By Malik Thompson, on October 20th, 2014 
On August 9th, 2014, eighteen year-old Black male, Michael Brown, was shot six times by Ferguson Police Department officer Darren Wilson, later dying from his injuries. In response to this tragedy, Brown’s community members constructed a memorial for the young man at the place of his death. However, the memorial was soon destroyed by Ferguson police officers. With unresolved racial tensions setting the stage, Ferguson community members unleashed their frustrations with the authorities’ lack of respect for Brown and his family through protests.
The Ferguson rebellions began the day after Brown’s murder, on August 10th. Gathering at the site of Brown’s death, later taking the protests to police headquarters, the Ferguson police department responded to the community members with military-grade riot equipment.
With the Ferguson community member’s protests continuing for days after Brown’s killing, and increasing brutality of police backlash, activists, organizers, and everyday people across the nation reacted swiftly to the struggles of the Missouri residents.
In a flurry of press releases, art, and rallies, a nationwide call to recognize the value of Black lives was sounded and echoed across the country. Not at all an exhaustive list, here are a sampling of the national and global acts of solidarity sparked by the events in Ferguson.
Starting on the West coast, in Phoenix, Arizona, more than one-hundred people gathered in the city’s Eastlake Park protesting police brutality. Fortunately, no police officers were in attendance to harass the protesters.
Protesters in Oakland, California held mirrors in front of officer’s faces because they wanted the officers to “just look at themselves”, a protester named Nichola Torbett told local radio station KPIX 5.
In Los Angeles, with it’s long history of police brutality, one-thousand people gathered outside of LAPD headquarters, linking their struggles with police brutality to the violence experienced by the people in Ferguson.
On the East Coast, residents of West Philadelphia rallied on the corner of 52nd and Market streets in protest of happenings in Ferguson, speaking out about their own experiences with police brutality in Philadelphia.
After the murder of 43 year-old Eric Garner at the hands of Staten Island police, high racial tensions between NYC residents of color and police simply swelled. Building off the momentum from those protesting in Ferguson, thousands of people from all over the NYC-area flooded the streets of Staten Island in protests of local and nationwide police brutality.
Similarly, after holding a vigil for Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, and other Black people slain by police and vigilantes, protesters in Washington, DC marched to the downtown area by the thousands, one of many protests held in the DC-area.
On the global stage, those struggling against oppressive regimes in Palestine and Hong Kong are using Twitter as a medium to link their struggles with those in Ferguson, offering helpful tips on dealing with a militarized police force during protests. A letter of solidarity published by the Mexico Solidarity Network hints at an even larger global awareness of the significance of the Ferguson rebellions than first thought may suggest.
With the recent events of Ferguson October, including the arrest of prominent Black intellectual Dr. Cornel West, a fresh wave of actions protesting anti-Black racism and police brutality may soon be upon us.
By Malik Thompson, on September 30th, 2014 
On September 21, 2014 over 300,000 people swarmed Manhattan in mass protest against global climate change. With indigenous peoples and people of color leading the charge , the largest protest against climate change in history took place in New York City.
On September 23, Rising Tide DC (RTDC), the local chapter of the international, grassroots climate justice network Rising Tide North America, and the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR), an organization dedicated to peace and nonviolent resistance, both staged acts of protests against climate change in solidarity with the march in NYC within the nation’s capitol.
NCNR gathered on Pennsylvania Ave. before stopping in front of the White House, and spoke out against the Pentagon’s usage of fossil fuels and similar military practices. Refusing to leave without meeting a person in power, five NCNR protesters were arrested for refusing to step away from the gates surrounding the White House.
While these events were taking place, RTDC led a march through downtown DC opposing the practices of large corporations, such as TD Bank, which cause global human and environmental suffering.
By Malik Thompson, on September 8th, 2014 
Kara Walker is a Black woman artist famous for grotesque silhouette cutouts depicting the experiences of Black woman in the South before the dismantling of formal chattel slavery. In the late spring of 2014, Walker constructed a mammy sphinx out of sugar, along with multiple Black male children made from molasses, exhibiting both in the soon to be demolished, old Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Exploring issues of race, gender, sex, objectification, and the terrible history of the sugar trade, Walker’s piece was met with a flurry of attendees sharing their experiences with her work to the wider world. Below are my own.
One of the worst things about my experience with the Kara Walker exhibit in Brooklyn was the lack of space available for me to mourn the devastation of Blackness, nor appreciate its power. There were white bodies everywhere I turned; white bodies laughing, white bodies posing for pictures, white bodies giving me strange looks as I solemnly shuffled around the warehouse, white bodies overflowing the space, white bodies spilling into my physical and mental space.
This happened most profoundly as I stood in front of one of the little Black molasses boys. This particular one had toppled over on it’s side, the molasses comprising the sculpture horrendously warped, conjuring images in my head of some beast mauling the sculpture before I arrived. Bolstering the intensity, as with every other sugar boy, was a puddle of mostly dried molasses beneath the sculpture, reminiscent of blood seeping from the child’s body.
I could only stare at it. Stare at it and think about all that it symbolizes, all the pain embodied in that moment, that moment when Black children are prematurely ripped away from their childhoods. I stood there for what felt like a very long time, which may have only been three or four minutes. While I stood there, there were various individual and groups of white people who would pass by, observe the sculpture, and move on although they weren’t actually very disruptive. After a few seconds of sitting with the piece, I figured out a way to block them out.
A group of two or three young white woman decided to stand next to me after I’d been standing in front of the sculpture for a while. I know I was emitting my emotions as I sat and contemplated the fate of the fallen molasses boy in front of me; I know that it must have been very uncomfortable for the white people who flocked around the sculpture to be near me as I mourned because most of them gave me a furtive glance before fleeing elsewhere within the factory. But this one very blue-eyed and blonde haired young white woman began not so sneakily searching my face for… something.
In the muted light of the sugar factory, her very blue-eyes glowed as they searched my very pained face; they glowed with a mixture of pity, guilt, and confusion- perhaps these are the components of the ever toxic sentimentality? Then, at that moment, I became uncomfortable, realized that even though this was obviously a cemetery, a place of remembrance and mourning for how Blackness has been distorted and destroyed throughout history, the pain I felt would always take a backseat to the comfort white people seek in lies. In that moment, I began remembering what violation felt like.
I have no way of knowing what that young white woman’s intentions were; was she wanting me to move because my mourning made her uncomfortable? Was she trying to figure out how to best console me as she navigated the treacherous terrain of gauging another being’s emotional state? I doubt I will ever have an answer to these questions.
I do, however, know that I would’ve preferred her not invading my space and keeping her distance while I sat with the heavy things rising to the surface of my conscious. I know I would have preferred her somehow quietly keeping other white people out of my space if her intention was to bring me comfort. I know good intentions mean very little in practice.
The realization that there was no space to engage with the art in the way in which I preferred became more apparent as I moved closer to the mammy sphinx; where no one seemed to understand the meaning of the mammy. They didn’t seem to understand the significance of her breasts, arms, and ass being out of proportion to the rest . . . → Read More: Kara Walker’s Desecrated Cemetary For Blackness
By Liane Scott, on June 5th, 2014 
Yesterday, we posted about tonight’s School Discipline Community Forum–All Souls Church, 1500 Harvard St. NW, 6:30PM. If you want to know more about how DC public school administrators typically discipline our students, watch the video below. Produced by this year’s Critical Exposure fellows, the video lobbies for the implementation of restorative justice programs in DC Public Schools. These programs could go a long way to clogging up the school-to-prison pipeline.
Final Fellowship SE 2014 from Critical Exposure on Vimeo.
Critical Exposure is a DC-based nonprofit that trains youth to use photography and advocacy to make real change in their schools and communities. Grassroots DC member Lishan Amde and I were very proud to work with the Critical Exposure Fellows Anaise Aristide, Malik Thompson, Delonte Williams, Maya Simms and Nadia Upshur-Richardson in the production of this video. Watch and learn what you can do to help bring restorative justice programs to DCPS.
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