It will be four years on May 25 since a white police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, and it will be 10 years this August since Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black 18-year-old.
These moments sparked a movement to save Black lives with large-scale protests across the St. Louis region and other parts of the country. Brown’s death kindled tensions between police and African American communities around the region, especially in St. Louis and north St. Louis County.
As unarmed Black people continue to die at the hands of police, some civil rights organizations and lawmakers keep pushing for police reform on the national level to help keep Black people alive. Bakari Sellers, a civil rights attorney, CNN political commentator and former South Carolina state lawmaker, said federal reform is dead, but there is hope through voting.
“First thing you have to do … is to get off the sideline, because so many people are exhausted, so many people are tired,” Sellers said “And so, I want people to think about ways in which we can change the world together.”
St. Louis Public Radio’s Andrea Henderson spoke with Sellers about his latest book “The Moment: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn't and How We All Can Move Forward Now,” the lack of national criminal justice reform and the difference between the deaths of George Floyd and Michael Brown Jr.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Andrea Henderson: In your book, you spoke about the day you were asked to talk about the killing of George Floyd on national television and how emotional you were right before and during the interview. Can you recall the day you found out about Michael Brown Jr.'s death, and what were your thoughts before or during any interviews?
Bakari Sellers: Michael Brown was different for me. In 2014, I was still in a different place in my life, because of the fact that I was in the legislature in South Carolina, and my daily tasks were all-consuming. Not only that, but I wasn't a father yet, either, and so when these things happen, and you're a father, as the kids say, it hits differently. I saw them in the streets, and it was for the first time that I saw young people really take back their destiny and take control and take power of a situation, and that situation was Ferguson. It was different from George Floyd for a number of reasons, but I don't think you could have had the response to George Floyd if you did not first have the response to Michael Brown.
Henderson: What makes you say that things were different for George Floyd versus Michael Brown Jr.’s death?
Sellers: There were a couple of things. I think the first thing is Darnella Frazier, she was the young 17-year-old girl who had the audacity to film. It was the words of George echoing out for his mother. It was the situation in the context whereby you have that imagery of a knee on the neck and just violently for nine minutes, losing your breath until you die. And then last, but not least, people don't take this into account, but COVID is one of the largest reasons that the response to George Floyd was what it was because people couldn't turn away. You had to stare at the screen. You had to watch this over and over again, because there was nowhere to go, and people were looking for things to do. So, they came out into the streets. You saw the protests that were more diverse than what they were in Ferguson. I mean, a lot of that had to do with the city – it was in Minneapolis versus Ferguson – and a lot of that had to do with leadership at the time. But again, you have to realize that Michael Brown did not die in vain, because if we did not learn those lessons, if we did not take back that power in 2014, then I'm not sure we would have been able to do the same in 2020.
Henderson: August 2014 was near the end of your South Carolina House of Representative term, what was going on in Congress around the time of the Ferguson uprisings? Do you remember congressmen talking about it, were they trying to fast-track any bills?
Sellers: No, no you didn't have the level of activism around Ferguson that you had around Minneapolis. For whatever reason, that was but, you saw the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, you didn't see anything about Michael Brown. What we did learn though, was the tactics that they would use, which is the first thing they did was bastardize Michael Brown and he was dead and they did not allow him to rest in peace. Instead of talking about him being murdered, they talked about who he was and what he was doing, etc. And unfortunately, young folk have had to learn a lot about death and Black blood flowing through the streets from Emmett Till the way through to George including Michael Brown. And it's unfortunate that after you're murdered at the hands of police, you're persecuted again.
Henderson: Many people thought after Mike Brown's death that we would see a reckoning for federal police reform, did you think that would happen? And did you feel like we were on the cusp of change for the Black community?
Sellers: Not after Michael Brown. I did believe we were on the cusp of change after George Floyd. I thought we were on the cusp of a third Reconstruction, and we missed that as well. For Michael Brown, there was no impetus to move, there was no groundswell to change. This was another Black boy who shouldn't have been doing what he was doing, and so the police who are almighty did what they were supposed to do and killed him, and he deserved the death penalty right there. And that's what you saw. That's unfortunate, because I think that there should have been a greater response to Michael Brown's death. I think that if the Missouri state legislature or the federal government would have responded appropriately, maybe you wouldn't have had George.
Henderson: What laws should have been implemented by the Missouri legislature or the federal government?
Sellers: I outlined some of the things [in my book] you can do along the lines of policing, banning chokeholds, banning no-knock warrants between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., a database for bad officers, so no longer can you get fired from the Clayton Police Department and go down and work in the St. Louis or Ferguson Police Department. I think officers need psychological examinations. It's a very tough job. There are a lot of things that we can do, and a lot of things that should have been done. And the problem is that those things still have not been done on a large scale.
Henderson: After Ferguson protests, many people thought police reform legislation would naturally occur in Missouri, and the St. Louis area, it did in some ways, we saw elections of local and state officials and lawmakers. However, police reforms have kind of stalled. Why do we see that and we are seeing that on a national level as well?
Sellers: It’s a difficult task to change the way that we've been policing in this country. There are a lot of people who want to articulate that the criminal justice system is broken, and it's not. Systems in this country aren’t broken, they work as intended, engineers design systems to work as they work. So, you cannot be surprised by the outcome. We have to deconstruct those systems and reimagine them, so that they look like us. And it takes people like those individuals who won those races, those district attorneys, those local mayors. It takes Mayor [Tishaura] Jones and many others to be within these systems and try to peel back the layers of decades of challenges to African Americans. And it's hard to do that in four years. It's hard to do that in eight years.
Henderson: So what can people do to get police reform on a national level?
Sellers: First thing you have to do … is to get off the sideline, because so many people are exhausted, so many people are tired. Politics today, local state, federal politics is like watching a car crash. And so, I want people to think about ways in which we can change the world together. We often do a great job of identifying problems, but very rarely do we identify solutions, and I want us to be solution oriented going forward.
Henderson: Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott tried proposing police reform legislation, but it died in 2021. What do you think needs to happen on both the left and the right to be able to bring about federal police reform?
Sellers: That is unfortunately dead. I actually sat in a room with Ben Crump. I sat in a room with the families of victims of police violence. Eric Garner's mom, Philonise Floyd, was there, and Terence Crutcher’s people were there. Tim Scott was there, and so was Lindsey Graham. We even tried to codify what Donald Trump did on criminal justice, and they refuse to. The police unions won, and there is an unwillingness to do what's right by the people of this country. And that's unfortunate.
Henderson: So, where does that leave us?
Sellers: Having to utilize our voice. Elect better people to Congress, start over, try again, but keep pushing.
Henderson: The City of Ferguson entered a consent decree in 2016. Although this measure is in place, there are still instances of racial profiling and disparities in Ferguson as well as in the St. Louis area. The Missouri attorney general puts out a vehicle stops report, and over the years it reflects that Black drivers are more likely to be stopped and arrested than white drivers. Like many other municipalities in the area, some Ferguson drivers have not felt any relief from discriminatory practices. Why do we still see this institutionalized racism play out, even though there are these criminal justice policies and procedures that are in place to try to protect people, especially Black people?
Sellers: Not only do we have to have the policies, but we have to have people who are willing to implement those policies. In Missouri, you have elected officials who could care less about what happens in St. Louis County, because you are Black folk, and so it's hard to get that level of accountability. And so that's what makes the district attorney’s job tough, and that's what makes Mayor Jones’ job so tough. What we have to do is rise above moments of bickering amongst ourselves and be willing to bring the relief necessary and the accountability necessary, something that hasn't been brought to this area.
Henderson: There are too many Black people that have been killed by the police in the past few years to even remember every name, every year, every instance. One would think that over the years of continued police brutality toward Black people — that happened to be captured on social media — that they would have some type of reprieve from police brutality. Why do we still have these moments?
Sellers: Well, we have one level of accountability that was only in George Floyd, but it took so much for us to get that accountability. The price is really high to get accountability. We just haven't fundamentally done anything to change the value of Black lives in this country. When you don't see the humanity in individuals and when you're able to see them as less than, then you're able to treat them anyway. Black folk in a lot of people's eyes are treated as less than human, and we don't get the benefit of our humanity. Therefore, when we're on the side of the road, we're deemed to be either hyper-criminalized and violent, and many times we're just trying to get home.
Henderson: How do you find hope?
Sellers: Yeah, I find hope. We are going to need to. We are in the darkest period of time right now, but only when it is the darkest, can you see the stars. I find hope in this new generation, I find hope in my children. It's hard, but you have to be willing to cling on to some hope.
Henderson: Speaking about finding hope in this new generation, we are seeing young people rising up, using their voices. Right now, many students are protesting on college campuses across the country, including some here in St. Louis, for colleges to divest from companies that support Israel. I know you stated on Oct. 7, that you condemn the Hamas attacks and you support Israel, given what has occurred over the past seven months, have your opinions and thoughts changed?
Sellers: I think it's a very complicated and nuanced issue. I don't think that it's not whether or not you're pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian, you got to be pro-peace. You have to look at what happened on Oct. 7 and acknowledge that was one of the most violent and brutal days we've ever seen in our lives, and we have to acknowledge that we need to make sure those hostages are returned safely. So, that's first.
The other thing is you can also say that the response from Israel was disproportionate and that we don't want any more innocent women, children, food service workers or hospitals blown up. We don't want any more of that. There have been too many innocent lives lost. You can also acknowledge that just as Benjamin Netanyahu is a fundamental impediment to peace, who has adopted these kinds of strictly conservative MAGA ways — even in Israel — that is very hard to negotiate with the people who don't believe you have the right to exist in Hamas. So, I don't like having conversations with people when I bring up Hamas, they say, "But you need to recognize what's happening here." Now we need to have a conversation about how we create an atmosphere and an environment where Palestinian children can grow, can live full and healthy lives and where Jews in Israel can live free, safe and secure and have that right to defend themselves as a sovereign country.
