“Can’t Take it No More.”
The words on the back of the young woman’s T-shirt summarized the theme of the day. She had just passed a couple of policemen who were barricading the entrance to Canfield Drive, the street where Michael Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson policeman six years ago.
Walking toward the memorial service for the slain youth in front of Canfield Green Apartments, attendees passed a bronze plaque on the sidewalk: “In Memory of Michael O.D. Brown, May 20, 1996-August 9, 2014.”
The woman, who asked that I refer to her as “Ashley,” pointed to the words on the front of her T-shirt: “Stop Murdering us,” it read. The back, she explained, is self-explanatory: “It’s too many Black people dying in these streets. We’re fed up, and we can’t take it no more.”
Ashley’s words were echoed by the speakers and some of the 150 or so attendees at the memorial. After all, Black people are still twice as likely to be killed by police than white people. Six years after then-Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson gunned down then-18-year-old Mike Brown, police have killed roughly 1,000 people per year since 2014. Some of the names we know: Freddie Gray (2015), Philando Castille (2016), Botham Jean (2018), Atatiana Jefferson (2019), and Breonna Taylor and George Floyd who were murdered by cops this year.
The loved ones of hundreds of other black people who were killed by police — whose names we may never know — demand an answer to the question: What’s changed since Mike Brown’s death?
According to Michael Hassle, 36, not much.
“When I think about it, I think there’s still no justice, nothing’s changed,” Hassle said. “We’re at war with one another. Hell, we’re at war with self.”
Hassle addressed the larger issue of gun violence. About 120 homicides have occurred in the City of St. Louis alone this year. Senseless, violent murders add just another layer of trauma to an already traumatized people. Now, 72 months after Brown’s death, the national epidemic of police brutality is accentuated by a worldwide pandemic – one that is also disproportionately taking Black lives.
“The Color of Coronavirus,” a report released this month by APM Research Lab, revealed “continued wide disparities by race, most dramatically for Black and Indigenous Americans.” By the numbers, the team of researchers and analysts noted that out of the 160,000 COVID-related deaths so far, 1 in every 1,250 were Black Americans, compared to 1 in every 2,800 white Americans.
Jana M. Gamble, vice president of The Michael Brown Foundation, which orchestrated the vigil on August 9, spoke to the additional trauma that Black people, families, and communities face from police and COVID-19.
“We’re already going through so much with systemic racism,” Gamble said. “Then you pour COVID into this when you already don’t have the resources in a natural environment. It’s extremely taxing to you mentally, physically, spiritually. Our people are being failed, and we’re dying.”
This year’s memorial service was similar to those held in the past. Passionate speeches were given by politicians and activists. The diverse crowd of attendees wiped tears away and hugged bereaved family members. Doves were released into the air. There were repetitious chants of “No justice, no peace!”
Although justice and police reform have been syrupy slow in the country, some attendees found hope despite the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic.
Elijah Foggy was only 13 when his mother brought him to the first protest demonstration after Brown was killed. Foggy, now 19, defined the solution to police rather basically.
“At the end of the day, we’re all family,” Foggy said. “We love each other. If anybody wants to be a part of this, part of the Black Lives Matter movement, all they have to do is say you’re sick and tired of black people dying.”
Hassle, who also spoke of family, asserted that the coronavirus had an upside. “It made families get back to family,” he said. “We’re now giving back to each other.”
For Ashley, the woman with the “Can’t Take it No More” T-shirt, neither the epidemic nor the pandemic is reason to give up the fight.
“Until we get justice, there will be no peace. We’re out here six years later to let y’all know that we still matter. And this pandemic won’t stop us. We out here.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess Fellow.
