Ten years ago, a Ferguson police officer shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., sparking an uprising that shed light on longstanding police violence against Black people and systemic injustice.
As the anniversary of Brown's death approaches, people in Ferguson and other parts of the St. Louis region say it's important to acknowledge the enduring pain of Black people as they continue to push for change.
“We were doing all of that stuff for over 400 days, not simply because of what we were fighting against, but because of who and what we were fighting for,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, co-founder of Campaign Zero, a police reform campaign.
Packnett Cunningham was one of five panelists who spoke Wednesday at a community conversation convened by St. Louis Public Radio and NPR at Greater St. Mark Family Church and moderated by Michel Martin of NPR.
The conversation began with a discussion of panelists’ reaction to the events of Aug. 9, 2014.
Packnett Cunningham learned of Brown’s death while on a trip to Kansas City with her mother. They decided to return home, where she went to Ferguson to stand with protesters.
“The love that bound us then and that binds us now is perpetually evident and how people have committed to changing this city, to changing our communities, to changing this entire world,” Packnett Cunningham said.
What’s changed in Ferguson
Others on the panel included Ferguson Mayor Ella Jones, Police Chief Troy Doyle, Clifton Kinnie, a teacher and activist who founded Our Destiny STL, and Zack Boyers, CEO of U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance.
Doyle said his police department is working to comply with the terms of a federal consent decree that called for changes in police and city practices. He said that the department has implemented major changes since 2014, and that now more than half of its officers are African Americans. It also has seen a dramatic decrease in the use of force. Those changes occurred because people in Ferguson decided to protest, he said.
“If it wasn't for the protest movement, would police officers be wearing bodycams?” Doyle said. ”If it wasn't for the protest movement, would we be involved in de-escalation training, crisis intervention training, and so on? Everything that we doing now, as far as reform, birthed from what took place here in the city of Ferguson.”
Jones added that the community’s relationship with police has changed dramatically in the past decade.
“If you want to know what's been happening here in the last 10 years, look at the different relationships that are being built, collaborative efforts that people who would never have stood beside each other are talking and serving together,” Jones said.
What still needs to be done
But the panelists and several audience members said the progress made since Brown’s death isn’t enough. Some mentioned the continuing killings of Black people by police across the U.S., including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Sonya Massey, an unarmed woman killed last month by an officer in her Springfield, Illinois, home after calling police to report a potential prowler.
“The movement that we saw globally in 2020 in the name of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others would not have happened in the way that it did if it were not for the 400-plus days of the Ferguson uprising,” Packnett Cunningham said.
She said conversations around police reform need to include both justice and accountability.
“Justice is a living, breathing Michael Brown,” she said. “Justice is all of us at home watching Netflix right now because Michael Brown is living his life anonymously; his parents are sitting there having dinner with their son. Accountability would have been the officer that killed him being tried.”
A grand jury in 2014 declined to charge Darren Wilson, the then-Ferguson officer who shot Brown, and a review by the U.S. Department of Justice found that there was not enough evidence to take the case to trial.
Four years ago, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell conducted another review of the case at the request of Brown's parents. But Bell decided not to file charges against Wilson.
Boyers said the St. Louis region needs to address persistent inequities to improve the lives of people in different communities.
“One of the things that I and a number of us have learned over the last 10 years is the requirement that we maintain and sustain a level of urgency, and it is still required,” Boyers said. “To get to a place where outcomes, life outcomes, health, wealth, all of it is no longer predictable by race; we're not anywhere near there. We need to continue to sustain that commitment to urgency.”
Kinnie said community leaders must engage young people and to help them become involved as participants and voters. He said that it’s also important to listen to people who are upset about systemic problems in policing and government, and that collaboration is essential.
“We still have a fight. We're not done,” Kinnie said. “We all might not have the same ideologies, but one thing I think we all agree on in this room is that we have to figure out how to love each other.”
See more photos of the St. Louis Public Radio and NPR News panel by STLPR's Brian Munoz.
