Intermission had just ended at The Muny’s show of “Aida” on August 9, and the lights lowered. Through the darkness, people throughout the audience began singing, “We who believe in freedom will not rest until it’s won.”
“We protested at The Muny because it was necessary,” said rapper Tef Poe and a leader of the activist group Hands Up United. “The play ‘Aida’ is layered with several racial undertones which mirror the problems we currently face. We mourn for the victims of all senseless acts of violence. This is not a matter of compassion; it is a matter of challenging systemic racism.”
Tef Poe was among about 40 activists who disrupted the Muny show on the anniversary of Michael Brown Jr.’s death. Ferguson activists climbed a staircase and dropped a large banner that stated, “The Muny says Black Lives Matter.” The action was a “sequel” to their Requiem for Mike Brown in fall 2014, where they disrupted the St. Louis Symphony singing “Justice for Mike Brown.”
Unlike the symphony, the audience did not clap while the demonstrators left. They booed and shouted things like, “Get a job,” and “All lives matter.” Many were anxious to get on with the show, which ironically had a strong underlying theme of slavery and the oppression of a group of people.
The protestors sang for about 10 minutes and then voluntarily walked out of the audience area.
“The song really speaks to where we are two years into the struggle,” said Elizabeth Vega, leader of an activist group called the Artivists. “We are two years in; we’ve become a little more seasoned. We’ve become a little more weary. Over 700 people have been killed by police this year.”
As they were leaving, St. Louis city police and theater security arrested three women and one man. The four individuals were released at 5 a.m. on August 10.
At about 2 a.m. on Wednesday, The Muny posted a message to Facebook stating that the performance was interrupted for 23 minutes.
“There were no injuries and no property damage,” the statement read. “St. Louis City Police responded and the performance of AIDA continued after the demonstration moved out of the theatre.”
Several protestors responded that the statement was false because the women arrested were injured. A video shot by activist Tony Rice shows a police officer sitting on top of one woman, making her face grind harshly into the pavement. The Eden Theological Seminary graduate, who does homeless outreach four nights a week, will be seeking medical attention. The St. Louis American’s video also show another young woman screaming in pain during her arrest.
On Tuesday, people throughout the world held a moment of silence from 11:55 a.m. to 12 p.m. to reflect on Brown’s death.
“Two days before he passed, he said ‘the world is going to know my name,’” Michael Brown Sr. told the crowd at the site where his son’s life was taken. Dozens gathered for four minutes of silence – to commemorate the four hours his son’s body would lay in the street of the Canfield Green Apartments two years ago.
In a brief ceremony, the family released doves in his honor and encouraged the protest community and supporters of the movement that spawned from Ferguson.
The world of people who have come to know his son’s death as the flashpoint for the conversation about the broken relationship between police and the black community – many of whom protested relentlessly for nearly a year – all paused in remembrance.
Hands Up United collaborated with the Artivists to plan the Muny action. It was an attempt to “expand the range of the conversation,” Vega said. Like the demographics at the symphony, the audience at the Muny is largely white. At the action, the group passed out a faux playbill that stated, “Meet us at the Muny, and then join us in the revolution.” In the playbill, Act One was “School to Prison Pipeline,” and the description talked about how students of color in St. Louis are consistently punished more harshly than their white counterparts for the same offenses. Act Two was “Poverty and the Neglect of the Inner City and North County,” and so on.
The synopsis read, “People think that the movement is solely centered on police brutality. Mike Brown’s death was the spark that ignited a movement focused on all the intersections were oppression, racism and poverty impact real people of color.”
After the protestors left, the show resumed – but first two of the actors addressed the crowd to acknowledge the action. Black actor Ken Page asked the crowd that, “we open our minds, our hearts and our spirits, most importantly, to understand what’s important, to whom it’s important and why it’s important.”
Page also said that, “We all know that black lives matter, but that doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter.”
At this, the crowd cheered, as if he validated their earlier “All lives matter” chanting. The chant is often associated with people against the movement.
Tef Poe felt Page’s statement missed the mark. When protestors say that “Black Lives Matter,” they are not saying other lives don’t matter.
He said, “By saying Black Lives Matter, we are actually uplifting the fact that all lives did not matter prior to August 9th 2014.”
Follow this reporter on Twitter @rebeccarivas.
