should be listening to, like, church leaders, people whose ideas we would never align ourselves with under any other circumstances. We’re all the sudden supposed to be listening to those people instead of finding allies we actually have affinity with, who maybe want to fight in the streets. So instead, it calls us in to question—“You’re being racist”—instead of allowing for a multiplicity of voices.
\nMasie: That traditional idea of allyship only makes sense if the only black people in your lives are those community leaders. If you look at black people as not being homogenous, then there is no singular “black voice,” there are all these different black voices, and you can choose who you want to align yourself with.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/hug1370.jpg\")
Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson attempts to ingratiate himself to protesters, as white police look on.
\nEmma: What is this second part of the question, repressive strategies of definition? Just these… identities?
\nCameron: Using words to obscure things that are happening. Like the “black community doesn’t want this” or “this identity isn’t supposed to do this.”
\nRaul: I read that as saying, “How do you deal with the fact that race and racism and these very tangible forms of oppression are actually what’s going on here?” Definitely, that’s what this is about, that’s what people are responding to—without reinforcing those rigid identity categories. Like, did you find ways to engage with the fact that this is a struggle against white supremacy, without reinforcing those rigid identity categories? Without putting everyone in rigid boxes and homogenizing their experiences?
\nVera: I can only think of that answer in terms of what we were not doing. Like, we were not doing what ARC (the anti-racism collective) was doing.
\nTodd: We were referring to that earlier, how we chose not to engage in typical ways that activists engage.
\nCameron: Also, it seems like white radicals or anarchists being there had an effect on people in terms of their understanding of racial dynamics and personal experiences. I’d talk to a lot of people who’d ask, “Whoa, why are you here?” being really perplexed and me being like, “I think about this all the time. I have some personal experience with police violence… It’s different, but it’s something that is pushing me to be here.” I think that blew some people’s minds.
\nMost of them were not political or had not read anti-racist theory. And the argument from an activist point of view is that they should be reading it, and if they were, they would realize that we’re actually a bad influence or something. Maybe that was a way we influenced things, by being there and not being pawns. Like, actually having thoughts and engaging people without being condescending.
\nBecause sometimes, like that week in August, we were some of the only white people around. That’s pretty awkward, cuz of historical shit. And then for some reason, it became way more white. So that’s an interesting question, too, how did that happen…
\nEmma: You mean the Leftists being there made it more white?
\nVera: Yeah.
\nCameron: Did it become “safer” for people? Were there figures people could point to, to be like, this is the new leader of the radical movement and I can talk to them, instead of it just being alienating and scary in some racist way.
\nVera: Well, OBS [The Organization for Black Struggle] got huge during all of this. That was part of it. That was a way people could engage and feel good about themselves as white activists.
\nMasie: Do you all feel like between daytime and nighttime the racial make-up was different? Because the few times I was there at night, I was like “me and my friends are the only white people here.”
\nCameron: Yeah.
\nLuca: At the beginning.
\nVera: And in November.
\nLuca: On South Florissant.
\nVera: You mean West Florissant?555. The two main roads where riots broke out in Ferguson are several miles from each other but are both called Florissant. West Florissant is the main road near the Canfield Apartments where Mike Brown was murdered and is the site of the famous burning QT. South Florissant is a more developed, racially mixed part of Ferguson where the Ferguson Police Department is, and where much of the rioting that happened after the November 24 announcement of the grand jury decision took place.
\nLuca: Yeah, West Florissant.
\nCameron: South Florissant was a little more mixed.
\nVera: But yeah, every time I said, “Fuck the police,” there was some black person or group of black people around who would be like, “Oh my god, that white person just said ’fuck the police.’”
\nVera: And laugh at me!
\nEmma: Sometimes I was like, is it cuz I’m white or cuz I’m a woman?
\nVera: Yeah.
\nLuca: It’s both, I think.
\nEmma: I didn’t know if other people who aren’t women also got that.
\nCameron: I got laughed at for saying it. But I did get offered a joint once or twice after saying stuff.
\nMasie: I think people just thought I was a cop. And so I’m not gonna ask someone for their number right now or what their name is or if they’re on Facebook… cuz they probably think I’m a cop.
\nRaul: Sometimes people would laugh at me and repeat “Fuck the police” in my accent. I think we may have made a positive contribution in chipping away at the idea that white people don’t care about fighting the police. Or maybe next time, if things continue, maybe even years from now, there are many more people in the city who have seen white people willing to confront the police. And maybe that’s a step closer to us being able to link up with each other in conflict situations.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/take1370.jpg\")
Old anarchist hyperbole coming true.
\nEmma: I’ve been thinking about the impact that violence has on us, and how it can be glorified within an anarchist subculture. Something about the rebellion, the uprising… even on the nights where there weren’t guns, it was a war zone. And if we want to sustain, or to build, a culture of resistance where it’s normal for that to happen… It seems like moments of the world that we want to see opening up will contain violence. I don’t like the violence, but I like what the violence opens up. But how does that violence affect us? How can we sustain it and not become what we hate about the violence? Which can be theoretical or interpersonal, like how we care for each other.
\nLuca: One of the things that I’ve been thinking is that I still want this. Like, even though we went through this very real experience of violence, like maybe we’re some of the very small pockets of people directly affected by the violence of that week and a half. I’ve been trying to make sense of that for myself, and realizing that this is still something that I want, even though that happened. I don’t want it not to have happened. In any part of me.
\nEmma: We could have done without it, but it doesn’t stop you.
\nVera: Well, it may have stopped me a little bit. In November, when we were out there and there was so much gunfire, I was ready to go because of what happened. There was a point at which I was like, “This is real.” There’s this person walking down the street next to me with a beer in one hand and a pistol in the other just shooting randomly into the air. And that was enough.
\nLuca: Yeah, I’m not saying it didn’t affect us. We were together in those moments [in November] where it was just like, “Yeah, let’s go home. This is reminding me too much of what happened.”
\nCameron: We were standing in the same spot [where our friend was shot during the August riots].
\nVera: It goes back to that idea that maybe we weren’t adding that much to the riot. Maybe we don’t need to be there because we’re not adding anything. We can go and try to push things somewhere else, you know?
\nRaul: But we didn’t. We just went home.
\nMasie: Would it be upsetting to people if I talked about what happened to our friend who got shot? And the potential for that to happen in the future?
\nEmma: We didn’t expect that to happen, so it’s good that people know that’s a possibility.
\nMasie: Immediately after we’d found out he’d survived and for a few weeks after, I was hearing from people, “Thank god this is over.” Which makes sense in some way, but in my head, I’m like, “Well, if shit ever gets crazy again, it’s not like people aren’t going to be bringing handguns to shoot in America, or at least in a place like St. Louis.” This actually might happen to our friends in the future. We might fucking die in the future. Or…”
\nLuca: Or not even handguns. Like, state forces, you know? I don’t think it was that far away from them starting to open fire on the crowd. Or, that was not out of the question.
\nMasie: Sure, but I don’t think it was close, necessarily.
\nLuca: I’m just saying it wasn’t out of the question. Like, if they’d gotten shot at enough. All it takes is one trigger-happy cop.
\nCameron: This is something that other people have talked about, but this sort of glorification of these situations… where from afar and in writing you can write about how it was this uprising against police and the state and it was all just this crazy, beautiful thing and sort of glorifying it as if it’s a movie scene. It’s a very fragmented understanding of it. But there was a push for a while, and maybe still is, of people being like, “Oh yeah, rioting is really cool! It’s the best thing!” And for me, I’m actually more interested in the actual rebellion, which encompassed a lot of other things. Like people hanging out and celebrating, or eating or talking or whatever. Organically organizing things in the moment. And then the rioting was a part of that. And maybe it was crucial to that. But…
\nLuca: I think that’s what I mean, too. I mean the overall rebellion, not necessarily just the rioting. I wouldn’t not want the rioting as well, but I think it’s really good to differentiate that the rioting is an element of a rebellion.
\nThere is a warrior culture that’s not talked about. When I said that earlier, I meant more of the ghetto warrior culture, but also like anarchist warrior culture. Like, that we’re gonna go to jail, get the shit kicked out of us, people are gonna die, and you’re just supposed to take it. It’s just expected. It’s just part of your struggle, and you’re just supposed to suck it up. Like, I had to work through some of those ideas with some of my own trauma. That it’s OK to be like, “This was devastating. It was awful and terrible and heartbreaking and hard.” Working through that cultural idea that we have, that we don’t address.
\nEmma: Yeah, that we’ve gotta be hard and militant.
\nCameron: I also think about how there are other people who didn’t come out because of that. There are so many people who were probably saying, “I don’t wanna go out there. I fucking hate the police, but I’m not gonna go out there, because there are guns.”
\nI don’t know exactly what those people think, but I think it probably had an effect on people not wanting to be there, especially people that, because of their lives or their experiences, are opposed to a lot of the things in this world. I can’t calculate it, but I definitely heard people saying that. I could see people being scared, screaming when gunshots went off, and crying. That’s the warrior culture thing that’s a part of that.
\nLuca: Yeah, people thought we were crazy to put ourselves in that situation.
\nMasie: I was gonna say that, too, about the expectations that these crazy things will happen and we’ll just have to deal with it. There are people who can’t deal with it, they realize that too late, and they just disappear. They just change their life completely, because the standard of what an anarchist is has been built up so much, it’s like unchangeable. Or that’s the reason why some people start snitching on each other. Like, “Holy fuck, now I’m facing all these years in prison, and I was told that I could handle this, and I can’t fucking handle this.”
\nCameron: It also seems to oppose this dichotomy that you’re either the crazy one or you’re the respectable one, where you’re part of the movement or an organization. It ends up working out in favor of the organizations in some ways. There’s no other way to be that doesn’t fit into that dichotomy. There’s not an infinite number of possibilities of how to engage. It whittles everything down to a few choices.
\nVera: Is that what you [Raul] were trying to say before? I’ve been thinking about what you said when you said, “We didn’t do anything, we just went home.”
\nRaul: Yeah, finding some other creative way of engaging if we weren’t gonna stay in the streets. I wanna hear other people’s thoughts on this, but I didn’t notice us having a warrior culture where we just expected everyone to be tough and not have to feel anything about that, not ever have to take a step back. Like, I know that that exists. Has existed for generations and does exist and has existed among us sometimes.
\nBut in this situation, I noticed us taking good care of each other. And like, fighting and coming home and crying together. And fighting and also taking care of our friends. And listening to each other when we couldn’t fight anymore (most of the time).
\nSo I took a lot out of the violent and directly combative aspects of what we were doing, and I felt really supported in that direct confrontation, or war-like scenario, by my friends. I didn’t feel like I just had to try to be really hard. It felt like I could be brave when I could and then cry about it when I was done being brave so I could be brave again the next day.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/raid1370.jpg\")
Thousands of police and National Guardsmen failing to preserve order in Ferguson on November 24, 2014.
\nLuca: I think that we did do a good job of taking care of one another, especially that first week and the first couple weeks after our friend got shot. But it did come up a little bit in the dynamics of agency and power and who’s comfortable in the streets, and how close they could be to police lines. And people feeling ashamed of their fear for not being able to be where other people were. That came up some. But I think people tried to handle it really well.
\nI’m also talking about how I’ve internalized that, as someone who’s been an anarchist my whole adult life. And then having to go through and be so intimately connected to what happened to [our friend who got shot], and then trying to unravel all that for myself, you know?
\nAnd trying to figure out the ways this long-term trauma and violence impacted my own life. Looking at myself and trying to figure out where that trauma manifests, like when [in November] I was trying to be back at the intersection where our friend was shot. And like, knowing it’s time to leave, and not being frozen. Being able to function in a space where we’re surrounded by more gunfire and more literal fire than we were the first week. And being able to function, to be OK and feel comfortable in that environment or that terrain. But then to come back later and have to listen to a trauma therapist be like, “Yeah, it’s fucked up what happened to you. Really, really fucked up. And it’s not normal.” And just being like, “Huh…” It’s my own internal process around being “tough” or “hard.” What it means to grow up and spend your whole adult life within this culture.
\nMasie: I wonder too about when to tell someone maybe not to do something cuz it’s gonna affect them if it goes poorly, or when am I just like, “That’s their own fucking life. I’m not gonna tell them what to do or control them in any way.”
\nFor example, I have a hard time not mouthing off to police, especially when I get really worked up. Repeatedly over the years, if I’m yelling in a cop’s face, friends will be like, “OK, you need to stop doing that.” I think it’s partially for my own sake, but maybe partially for theirs, because they’re the ones that will have to stay up all night to bail me out, right?
\nSo is that just that experience multiplied by a thousand? Like, “You’re going into an area where people are getting shot and almost killed. I’m the one that’s gonna have to fucking bury you.” I’m not gonna put that guilt on someone. It’s just hard for me. Because in those situations, where people are just rushing out the door to go to the riot in North County, and I’m exhausted, and I need a night to not do anything, but it’s like, “Well, realistically, I might be the one that has to bail them all out of jail and stay up all night.” Does that make sense at all? I’m not telling people they shouldn’t do those things, I’m just saying that’s some sort of reality.
\nLouise: That’s something that I’ve thought about for sure. When there is a sort of warrior culture where not everyone is going out and being a warrior, there are also the people at home who are going to experience the loss of someone and have to deal with that. And people who are always on alert that someone might be taken from them, or that they might have something really awful happen to someone else. I’m sure in Canfield, that’s something that a lot of black women experience constantly. At any point, they could get a call that someone’s been shot, someone they know. The element that’s scary about some people being warriors is that it’s not just those going out being warriors. There’s also people at home.
\nRaul: It makes sense in the context of the anarchist movement that romanticizes rioting and conflict to highlight the downsides of that. And also, I can dream of and put together strategically in my mind a social revolution that doesn’t look like that, or a moment where the world changes dramatically in a way that I want it to.
\nBut in those moments when I was in the streets and it was overwhelming, or there were guns everywhere, I also had the thought that this is just what it’s always gonna look like. All these moments you’ve dreamed of, of the world changing and getting to be one that’s worth living in for you and the people around you, this feels like a stage that we will inevitably have to move through—and participate in if we want it to go a way that we want it to go. If we’re serious about the world changing, we have to adapt ourselves to the fact that maybe that’s the reality that we’ll have to deal with and learn to cope with. And maybe it’s just a matter of not romanticizing it. If enough of us have gone through it, we wouldn’t have the kind of fetishization, but maybe we could have a realistic acceptance that that’s what stands between us and the world that we hope for. Unfortunately.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/carburn1370.jpg\")
A burning police car in Ferguson on November 24, 2014.
\nVera: Do we need to take a break right now? I worry about this conversation being hard.
\nMasie: So… if people are using handguns, you might get shot, we realized.
\n[laughter]
\nLuca: We realized that’s real.
\nEmma: It could be your friend and not just some stranger. And it could be like a permanent loss from your life.
\nRaul: We shouldn’t fetishize it, but we also shouldn’t…
\nVera: Avoid it.
\nRaul: Right, we can’t avoid it. We can’t control these circumstances either. They’re gonna come up. We can highlight the value of not bringing guns. But people are gonna do it anyway. So what are we gonna do?
\nLuca: Yeah, like, this question of the role of firearms. It’s hard to know what to say about them. But we all know they changed the way it went. It created this deeply inhospitable environment where the cops would not come in because of guns.
\nMasie: And sometimes it was casual and it wasn’t that scary. It was like firing a few rounds into the air, and the cops are gone. The police helicopters are gone.
\nCameron: And then the night… it was intense that our friend got shot, but even then, it was just like, these kids have guns and they’re smoking weed and just hanging out.
\nLuca: Right, that’s just what it is. They’re just everywhere.
\nCameron: Some of us were talking to them, you know?
\nRaul: And the night of the verdict, people shooting at the cops was what instigated collective action. People were shooting off away from the crowd, and the crowd of people moved towards that. Towards the gunshots.
\nVera: Intentionally.
\nRaul: And as they started moving toward it, intentionally, they started also smashing windows, confronting the police…
\nLuca: That moment that broke the tension… where everyone was standing around the night of the verdict for like 15 minutes [after the verdict was announced]… nothing’s happening, we’re all just standing there. Literally, there is like six shots fired and shit starts.
\nVera: Someone actually said, “Well, that’s gonna pop shit off.” And it did.
\nMasie: Which doesn’t mean you have to fire gunshots to make shit happen.
\nEmma: Right. Without guns it’s us versus them, and the enemy is clear. And then, I know that people with guns are still against the same enemy, but it is like, “OK, you have a gun, you have the power now too.” And we should have the power, not just the police, but still, that’s real. It stops you a little bit.
\nMasie: Yeah, it can… in these situations, where it opens it up and makes power more diffuse, sometimes when people start shooting, it’s like, “And now we’re all just running away, and the night’s over.” Which sometimes, if the night’s over, then it’s a good time to do that. But sometimes it’s like, “Well, you made that decision for all of us.”
\nEmma: I do feel like the world that we dream of, and having those moments of uncontrollability or possibility open up, will entail violence. And so just normalizing that, being emotionally prepared for that, and dispelling the glorification of it or the romanticization of it.
\nThere’s something too, though, in the dichotomy—or, it can feel like a dichotomy—that you either are militant or you’re passive. And the riot is crucial, but in a rebellion, how do you sustain this and how do you not make it just against police but against our whole lives? Yeah, we want a social revolution.
\nAnd somehow, for people who are supporting or don’t want to engage in the same way, there need to be spaces or other things they can do. Or when people are shooting guns and someone’s scared and has to leave, what else can they do? Or, you don’t want to stay in the middle of a confrontation with police, so what do you do to add something?
\nI mean, we need everything to be transformed. Every relation, everything. So there’s more than just fighting in that one way—even though it’s those moments where there’s violence that open up what we desire. And that’s brutal… and worth it. Or, you have to come to that for yourself—if it’s worth it to you.
\nLouise: It’s interesting how much the guns being around… that people having guns, sort of enables the Left and the organizers to blame everyone who does stay out on those nights, to be like “Here you go, cops, take these crazies, they must be crazy if they’re still out here. And they want to fuck all kinds of shit up and shoot everybody, so take ’em.”
\nAnd that really enables people to say, “These are the non-violent people, and these are clearly the crazy, violent people.” And that really serves them, to sort of sacrifice the people like that. I mean, especially on the night of the curfew, that really served them. “We’re telling everybody to go home and it’s just the crazy people who we can’t control that we’re gonna give you. That are gonna stay here.”
\nCameron: And also it’s a great strategy for police, cuz they can just be like, “We can do whatever the fuck we want now.” Whereas before, there were clearly peaceful protesters, and they couldn’t. So they just mass arrest people.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/tense1370.jpg\")
Tense moments in the streets of Ferguson on November 24, 2014.
\nEmma: We were supposed to talk about the wonderful moments.
\nLuca: Oh yeah… let’s do that.
\nVera: One of my favorite moments was the night… it was the last night when we were all on Canfield [Monday, August 18th] and there’s that restaurant right there…
\nLuca: Red’s?
\nCameron: The BBQ place?
\nVera: Yeah, Red’s, I guess it was Red’s… and the cops were not coming down Canfield, so people were sort of playing with that area in between where most of the crowd was and where the cops were. And this kid lit a Molotov and just threw it into the middle of the street. And everyone was like “What!? Come on! Don’t waste it! Why the fuck did you throw it there?”
\n[laughter]
\nVera: So he lit another one and poured a whole bunch of gas into Red’s and then everybody was like “OK, make this one count!” And so he runs up there again and throws it and lights it on fire… and everyone’s cheering.
\nCameron: But then the fire went out and some person started running towards it with a jug of something… And I was like, “Oh, man, c’mon. He’s puttin’ the fire out.” And then it was just gasoline…
\n[laughter]
\nCameron: He started just pouring gasoline all over it. And I was like, “This is not what I expected.” Normally when someone’s running toward a fire, they’re putting it out.
\nLuca: Going back to the people who the media made invisible out there… All the young women out there. All the young women on the front lines. Not backing down and not going home.
\nEmma: Yeah, even when they666. The Nation of Islam and the some elements of the New Black Panther Party were most responsible for initiating these calls. would be like, “Get the women out of here.”
\nVera: Yeah, so many women were like, “Fuck that.”
\nMasie: I’m just gonna say it, I liked the party atmosphere down there and I liked smoking weed with those teenagers…
\n[laughter]
\nLuca: I had a night when it was like a block party [Thursday, August 14th] where I got high at the end of the night and it changed everything… I was just like, “This is so amazing.”
\n[laughter]
\nRaul: Yeah, you were texting me, like, “you gotta get down here! This is so amazing!” I texted Cameron and I was like, “So I need to get down there?” and Cameron was like, “Luca’s really high.”
\nCameron: Yeah, it’s cool, but… maybe you don’t have to rush down here.
\nLuca: It just made everything that much more surreal and that much more beautiful. It was so cheesy, but, it was just like, “Oh yeah…”
\nWell, it gives you pause cuz we’d been in it all week, like all week this was happening and happening and it was like, “No way, this is really happening, this is my real life right now.”
\nEmma: And it was awesome how the QT became a monument. Everyone was there taking photos of themselves and of each other.
\nRaul: And doing graffiti and having dance parties…
\nVera: …and handing out hot dogs…
\nLuca: Yeah, and all the kids who were there. All the times that there were children or were pregnant women… especially earlier in the day, and sometimes late at night.
\nMasie: I remember one of our friends saying… the second night after Vonderrit Myers was shot [Thursday, October 9th], she had her daughter there, and she was running around, doing all kinds of toddler-type things. She was hanging out with other children that age, and then our friend was talking to their mothers, asking them “Is this irresponsible of us to have kids here? You know, since it could get violent.” And the moms were like, “It would be irresponsible for them not to be here. They need to be here, we need to teach them about this.” I thought that was really awesome, really powerful.
\nCameron: There was some child psychiatrist who came out on the news saying, “Do not take your children here. They haven’t formed their reality of the world yet.”
\nLuca: That’s exactly why you need to take them there.
\nVera: I was at Vonderrit’s memorial one night, and there weren’t that many of us there, but there was a woman there with five kids, and some asshole came by in his car talking about “another thug martyr,” yelling all this racist shit. And then the people that were at the memorial attacked his car and were kicking it and throwing shit and he raced away.
\nAnd that woman was like, “That was so important for my kids to see that. To see people fight back. To not accept that sort of thing.”
\nMasie: All the people hanging out of cars.
\nEmma: Oh god, like twenty people! On some car that could barely pull itself.
\n[laughter]
\nVera: Yeah, there were a ton of cars cruisin’ up and down West Florissant.
\nEmma: It was even fun when you were sitting in your car eating and you’re like, “Well, I think we should go home now,” but then we stay and then the split second you decide to leave something happens and then you’re like “No, gotta stay.” And that just happens all night long.
\nRaul: The collective momentum and anger and excitement when people are flipping over a cop car. It takes a lot of people, you really gotta give it your all. Every inch of space on that cop car was somebody trying really hard. It’s just a really beautiful experience. And how excited people are when it finally goes over.
\nVera: And then the cop car on fire with things shooting out of its trunk. That was really beautiful.
\nMasie: Yeah, I remember the first night of the riot. And being like, “Shit, there’s a lot of people at that QT without masks on.” And then an hour later seeing fire and I was like, “Well… that’s one way of dealing with it. Won’t be leaving any evidence.”
\n[laughter]
\nMasie: Yeah, the first night of the riot I remember us all getting back together at the house and everyone being euphoric, like, “Did that really just fucking happen, oh my god!”
\nEmma: Well, should we say anything else, or… end it in some grand way?
\nVera: That seemed pretty grand.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/ferguson-reflections/images/patrol1370.jpg\")
Missouri National Guardsmen patrol the ruins of Ferguson on November 26, 2014.
\n1. On July 14, 2013, there was a rally in St. Louis in response to George Zimmerman being found not guilty for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The rally culminated in about 800 people marching through downtown St. Louis. Police barricades were moved and pushed through, graffiti was written on the back of moving buses, things were thrown in the streets. It quickly became the most notable anti-police march St. Louis had seen in recent history. This march took the cake until Ferguson, which took the whole bakery. A short article on the march entitled “The Storming of the Bastille” can be found at the dialectical-delinquents.com page of Ferguson coverage. ↩
\n2. LeDarius Williams was shot and killed by St. Louis police on Minnesota Avenue in St. Louis city. ↩
\n3. The apartment complex just off West Florissant where Mike Brown was murdered, and the original site of the militant street presence that produced the rebellion. ↩
\n4. Sam’s Meat Market and Liquor on West Florissant Avenue, which was repeatedly looted during the rebellion. ↩
\n5. The two main roads where riots broke out in Ferguson are several miles from each other but are both called Florissant. West Florissant is the main road near the Canfield Apartments where Mike Brown was murdered and is the site of the famous burning QT. South Florissant is a more developed, racially mixed part of Ferguson where the Ferguson Police Department is, and where much of the rioting that happened after the November 24 announcement of the grand jury decision took place. ↩
\n6. The Nation of Islam and the some elements of the New Black Panther Party were most responsible for initiating these calls. ↩
\nA wild and growing anti-police revolt is in full swing across the Bay Area. It is a node in the growing national movement sparked by the insurrection in Ferguson following the police execution of Michael Brown, and at the same time it is a continuation of local struggles dating back at least to the 2009 Oscar Grant riots in Oakland. Some of us who have participated in events in the Bay over the past two and half weeks urgently desire to communicate to others around the world about what is unfolding here. Our aim is not to claim bragging rights or to establish Oakland as the riot capital of the United States. On the contrary, it is necessary to spread word of the unprecedented nature of these events precisely because it suddenly seems more possible than ever before that revolt against white supremacy and the police could spread beyond the usual spaces of protest.
\nIn order to illustrate the magnitude of what has unfolded since a grand jury announced it would not indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown, we must make one point clear: we are losing track of how many highways have been blockaded, which stores have been looted, which intersections have seen the fiercest fighting with police. All of this has been unfolding on a nightly basis for over two weeks. Roughly 600 people have been arrested. Many of the main business districts across the East Bay are boarded up. It has become routine to hear police and news helicopters tracking the latest riot each night. Militarized police forces from across northern California are now regularly being deployed in our streets. Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Emeryville have all experienced riots and looting.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/quote1370.jpg\")
\n Many of us have been through various movements and small-scale revolts in Oakland and the Bay Area over the past decade or more. Yet this is something different. While the numbers taking the streets on any given night are not massive—usually in the range of 500 to 1500—the consistency and level of intensity that this insurrectionary wave has unleashed have not been seen here in decades. All this is unfolding outside the control of any organization or political clique. At this point, there are barely even specific call outs for marches or meet ups: crowds of neighbors, students, activists, and militants are now gathering each night on their own chaotic initiative. An informal alliance of graffiti crews, groups of friends composed primarily of young Black and Brown rebels, and clusters of anarchists of various stripes and backgrounds has emerged to create the most vibrant and combative tendencies within the uprising. Those who show up with suggestions as to where the energy of the crowd might best be applied are given a hearing, and sometimes their proposals are carried out. Those who attempt to calm and manage the situation are ignored, and often attacked if they attempt to impede others’ actions.
\nThe initial wave of rioting, marches, and blockades in Oakland during the week of November 24 was just the beginning. There followed multiple blockades of the 880 and 980 freeways, numerous die-ins blocking roadways, and shutdowns of the West Oakland BART station—and then the riots began in earnest. Here is a rough timeline of the events of the past two and a half weeks, followed by our initial reflections.
\nNovember 24: A grand jury in Ferguson refuses to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown. Ferguson burns. Over 2500 meet in downtown Oakland and proceed to block the 580 highway for hours. Then the crowd marches back downtown to the police station, where clashes erupt on Broadway. Participants erect burning barricades and loot several corporate stores, including a Starbucks and Smart and Final grocery store. Dozens are arrested.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/collage1-1370.jpg\")
Demonstrators blocking the freeway, erecting barricades, and looting on November 24.
\nNovember 25: A small crowd takes over highway 880 in Oakland. A larger crowd blocks highway 580 later in the night, and nearly 100 are arrested. The remaining crowd creates massive burning barricades across Telegraph to hold back police. A series of corporate stores are looted in North Oakland and gentrifying businesses are smashed. Another mass arrest occurs near Emeryville at the end of the night.
\n\n
November 26: A destructive march plays cat and mouse with Oakland police in downtown and West Oakland for hours before being dispersed by police. Multiple businesses in downtown are damaged and more are arrested.
\n\n
November 28: A coordinated civil disobedience action at the West Oakland BART station shuts down all service in and out of San Francisco for over two hours. That night, in San Francisco, nearly 1000 protesters lay siege to the shopping district of Union Square during Black Friday, clashing with police and damaging fancy stores. They march into the Mission district, where stores are looted and banks are smashed. The night ends in a mass arrest of the dwindling crowd.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/collage2-1370.jpg\")
Barricades on Telegraph Avenue on November 25; the Black Friday march on November 28.
\nDecember 3: A New York grand jury fails to indict any officers in the choking death of Eric Garner. Crowds block Market Street in San Francisco. In Oakland, a march weaves through downtown; riot police prevent it from reaching OPD headquarters. Instead, participants march through the wealthy Piedmont neighborhood.
\n\n
December 4: Another march weaves through Downtown Oakland, eventually heading east towards the Fruitvale district, where there is a showdown with Oakland police and a mass arrest. In San Francisco, a die-in blocks Market Street for a second night.
\n\n
December 5: Hundreds march through downtown Oakland, holding a noise demo in front of the jail to support those arrested during the revolt. The crowd moves on to take over the 880 freeway before being pushed off by police. Next, the march surrounds the West Oakland BART station and destroys the gates protecting the riot police inside. The station is shut down for an hour before the march moves back downtown, where property destruction, clashes with police, and arrests occur.
\n\n
December 6: A march originating near UC Berkeley campus eventually clashes with Berkeley police near their headquarters and proceeds to loot multiple stores, including a Trader Joe’s and Radio Shack. The crowds grow as many students take to the streets. In response, police departments from across the region pour into central Berkeley, firing dozens of rounds of tear gas and physically attacking demonstrators and bystanders, inflicting serious injuries.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/collage3-1370.jpg\")
Demonstrations impact BART on December 5; street confrontations on December 6.
\nDecember 7: On Sunday night, another march starts in Berkeley and moves into North Oakland, clashing with police, destroying multiple California Highway Patrol (CHP) cruisers, and taking over Highway 24. CHP officers use tear gas and rubber bullets to push back the crowd. People respond with rocks and fireworks, then march back into downtown Berkeley, destroying bank façades and ATMs. They attack cell phone and electronics stores, culminating with the looting of Whole Foods. The night ends with hundreds of people gathering around bonfires in the middle of Telegraph, popping bottles of expropriated Prosecco. Police are afraid to engage the crowd, but some participants are snatched in targeted arrests.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/collage4-1370.jpg\")
Demonstrators wreck CHP vehicles during a blockade of Highway 24 on December 7.
\nDecember 8: The third march from Berkeley is by far the largest. Over 2000 people take over Interstate 80, stopping all traffic for two hours, while another segment of the demonstration blocks the train tracks parallel to the freeway. The crowd attempts to march on the Bay Bridge but is pushed back into Emeryville where over 250 people are mass arrested.
\n\n
December 9: The fourth march from Berkeley sets out once again down Telegraph Avenue into Oakland and shuts down another section of Highway 24 and the MacArthur BART station. Increasingly violent clashes ensue with CHP officers in full riot gear, who open fire with rubber bullets and beanbag rounds, causing numerous injuries and ultimately pushing the crowd off the freeway. The march then looped through downtown Oakland and made its way into Emeryville, where a Pak N Save grocery store was looted along with a CVS pharmacy and a 7 Eleven. The night ended with another round of arrests, scattering the crowd.
\n\n
December 10: Hundreds of Berkeley High School students stage a walkout and rally at city hall. A smaller fifth march from Berkeley makes its way into Oakland where a T-Mobile store is looted and other corporate stores are attacked. People point out and attack undercover CHP officers in the crowd, who pull guns on the crowd as they make an arrest.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/undercover1370.jpg\")
Undercover officer threatening demonstrators who outed him on December 10.
\nThe rhythm of unrest has changed tempo repeatedly over these twenty days, but shows no signs of quieting. Revolt has shifted fluidly between various forms of resistance—from relatively calm marches to mass highway blockades, intense street fighting, and targeted expropriation. This has kept the movement resilient and capable of bringing in a diverse range of new participants day after day, even when there are sharp disagreements over which tactics are appropriate and little consensus over what direction the movement should take.
\nIt is difficult to anticipate what will happen next. No one predicted that this revolt would be sustaining this level of intensity more than two weeks after people first gathered at 14th and Broadway while Ferguson burned. At this point, it appears likely that the momentum will continue in some form until at least the week of Christmas.
\nThe long-term repercussions are unclear. At the very least, it seems that the reactionary period of social decomposition that followed the high points of struggle here in the Bay during 2011 and early 2012 is over, and something new and even more ferocious is taking shape. We can also tentatively conclude that the tactic of blockading major infrastructure, including highways, has spread beyond the high water mark previously set by the port blockades of the Occupy movement. There have been at least ten highway blockades in the East Bay alone over the past couple weeks; such blockading is now considered a favorable tactic even by those who identify as “peaceful protesters.”
\nMeanwhile, the consistent pace of combative demonstrations that traverse municipal boundaries is pushing local law enforcement infrastructure to its limits. Police units are increasingly reluctant to engage with the crowds; officers who find themselves locked in street fights are retreating more frequently. Media reports suggest that the first two weeks of protests have cost Oakland $1.36 million in overtime alone.
\nOf course, the unrelenting pace of events is also straining the anti-repression infrastructure that has become such a vital sustaining force for rebellious movements here in the Bay. This infrastructure is one of the lasting local manifestations of Occupy Oakland; it has roots stretching back to the Oakland 100 Support Committee, formed in the immediate aftermath of the original Oscar Grant riots. Arrests are now occurring every night, arraignments every day, rides must be coordinated to and from Santa Rita Jail constantly and additional money is desperately needed to bail out arrestees with more serious charges. How we follow through with displays of solidarity and direct material support for arrestees will determine how much strength we gain from this uprising moving forward.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/rubble1370.jpg\")
Downtown Berkeley on December 7.
\nStanding in the streets of Oakland in December 2014, it seems that we have come full circle almost exactly six years after Oscar Grant was executed by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. The journey that began by the Lake Merritt BART station on January 7, 2009 when that first OPD car was smashed has taken many twists and turns through various waves of protest and movements, many of which have manifested in rioting and clashes with police in and around downtown Oakland. Meanwhile, a wave of small uprisings has unfolded in an increasing number of locations across the country in response to one police execution after another: Portland in 2010, Denver in 2010, Seattle in 2011, San Francisco in 2011, Atlanta in 2012, Anaheim in 2012, Santa Rosa in 2013, Flatbush in 2013, Durham in 2013, Salinas in 2014, Albuquerque in 2014. In each of these local uprisings, the name of a person whose life was taken by the state was snatched from oblivion and burned into collective memory through the actions of those who chose to revolt.
\nThe brave people of Ferguson pushed this past the point of no return by doggedly refusing to leave the streets night after night, showing that these revolts could extend in time and increase in intensity. If there is one answer as to why those of us in the Bay now find ourselves in a near insurrectionary situation tonight, it is simply this: we are no longer alone. Another city has set a new precedent for resisting the racist police state, so Oakland is no longer an outlier.
\nThe new paradigm of struggle emanating from Ferguson was further reinforced during the second week of the revolt, as news spread that a New York grand jury had failed to indict any NYPD officer in the strangling of Eric Garner. What had previously been restricted to singular outbursts of anger in reaction to individual cases of police executing Black and Brown people became a systemic struggle confronting the structures of white power and state violence within this country. This struggle is no longer just about Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or Oscar Grant, or even the thousands killed by police whose names have never entered the public consciousness. It is about the violent marginalization and enforced social death of entire Black and Brown communities. It is about the role of the police in exercising lethal force with impunity to maintain this order and uphold the slave state foundations of American capitalism.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/freeway1370.jpg\")
Demonstrators blockading Interstate 80 on December 8.
\nWe can now finally speak of a national anti-police movement that came into being through the fires and blockades of late 2014. This should be celebrated as a massive victory for resistance in the United States. An important milestone has been reached and we are watching the results unfold every night before our eyes.
\nMany days ago, it became impossible to predict what would come next. We hope this uncontrollability spreads to new locations, in ever more creative forms of disruption and attack.
\n\n
–Some Oakland Antagonists, December 10, 2014
\n\n
To support arrestees in this struggle, please donate to the legal support fund.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/from-ferguson-to-the-bay/images/bridge1370.jpg\")
\n On August 19, ten days after police murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a slew of corporate media stories appeared charging that “criminals” and “outside agitators” were responsible for clashes during the protests. CNN alleged that “all sides agree there are a select number of people—distinct from the majority of protesters—who are fomenting violence,” quoting a State Highway Patrol Captain, a State Senator, and a former FBI assistant director to confirm this.
\nToday’s militarized police understand that they are operating on two different battlefields at once: not only the battlefield of the streets, but also the battlefield of discourse. So long as most people remain passive, the police can harass, beat, arrest, and even kill people with impunity—certain people, anyway. But sometimes protests get “out of hand,” which is to say, they actually impact the authorities’ ability to keep the population under control. Then, without fail, police and politicians proceed to the second strategy in their playbook: they declare that they support the protesters and are there to defend their rights, but a few bad apples are spoiling the bunch. In this new narrative, the enemies of the protesters are not the police who are gassing and shooting people, but those who resist the police and their violence. When this strategy works, it enables the police to go back to harassing, beating, arresting, and killing people with impunity—certain people, anyway.
\nSure enough, a few hours after these articles about “criminals” and “outside agitators” appeared, the St. Louis police killed another man less than three miles from Ferguson. Here we see how defining people as “criminals” and “outsiders” is itself an act of violence, setting the stage for further violence. You can predict police behavior at protests with a fair degree of accuracy based on the rhetoric they deploy in advance to prepare the terrain.
\nSo when we hear them say “outside agitators,” we know the authorities are getting ready to spill blood. All the better, from their perspective, if people buy into this rhetoric and police themselves so no officer has to get his hands dirty. This is often called for in the name of avoiding violence, but self-policing returns us to the same passivity that enables police violence to occur in the first place. How many people would have even heard about Michael Brown if not for the “criminals” and “agitators” who brought his death to our attention? Self-policing also preserves the impression that we all choose this state of affairs of our own free will, reinforcing the impression that anyone who does not is an outsider.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/agitators/images/police1370.jpg\")
\n What is an “outside agitator,” anyway? Deploying the National Guard to a town of 21,000 people—isn’t that outside agitation? When Occupy Oakland was in the news in 2011, there was a lot of rhetoric about “outside agitators” coming to the city to start trouble with police, until it came to light that over 90% of Oakland cops lived outside of Oakland. Surely if anyone deserves to be labeled outside agitators—in Ferguson, Oakland, or any other community around the US—it is the authorities.
\nBut what about people who come from out of town to participate in protests? The CNN article claimed that “among those arrested are residents of Chicago, Brooklyn, Washington, San Francisco, Austin, Des Moines, and Huntsville, Alabama, according to jail records.”
\nThis might sound like convincing evidence to middle class readers. But anyone who has been poor and precarious knows that the permanent address you give when you are arrested may not be the same as the place you actually live. You might give a different address because you aren’t sure your current housing will last, because the landlord doesn’t know your place has more people in it than are named on the lease, or simply because you don’t want local vigilantes to know where to find you. Instead, you might give a more reliable long-term address, perhaps from another state.
\nStill, let’s imagine that some of these arrestees who gave out-of-town addresses are in Ferguson for the very first time. Wouldn’t that make them outside agitators? Perhaps it would, if the issue was specific to Ferguson alone and they had no stake in it. But in “Chicago, Brooklyn, Washington, San Francisco, Austin, Des Moines, and Huntsville, Alabama” the police have killed black men under identical circumstances. The militarization, brutality, and systematic racism of the police are in effect all around the country, not just in Ferguson. When people are suffering the same forms of oppression everywhere, it makes sense for us to come to each other’s assistance, to make common cause.
\nThis is not outside agitation. It is solidarity.
\nSo long as we understand the problems we face individualistically, we will be powerless against them. Solidarity has always been the most important tool of the oppressed. This is why the authorities go to such lengths to demonize anyone who has the courage to take risks to support others. Throughout the civil rights struggles of the 20th century, participants who are celebrated as heroes today were tarred as “outside agitators.” The term has a long history on the tongues of racists and reactionaries.
\nIn this light, it is ironic, if not unexpected, that one of the corporate media stereotypes of the “outside agitator” is the “white anarchist”—as if all anarchists were white. It’s no longer considered decorous to call people race traitors, so the allegation is inverted: white people who fight alongside black and brown people must not have their best interests at heart, certainly not as much as the police and corporate media do. Although declaring oneself an anarchist does not magically free a white person of the racism that pervades our society, it is racist indeed to attribute all the unrest in Ferguson to “white anarchists,” denying the existence or agency of black and brown participants.
\nThis is the corporate media attempting to play a race card of its own, in order to create divisions between those who struggle against police brutality. It’s not surprising that the authorities would seek to create discord along racial lines—one of the chief reasons race was invented was to divide those who would otherwise have a common interest in overturning hierarchy.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/agitators/images/together1370.jpg\")
\n To emphasize this once more, we have to understand the deployment of rhetoric about “outside agitators” as a military operation intended to isolate and target an enemy: divide and conquer. The enemy that the authorities are aiming at is predominantly black and brown, but it is not just a specific social body; it is also an aspect of our humanity, a part of all of us. The ultimate goal of the police is not so much to brutalize and pacify specific individuals as it is to extract rebelliousness itself from the social fabric. They seek to externalize agitation, so anyone who stands up for herself will be seen as an outsider, as deviant and antisocial.
\nThis would be more likely to succeed if most people were integrated into comfortable places in their power structure. But the problem with their strategy, at this particular historical juncture, is that more and more of us are finding ourselves outside: outside a steady workplace, outside a recognized position of political legitimacy, outside the incentives that reward people for keeping quiet. We are finding ourselves outside, and finding each other. We are finding that it doesn’t make sense to go on being docile, that our only hope is to stake everything on fighting together for our collective survival rather than contending amongst ourselves for a place in the hierarchy.
\nNext time, the authorities will be lucky if the disturbances are confined to a single town, so they can accuse those who go there of being outside agitators. The racism and police brutality for which Ferguson is now infamous are widespread. The next conflagration could spread everywhere, like Occupy did. Stop killing us, or else.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/agitators/images/poster1370.jpg\")
\n This illustration is available in poster form from artist Corina Dross, to raise funds for arrestees in Ferguson.
\n\n
“I’m committed to making sure the forces of peace and justice prevail,” Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said in Ferguson on Saturday, August 16, after a week of conflicts sparked by the police murder of teenager Michael Brown. “If we’re going to achieve justice, we first must have and maintain peace.”
\nIs that how it works—first you impose peace, then you achieve justice? And what does that mean, the forces of peace and justice? What kind of peace and justice are we talking about here?
\nAs everyone knows, if it weren’t for the riots in Ferguson, most people would never have heard about the murder of Michael Brown. White police officers kill hundreds of black men every year without most of us hearing anything about it. That silence—the absence of protest and disruption—is the peace which Governor Nixon wants us to believe will produce justice.
\nThis is the same narrative we always hear from the authorities. First, we must submit to their control; then they will address our concerns. All the problems we face, they insist, are caused by our refusal to cooperate. This argument sounds most persuasive when it is dressed up in the rhetoric of democracy: those are “our” laws we should shut up and obey—“our” cops who are shooting and gassing us—“our” politicians and leaders begging us to return to business as usual. But to return to business as usual is to step daintily over the bodies of countless Michael Browns, consigning them to the cemetery and oblivion.
\nGovernor Nixon’s peace is what happens after people have been forcefully pacified. His justice is whatever it takes to hoodwink us into accepting peace on those terms—petitions that go directly into the recycle bin, lawsuits that never produce more than a slap on the wrist for the killers in uniform, campaigns that may advance the career of an activist or politician but will never put an end to the killing of unarmed black men.
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Keeping the peace in Ferguson
\nPermit us to propose another idea about how to address conflicts—what we might call the anarchist approach. The basic idea is straightforward enough. Real peace cannot be imposed; it can only emerge as a consequence of the resolution of conflict. Hence the classic chant: no justice, no peace.
\nLeft to itself, a state of imbalance tends to return to equilibrium. To maintain imbalances, you have to introduce force into the situation. The greater the disparities, the more force it takes to preserve them. This is as true in society as it is in physics.
\nThat means you can’t have rich people and poor people without police to impose that unequal relation to resources. You can’t have whiteness, which inflects and stabilizes that class divide, without a vast infrastructure of racist courts and prisons. You can’t keep two and a half million people—nearly a million of them black men—behind bars without the constant exertion of potentially lethal violence. You can’t enforce the laws that protect the wealth of good liberals like Governor Nixon without officers like Darren Wilson killing black men by the hundred.
\nThe militarization of the police is not an aberration—it is the necessary condition of a society based on hierarchy and domination. It is not just the police that have been militarized, but our entire way of life. Anyone who does not see this is not living on the business end of the guns. These are the forces of peace and justice, the mechanisms that “keep the peace” in a dramatically imbalanced social order.
\nSometimes they appear as surveillance cameras, security guards, police stopping and searching or shooting us. Other times, when that becomes too controversial, the forces of peace and justice reappear as the good cops who really seem to care about us, the earnest politicians who want to make everything better—whatever it takes to get public opinion back on the side of the ones who shoot the tear gas. Still other times, the forces of peace and justice are community leaders begging us to leave the streets, accusing us of being “outside agitators,” or promising some more effective outlet for our rage if only we will cooperate—anything to thwart, discredit, or defer immediate concrete struggle against injustice. In every case, it’s the same swindle: peace now, justice later.
\nBut real peace is impossible until we put an end to the violent imposition of inequalities. All the conflicts that are currently suppressed by the forces of order—between developers and residents, between rich and poor, between the racially privileged and everyone else—must be permitted to rise to the surface. Make it impossible for anyone to coerce anyone else into accepting a relationship that is not in her best interest: then, and only then, there will be an incentive for everyone to address conflicts and reach accord.
\nThis is the only way forward, but it’s a daunting prospect. It is not surprising that people often blame those who stand up for themselves rather than coming to terms with how deep the divisions in our society run. This explains why so many apparently well-meaning pundits have pretended not to understand why people would engage in looting as a form of protest against the murder of Michael Brown. The same constant imposition of force that took Michael Brown’s life separates millions like him from the resources they need on a daily basis. In this light, looting makes perfect sense—as a way of solving the immediate problems of poverty, of rebelling against the violence of the authorities, and of emphasizing that change has to be more thoroughgoing than mere police reform.
\nLet us not resent those who get out of hand for reminding us of the conflicts that remain unresolved in our society. On the contrary, we should be grateful. They are not disturbing the peace; they are simply bringing to light that there never was any peace, there never was any justice in the first place. At tremendous risk to themselves, they are giving us a gift: a chance to recognize the suffering around us and to rediscover our capacity to identify and sympathize with those who experience it.
\nFor we can only experience tragedies such as the death of Michael Brown for what they are when we see other people responding to them as tragedies. Otherwise, unless the events touch us directly, we remain numb. If you want people to register an injustice, you have to react to it immediately, the way people did in Ferguson. You must not wait for some better moment, not plead with the authorities, not formulate a sound bite for some imagined audience representing public opinion. You must immediately proceed to action, showing that the situation is serious enough to warrant it.
\nFerguson is not unique—there are countless such towns across the United States, in which the same dynamics play out between police and people. The rebellion in Ferguson will surely not be the last of its kind. Those of us who don’t buy into Governor Nixon’s program of peace now, justice later must prepare ourselves for the struggles that are soon to unfold. May we meet one day in a world without tear gas, in which skin color is not a weapon.
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\n The conflict in Ferguson over the murder of Michael Brown is only the most recent of many such uprisings around the US. This is an incomplete review of firsthand accounts and analyses of the previous precedents for struggles against policing.
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\nLos Angeles, CA (April 1992) No We Can’t All Just Get Along: Hip Hop, Gang Unity and the LA Rebellion & From Passive to Active Spectacle: Afterimages of the LA Riots
\nCincinnati, OH (April 2001) How Fast It All Blows Up
\nOakland, CA (January 2009) Unfinished Acts: The Context, Conflicts, and Consequences of the 2009 Oakland Rebellions
\nSeattle, WA (January to March 2011) Burning the Bridges They Are Building: Anarchist Strategies Against the Police in the Puget Sound, Winter 2011
\nAtlanta, GA (October 2011 to March 2012) Don’t Die Wondering: Atlanta Against the Police Winter 2011–2012
\nAnaheim, CA (July 2012) The Anaheim Anti-Police Riot, A Love Story
\nBrooklyn, NY (March 2013) The Flatbush Rebellion
\nDurham, NC (November 2013 to January 2014) Unforgiving and Inconsolable: Durham Against the Police
\n…Finally, from participants in the events in Ferguson, we recommend An Eye for an Eye Makes Our Masters Blind: One Account of Last Night’s Anti-Police Riot and Let Us Not Become Police, Let Us Not Become Sheep.
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![Old anarchist hyperbole](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/04/01/19.jpg\"){kind=link}