“Ferguson 365” filmmaker Chris Phillips had a unique vantage point as he captured the unrest in Ferguson that followed the death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014.
A resident of the Canfield Green Apartments, the site where former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot the unarmed teen, Phillips could provide insight on life in Ferguson before the St. Louis County municipality became the flashpoint for conversations on the long-fractured relationship between law enforcement and the black community.
He sat with newly appointed ArchCity Defenders Executive Director Blake Strode on Friday, February 9 during a screening of his film. The screening was a fundraiser that commemorated the three-year anniversary of the legal advocacy organization’s class action lawsuits against the cities of Ferguson and Jennings. Phillips shared his experiences before the unrest, mainly about the heavy police presence as he made his commute to work at Webster University. There were cop cars strategically placed along the entire stretch of West Florissant all the way to I-70 and Lucas and Hunt. There was a red-light camera at that light and two police cars with radars pointing in each direction 300 feet from the camera as drivers passed by. He spoke of often seeing young blacks in handcuffs sitting on the curb as part of the everyday surroundings of his morning and evening routines.
“It was important for me to contextualize what the climate was like, because I think when people looked at the situation, they think they (protesters) are just responding to this young man being killed,” Phillips said. “This is more than him getting killed. This is about decades of systemic abuses. When you see people outraged about him being killed, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. You get tired of being harassed, losing your job, losing your livelihood, being locked up for nonsense.”
The film – a short – gave snapshots of the unrest. “Ferguson 365” also looked at the protests in response to the death of Mansur Ball-Bey in St. Louis city, the protests in Baltimore as well as moments captured from Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network march on Washington, the 50th Anniversary of Selma’s Bloody Sunday and other moments of protest around the nation that happened following Ferguson.
“For me, the 365 concept is because it’s a year-round cycle,” Phillips said. “It happens everywhere and it’s constantly happening – this issue of racial injustice and police violence. It’s a full year portrait of what happened after Michael Brown got killed. The protests really went beyond 365 days.”
The short, which Phillips announced is currently being expanded into a feature film, and brief interview period with Strode following the screening sparked a lively Q&A session with the capacity crowd at the KDHX Stage in the Grand Center Arts District.
“It’s been understood for at least the last 100 years that the pathway out of poverty is through education and that it’s a lot cheaper to educate a person than it is to incarcerate them,” a guest said. “We see what our governor is doing – he took a $113 million out and now he wants to take another $87 million. That [money] is the seed that our education department needs so that people can grow up and have education and training have the choice to not live in an economically depressed neighborhood where there is nothing going on. What’s your reaction?”
Phillips pointed out that there is mass profit happening because of mass incarceration. Strode agreed.
“Not only is it cheaper to educate than imprison, it’s cheaper to do a lot of things,” Strode said. “It’s cheaper to provide decent housing. It’s cheaper to provide communities with jobs. It’s cheaper to not have police pull people over. The question is about priorities and why we are spending so many resources on arresting and incarcerating. At a certain point it’s clear that it’s intentional.”
Phillips said that there are ways to generate revenue streams without doing it on the backs of poor people.
“There are some improvements where we see people giving their time and resources to Ferguson as a response – but then we look at the system as a whole, and some things are going backwards,” said Phillips. “That’s my analysis.”
He hopes that through the underlying themes of his film, which will expand to include the Stockley verdict protest, that viewers will take not of the electoral process and the importance of voting as an integral element of activism.
“Knowles is still mayor in Ferguson,” Phillips said. “When we are talking Bruce (Franks) and Rasheen (Aldridge), we are talking about 100 votes that led to victory. And Tishaura (Jones) was not the mayor of St. Louis because of 888 votes. It shows that we really have to take charge when it comes to local elections.”
He said he saw it in Ferguson and during the Stockley verdict protests, but he is hoping that people who aren’t directly impacted by police violence and social injustice remain engaged in speaking out on behalf of people of color.
“Michael Brown being left on a street for four and a-half hours would not happen in Creve Coeur. It would not happen in Chesterfield, Wildwood or St. Charles,” Phillips said. “It shouldn’t be an issue that just affects you to get you to the table to fight. You have to look at it as a human issue – and know that it’s just a matter of time before it does affect you.”
For more information on Arch City Defenders, visit http://www.archcitydefenders.org/
For more information on “Ferguson 365,” visit http://www.ferguson365film.com/
