The time to protect black life is now

I adjusted my backpack and shuffled slowly through the airport. I was exhausted. Five days earlier, I had stood freezing and eager for justice on South Florissant Avenue. Behind me on the top of a car was Mike Brown’s mother.

As we listened to the grand jury announcement and learned that Darren Wilson would walk away a free man, the Brown family held each other closely and sobbed. I shouted with everything I had into a megaphone to get the seemingly countless media cameras to back up, wishing this family a single moment of grief.

Shaking my head clear of that chaotic night and raising my eyes to find my gate number, I saw an extremely familiar face walking towards me. I hesitated, not wanting to stop him. Again, I thought to myself, “This family deserves a moment to grieve.”

But, I was headed to meet the president of the United States. I was on my way to Washington, D.C. because the son of the man walking towards me was murdered. I stopped him.

Quickly introducing myself, I told Mike Brown Sr. that I was one of the many people fighting for justice for his son. He placed his hand on my shoulder and pulled me in for a hug. I tried not to collapse into sobs and summoned enough composure to say, “We love you” as he whispered a tired, “Thank you” in my ear.

Two days later, I walked through the door of the Oval Office with seven other black youth organizers. Exactly 59 years before, Rosa Parks took part in a brave action that would spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That legacy fresh in our minds, we stressed to President Obama the time for action was now.

He listened, seemingly heeding our urgency as we presented him with our demands of his administration. Then he told us gradualism was the key to progress. I found it hard to swallow his message of patience after 100 days of protesting, a hospital visit for tear gas exposure and an overnight jail stay for exercising my First Amendment rights. As he spoke, several of us began to shake our heads involuntarily. We’d waited too long already. 

In the time since I sat in the Oval Office I have visited countless nonprofits, the United Nations in Switzerland, Amnesty International and the ACLU in New York, advocating that the time to protect black life is now. I have recounted the inhumanity of racism and how it is manifested through individuals like Darren Wilson and structures such as the Ferguson Police Department. I have made national and international connections, stressing that we are all as vulnerable as Mike Brown as long as racism prevails unchecked and black people are offered passing time as the solution.

In addition to the one-year mark of Mike Brown’s murder, this month also marks the 5th year Haitians were told to wait for aid after a devastating earthquake tore through their country. August also includes the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Watts rebellion and the 10th commemoration of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. 

It’s a month filled with devastating history during which black folks suffering and dying have been told to “wait.” We cannot wait any longer. We have been left to suffer in plain view, the victims of the societal cancer of structural racism, our humanity ignored consistently. 

One year after the death of Mike Brown caused the world to stand up and proclaim “Black Lives Matter,” we are still in a state of emergency. Over 1,000 lost lives later and our government has yet to take real action to respond to this crisis of law enforcement killing citizens. We have survived a year of raising awareness through various methods: sacrificing our bodies through direct action, flooding social media with untold truths and organizing to build collective power and change in our communities.

I have carried the name of Mike Brown with me, realizing as the Movement for Black Lives has spread internationally that the loss of a young man-child was for many the sounding of an emergency alarm that we must continue to ring. It is our duty. Black lives have been discarded for far too long.

This is why one year later we continue raising up the stories of those lost, making new freedom bells of names like Samuel Dubose, Kindra Chapman and Sandra Bland and refusing to wait for those whose patience for injustice would have our names be next. We are still wondering when the rest of America will join us. The time has always been right now.

Ashley Yates (Twitter: @BrownBlaze) is a writer, cultural influencer and #BlackLivesMatter organizer from Florissant.