This year, on August 9th, I sat alone in a hotel room in Washington D.C. I was waiting to attend the premiere of Whose Streets?, a documentary about the Ferguson uprising that features some of my activism during the 2014 protests, alongside the work of others who took to the streets when Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown.
In silence, I clicked back and forth between my Facebook memories from that year – images that reminded me of the outrage and sorrow of my community – and a Riverfront Times article from the present day: Ex-St. Louis Cop Jason Stockley Testifies That He’s No Murderer.
“That sounds familiar,” I thought to myself. Except that Darren Wilson, whose cold-blooded actions set off the movement that changed my life and our city, was never charged.
On December 20th, 2011, former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley shot 5 times into Anthony Lamar Smith’s silver Buick at the end of a high-speed chase. Stockley left him to die while he planted a revolver in the car.
And now, in St. Louis, the verdict in this case looms over the city much as the question of where Darren Wilson would be indicted loomed in November of 2014. Then, armored vehicles were stationed near the courthouse in Clayton. Last week, barricades went up around court buildings downtown.
Local activists have committed to months of protest if Stockley is acquitted, and rightfully so. The movement that came out of Ferguson persists, though the cameras have gone, because needless to say, our conditions remain the same.
As I consider what this moment might mean for activists and the resistance movement in St. Louis, I am reminded of our power, our determination to seek justice in an unjust, oppressive nation.
In 2014, I was a founding member of Millennial Activists United (MAU), a feminist, queer-led activist collective that undertook creative, powerful, and contentious civil disobedience and direct action. Alongside my partner, Alexis Templeton, I organized many actions in St. Louis in the year following the killing of Mike Brown, using civil disruption to call attention to St. Louis’s systemic assault on and disregard for Black lives.
Among many mobilizations included protesting at high-end restaurants in the Central West End and in South County, predominantly white-populated areas, disrupting the comfortable, day-to-day routine of folks far removed from the realities of being black, over policed, damn near preyed upon, in St. Louis.
In collaboration with other activists, MAU organized outside of Black Churches on Easter Sunday (#BlackChurch), the day that sees the largest turnout of Black churchgoers and marks the resurrection of radical, table-flipping, Palestinian Jesus Christ, calling for voice and action from those who had remained silent on matters of state violence.
We organized outside of Jewish synagogues on Yom HaShoah (#BlackShul), a tender time of remembrance of all who perished in the Holocaust, calling for solidarity across our struggles.
To commemorate the first anniversary of Mike Brown’s death, on August 11th, 2015, with the support of lawyers, medical professionals, documentarians, and everyday people who made a decision to stand on the right side of justice, MAU organized a rush hour shutdown of I-70 in both directions.
During the shutdown, one driver, a middle-aged woman who appeared to be white, became increasingly angry for the delay. She yelled profanities and gave the middle finger to protestors and documentarians, as you can see in a scene from Whose Streets?. The driver also had conversations with police officers who approached her vehicle. And while I’d like to think they told her to stay calm, I presume they told her it would be okay with run over protesters with her car.
As I stood on the median, watching and directing the action, I heard fellow comrades pleading “lady, lady, please stop” and looked over to see the driver moving her vehicle forward into bodies. You could hear it strike these folks who had trusted my direction.
Why? Because this person believed getting to her destination was worth risking the lives of the many who took to the highway to bring awareness to the disregard and violence that is the norm for St. Louis’s black community.
As this woman continued to advance her car, I hopped down from the median and struck the driver door of her SUV with my size six foot. She gave me a look of disdain before slamming on the gas and plowing through the line, dragging a yellow painted box that read “Ferguson is Everywhere”. To this day, I thank the ancestors that it was a box and not a body.
Shortly afterward, I ordered the highway to be cleared going eastbound. We watched as police from various jurisdictions, along with state troopers, lined the highway, waiting for the moment to act. When they did, they ordered us to return to our vehicles and leave the premises.
As we did, we were trapped on the parking lot and brutally arrested, zip tied, and made to sit on the hot pavement for what felt like hours, before sitting on a bus without air-conditioning for hours more. One man attempting to leave the highway was slammed to the ground, resulting in a concussion that went untreated on that August day.
Everyone was arrested, including Alexis and me, as I had warned participants they would be. I cried angrily and loudly at the circumstances. For us, it felt like a lose/lose. We don’t protest, we lose. We do protest, we’re criminalized, and we lose.
I was released very early the next day, just 14 hours before I was arrested again on S. Central Avenue in Clayton, waiting for other highway protesters to be released from jail. This time, I was charged with a Class D felony for property damage, along with two misdemeanors, for kicking the angry driver’s car.
Somehow, St. Louis County – the state – had picked up on her story and chosen this belligerent white woman as their victim. You heard that right. Not only did the driver of the SUV face no consequences for plowing through a line of protesters, I was being labeled a felon for attempting to stop her. For attempting to protect friends, colleagues, comrades, human beings.
Just last month, a vehicle drove through protestors in the Grove during a vigil for Kiwi Herring, a Black trans woman who was killed by police, injuring three. And before that, the whole country watched in horror as a driver killed a protester and injured many others in Charlottesville.
And yet, media and public officials continue to disparage protesters, and more terrifying, our lawmakers continue their efforts to increase the penalties for those who expose their bodies to tanks and tear gas, to rubber bullets and moving cars, in order to express the needs of black and brown communities, and bring awareness to the state violence and injustice we constantly bear the brunt of.
This is why we must disrupt.
Though I am not a convicted felon, I have been largely silenced by the state since the highway shutdown. I’m serving probation of anywhere from two to five years, and any arrest could be a violation, again landing my fate, and my family’s, in the hands of the court.
But while I can’t be in the streets, should Stockley be acquitted, I will still be part of the protest.
All of the actions MAU organized were successfully executed in part because we had a solid and broad community who believed as strongly as we did that justice is ours, and that the work required to obtain it would be arduous but necessary.
This community rallied around us, donated to our legal fund, wrote letters, picked up our vehicles, provided childcare. The nurses, educators, attorneys, clergy, professors, students, artists, food service workers. The support of these people is vital to those who risk our bodies and freedom to fight for black people.
In the event that Stockley is acquitted, we must disrupt. Even in the face of state repression, we must disrupt. While many will take to the streets, many others can resist though other actions. Support your local activists. Clergy, if you aren’t preaching resistance in this city, then you are not preaching. Disrupt your comfortable dinner conversations. Organize yourselves at your city council meetings. Stop making nice with the status quo and disrupt it. Stop asking what you can do and use whatever tools and access you have to support the protest.
And to my comrades on the ground putting your minds, bodies, and freedom on the line, should it come to that, give them hell.
Brittany Ferrell is a St. Louis activist, co-founder of Millennial Activists United, and a registered high-risk labor and delivery nurse. Ferrell is a 2015 St. Louis American Salute to Young Leader Award Recipient and Deaconess Nursing Scholar.
