Saturday marked two weeks since the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown, and peaceful protest continued with marches along West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, day and night.
Canfield Green Apartments, however, where Brown was shot six times and killed – and where he was mourned first, in the stunning four hours that Ferguson police left his body lying in plain sight of family and friends – hosted a quiet community celebration.
Organizers set up a small stage, from which pastors from nearby Living Oak Ministry preached and led prayer. Free food was provided in the form of grilled burgers, bags of chips, and ice cream that melted instantly off the cone in the blazing heat.
The food table also was the fulcrum for receiving relief supplies. Canfield Green has been barricaded in by the militarized police response to protests, and many residents have not been able to freely travel to shop for basic necessities.
The relief effort came from many sources, including St. Louis Crisis Nursery. At one point the Rev. Tommie Pierson, pastor at Greater St. Mark Family Church, came by to check if more cold water was needed (it was).
A crafts table was set up where mostly children contributed to a sort of mural on paper in Michael Brown’s memory. “Turn this world upside down,” “Justice,” “I [heart] humans” and “R.I.P. Mike Brown” were among the scrawled sentiments.
The impromptu memorial to Michael Brown that took shape in the middle of Canfield Drive, where he died, remains a site of pilgrimage. A trail of roses leading up to the memorial – which is dominated by two orange traffic pylons, an Albert Pujols Cardinals jersey and multi-colored Mylar balloons – was starting to disappear.
A group of New Black Panthers assembled on the sidewalk facing the memorial in the street. They led an action where people lay on the street for four minutes, to symbolize the four hours that Ferguson police let Brown’s body lay in the street while his family and friends went hysterical with grief.
Many observers have cited those four hours of pain as central to the community’s rage and the staying power of the protest movement.
“I will seek Him like never before. I’ll call His name. If I got to call by myself, I’ll cry out to the Lord,” one man preached from the stage in the park, which is also just across from the makeshift memorial. “If nobody around me will cry out, I will make a sound, if nobody else around me will make a sound.”
But in fact, he was far from alone in his cry for justice. Anderson Cooper, the CNN anchor, wandered past the memorial in Canfield Green, one of the remaining holdouts of national media that have been broadcasting live from Ferguson for more than a week.
A woman from Vancouver, Canada, admired the crafts table and talked to one of the diverse organizers. A filmmaker from California came by, taking snapshots as part of her work on a documentary film about the movement. The DJs playing hip-hop from a table in the shade along Canfield Drive said they were from Chicago.
A protest movement that started with extreme grief and rage in this complex of modest, low-rent apartments has gone international.
Indeed, veterans of the protest movement noticed many new faces at the march on Saturday night, and some questioned the motives of the newcomers. Patricia Bynes, community activist and social media commentator (@Patricialicious on Twitter), reminded newcomers where it all began and to where it must return.
“If you come to Ferguson to protest but haven’t been to the Mike Brown memorial,” she said on Twitter, with some abbreviations, “you are doing it wrong and are probably here for the wrong reasons.”
