NAACP youth leaders from across the country and the St. Louis region led a march Saturday to end racial profiling, police brutality, and honor the life of Michael Brown Jr.
The African-American teenager was unarmed when he was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, on Aug. 9.
Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, St. Louis City Police Chief Sam Dotson and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar led protesters in a show of unity. Gaskin said their presence was meant to make a statement.
“There’s a level of distrust,” said John Gaskin III, one of the youngest members of the National NAACP Board of Directors. “We can heal the relationship between law enforcement and people on the ground. We want St. Louis to be that model.”
The St. Louis County NAACP organized the march to demand: the mandatory use of body-worn cameras on police officers; a federal review of racially disproportionate policing; and, the demilitarization of law enforcement. Gaskin said meetings have already been arranged with both police chiefs.
They marched from the Buzz Westfall Shopping Center, at 8037 W. Florissant Ave., to the corner of Canfield Drive and back in temperatures that reached a high of 99° that day. They were joined by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, 22, of Washington D.C., with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the largest Arab-American grassroots organization in the U.S. The ADC supports the human and civil rights of all people and opposes racism and bigotry in any form. She felt obligated to participate in the march, Al-Khatahtbeh said.
“We all share a united struggle,” she said. “We’re all facing the same system of oppression. We all need to come together to fight with one another and for one another in this common cause.”
Al-Khatahtbeh is of Palestinian descent and said Ferguson resonates very close to her heart.
“The same tear gas canisters that are being used on my people in Palestine are now being used here at home to oppress other people,” she said.
The slogan that day was “Courage will not skip this generation,” the brainchild of NAACP National Board of Directors Chairman Roslyn M. Brock. Young people are the new face of the NAACP courageously fighting for today’s issues; issues that have changed since “yesteryear,” Gaskin said.
“The issue used to be can I go to Harvard,” he said. “The issue now is can I survive long enough walking down my neighborhood street to make it to Harvard.”
Protesters were advised against using signs not in alignment with the NAACP’s slogan. Eva Ball and her eight-year-old daughter trailed behind protesters with a cardboard sign that read “Arrest Officer Wilson,” on a day when some rallied in support of the officer in south St. Louis.
“The only way we can have peace for the situation is if the police are held accountable for their actions,” Ball said.
Paulette Thompson held a sign with the first letter initial and last names of four African-American youth and men killed due to police brutality or racial profiling. Their names were Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner. Thompson shared her own experience with racial profiling. Police have followed her multiple times through her “predominately Caucasian” neighborhood in St. Louis County, she said.
“I live in that neighborhood,” she said. “They see a black face and don’t know what to expect.”
Kwame Thompson (no relation to Paulette Thompson) is a civil litigation lawyer in Atlanta, Ga. and with the Dr. Martin Luther King Support Group for Nonviolent Social Change. Thompson said the organization demonstrated in solidarity with the NAACP Saturday to demand the prosecution of Wilson, a man Thompson said “murdered” Michael Brown in “cold blood.”
Thompson practiced law in St. Louis County for 15 years. One of his clients was Jarvis Murphy, 27, who died from injuries he sustained after a traffic stop in Overland, Mo. in January of 2009. The incident never made the national media, and he said officers involved in the shooting were never brought to a grand jury.
“We know the criminal justice system in St. Louis County,” he said. “We know that Bob McCulloch is not fair.”
Follow this reporter on Twitter: @BridjesONeil | E-mail this reporter: boneil@stlamerican.com