By Grassroots DC, on August 7th, 2015 
Cross-posted on behalf of the Stop Police Terror Project DC
August 9th will mark one year since 18-year-old Mike Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Mike Brown’s death, and the subsequent non-indictment of the officer that killed him, resulted in a shockwave of marches, rallies, shut downs and die-ins all across the country. The recent deaths of Sandra Bland in Texas and Kindra Chapman Alabama, both at the hands of police, show the need to continue struggling against racist police terror and to show that we will not stand for the ongoing brutalization and killing of Black people in America. Join Stop Police Terror Project DC on Saturday, August 8th at the African American Civil Memorial to rally and march in the memory of Mike Brown and other victims of police killings past and present.
SHUT IT DOWN FOR MICHAEL BROWN! Rally and March in Memory of Mike Brown and other police terror victims. August 8th, 2015, 7:00 p.m. African American Civil War Memorial
DCFerguson, a group that’s done a great deal to confront police terror, has changed their name and expanded their mission. Learn more about the new organization Stop Police Terror Project DC below.
Formal statement on the dissolution of DCFerguson:
DCFerguson first emerged during a vital and spirited time in the burgeoning national anti-racist movement. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, and the subsequent non-indictment of the policemen that killed them galvanized the country, and after several successful actions, the organizers decided to form a coalition to address police terror locally. The organization was able to raise awareness about the jump-out squads and other militarized police tactics, collected testimonies of local police terror victims, and demanded that city funds being used to increase police presence on the street be redirected to community-led security efforts.
Recently, due to pressures created in part by our efforts, the Metropolitan Police Department, under the leadership of Chief Cathy Lanier, has shifted its tactics. The department will reorganize the seven individual vice units that are currently responsible for most of the recent misconduct, and create a central Narcotics and Special Investigation Division along with a Crime Interdiction Unit. Lanier claims these changes are a part of a shifting focus in the MPD from low level dealers to suppliers, along with a new focus on synthetic drugs, but we believe this is simply a cosmetic change being made to avoid changing the lethal tactics that lead to the death of people like Ralphael Briscoe and DeOnte Rawlings.
As they change and adapt, so do we, and as such, DCFerguson has decided to reorganize under a new name with new leadership. Ferguson brought us to where we are, but at this juncture so many tragic incidents nationally and locally have illuminated our understanding of these issues. As such we wanted our name to reflect that expanded reality.
The new organization, Stop Police Terror Project, D.C. (SPTP), will continue to function as an organization dedicated to ending racist militarized policing in our region. SPTP will continue to be structured as a set of volunteer committees who meet independently to complete tasks for the organization’s different projects. Everyone who was active on these committees in DCFerguson is encouraged to continue their work in SPTP as we intend to move forward with our plans as outlined in the last few months.
Since the state has reorganized itself in a fraudulent way for the problem to continue under a new guise, we intend to reorganize in a genuine way in order to put a stop to these abuses. So with a history rooted in addressing racist police tactics in a concrete way, SPTP will continue to expose the institutional violence perpetrated upon poor and working Blacks in the area, will continue to highlight the interconnectedness of forms of oppression related to police terror, and of course, will continue to be in the streets. The struggle continues.
Sincerely,
Tiffany Flowers Sean Blackmon Yasmina Mrabet Eugene Puryear
By Malik Thompson, on December 5th, 2014 
I wrote this essay in response to liberal notions of nonviolence, which tend to be irritatingly sentimental and shallow. In the wake of this nation’s imprisonment system’s failure to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Panteleo, the two police officers responsible for the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively, much debate has been sparked about the nature of the rebellions, both peaceful and retaliatory, which have taken place across the country. Although not written in response to this particular series of tragedies, I believe the insights I offer in this piece shed light upon the necessity of transforming systemic manifestations of violence rather than condemning those groups and individuals who choose retaliatory tactics in response to the brutality they, and their community members, are subjected to.
Protest in Ferguson…
There is a force in our society, one that has come to manifest itself in countless forms, that many people are hesitant to name as a detriment to their lives. Most who dare to speak against this force, to utter the word that names it, are waved away as sentimental dunces, are charged with promoting lofty idealisms and are thereafter banished to society’s dim margins. Very few wish to acknowledge the hideous commonness of this force in its many manifestations.
That force’s name, that persistent presence, that scourge of pain, and fear, and shame, is ‘violence’. When most people hear the word ‘violence’, memories of physical brutality may replay in their minds. A vicious swat by an older sibling, a sailing fist cracked across a jaw, a bloodcurdling assault by an anonymous assailant. Although many are quick to decry the most intimate aspects of physical violence where it rears its head, the majority of those are also unwilling, or incapable, to enact healing work against those lingering traumas associated with having one’s body ravaged at another’s hands. Of course, they themselves are not to blame.
Ours is a society that seeks to, at every turn, devalue the significance of its citizens interior lives. We are encouraged to neglect our inner lives; religious practices are derided as narrow-minded and uncouth within increasingly secularizing cultural spheres, those who seek out therapists are snickered at in secret, and all who deeply ponder about human nature are handled with suspicion and apprehension. For most people, extended silences and solitude allow sinister things to bubble up to their conscious, and no one has taught them to be at peace with these haunts. Too many flee their demons by embracing addictions. Too many lack skills that would disallow past traumas to rend their spirits. Too many have been coaxed into allowing their interior lives to decay.
Yet, the state of people’s interior lives can never be divorced from the surrounding sociopolitical and sociocultural environments in which they’ve developed. Is it not violence when ours is a society that devalues the humanity of female-bodied people to no more than their sexual organs, their bodies violated time and time again, their appeals for justice ignored just as often? When young children, of all colors, point to dolls of darker skin and Afro-features as inherently nefarious? When indigenous voices of various tones seeking sovereignty over ancestral lands are constantly ignored and, instead, have the miniscule wedges of Earth they’ve been murdered onto bombarded with toxic wastes? When people of all races lacking in economic resources must either subsist on foodstuffs that poison their bodies, or nothing? What world do we inhabit where these realities often go acknowledged and, yet, unmanaged; where the suffering of another is commonly associated with a character flaw on the individual’s part and not symptomatic of systems of domination our society was built, and tragically thrives, upon?
Any path toward nonviolence that fails to acknowledge and work against physical, non-physical, and structural manifestations of violence is inherently lacking in depth. Any paths toward nonviolence lacking in strategies for justice and healing are underdeveloped. We are past the era where the division between mind, body, and spirit can be justifiably imposed upon the masses. We are past the point of presenting the populace with sparkling words in hopes that they will suffice for the arduous labor of transforming our world into one where harmony reigns.
Comprehensive nonviolent ideologies must offer tactics and solutions to address the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of evil, blatant and insidious. Nonviolence is only authentic when the livelihoods of all persons are accounted for, when voices resounding at the margins become centered and their requests heeded. Ultimately, the . . . → Read More: On Nonviolence
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 October 6th, 2014 This “controversial” art work by Mary Englebreit inspired a Facebook campaign.
During dire times, humans seem to have a natural inclination toward the arts as a mechanism to relieve the pressure of feelings otherwise incommutable. Whether we’re referring to the practices of the ancients to perform dance and song for their gods in exchange for blessings, or the sorrow songs passionately sung by enslaved Black people to convey their shackled inner lives and yearnings for freedom, art has been the medium people have turned to time and time again to give substance to that which can’t be said.
However, the so-called ‘cultural elite’, those who live under the impression that legitimate art is only that which is hung in the galleries of lavish neighborhoods, where hundred dollar wines flow like water. The art of this privileged few tries its best to erase the lives of the majority, giving special apathy to those who live on the margins. This is art produced under the delusion of plush fantasy, built upon others’ backs.
Despite the efforts of the upper classes to discourage the production of art that speaks to radically different experiences, where various societal structures are unabashedly named as the forces that cause suffering and notions of taboo are simply done away with. These works of art, where various societal structures are unabashedly identified as forces that cause suffering, have been essential components to movements for social justice; from Harlem Renaissance artists boldly proclaiming that “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.” , to writers living during the Civil Rights/Black Power era, such as Lorraine Hansberry, who actively chose to depict Black people’s lives without relying upon misinformed notions of Black humanity to give their works zest. Arts, in all of its manifestations, have pulled movements for change in directions that would have otherwise been inaccessible, because works of art constructed with an abundance of integrity and technical skill can activate people’s imaginations in ways that speeches and lectures can’t.
To not give those artists committed to liberatory struggle as well as the production of quality works of art credit is detriment to cultivating a world where people are able to creatively live as their entire selves. Artists dedicated to these missions are extremely reliable for capturing experiences that would otherwise decay into vague recollections and dust. To deny the contributions of these artists is to erase skillful encapsulations of human reaction to social phenomena.
This said, when eighteen year-old Michael Brown was slain in Ferguson, Missouri by Ferguson Police Department officer Darren Wilson on August 9th, the outcry of the artists was imbued with a wave of indignant pain only the most tragic social phenomena are capable of triggering. This tragedy, within the context of post-Zimmerman America and continued further violence directed toward Black youth, such as Renisha McBride, was met with a global outpouring of art.
Artists of all disciplines released wave after wave of material in the weeks following Brown’s killing and the community led protests against the FPD’s refusal to penalize Officer Wilson for his actions as well as general lack of respect for Brown and his family. A statement of solidarity, published on Red Wedge Magazine’s website, signed by artists across the country and abroad, serves as a microcosm of the energy artists have channeled into producing art which grapples with the reality that the state deems Black lives disposable.
Beginning with the writers, a poem entitled not an elegy for Michael Brown, by award winning poet Danez Smith, begins with the line, “I am sick of writing this poem”, and goes on to question the masses commitment to justice for Brown and other slain Black youth. In this same literary vein, various DC-area poets contributed to the development of Dear Ferguson – A DC Community Poem, searingly read by internationally renowned DC based spoken word artist Pages Matam. Both poems add compelling perspectives and fresh language to the discourse surrounding the events continuing to erupt in Ferguson.
Wallace lying face down in front of the ‘LOVE’ sculpture, wearing a ripped, bloody T-shirt. A young person holding a sign reading ‘Call Us By Our Names’ stands next to his body.
In Philadelphia’s iconic LOVE park, two actors, Lee Edward Colston and Keith Wallace recreated Brown’s last moments right in front of the park’s eponymous ‘LOVE’ sculpture. By having Wallace wear a white T-shirt with holes resembling bloodied gunshot . . . → Read More: Artists Respond to Michael Brown’s Murder and the Ferguson Rebellions
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