Continuing the series of reflections by local Chicago organizers who traveled to St. Louis and Ferguson last weekend is my comrade Kelly Hayes. I am so happy to feature Kelly’s words and photos today.

It’s been about three days since I returned from Ferguson October, and my body and mind are finally starting to settle back into the life I know. A number of people have asked me about what I saw and experienced there, and I’ve generally responded with simplistic, vague statements like, “It was intense.” I’ve done this partly because I haven’t fully processed all that I saw and heard out there, and partly because I know that as soon as I start to speak, I’ll be walking a fine line between bearing witness and co-opting someone else’s narrative and struggle. Because while I am a person of color, I am not black, and I do not live in a community where my life has been deemed utterly disposable. Were my partner and I to have children, I would not spend my days wondering if some police officer would imagine their cellphone was a weapon, or simply gun them down out of a blind contempt for all things black.

This disposability of blackness is not my daily reality, so I know I must take care in how I explain what I saw and experienced on those streets, amongst those brave people.

photo by Kelly Hayes

I arrived in St. Louis on Saturday. The atmosphere was much as I expected it to be, with props and banners and high spirits. There were smiles. There was laughter. There was spectacle. I was glad I walked with those people, some of whom traveled great distances just to participate in that march, before hopping back on their buses for the long trip home. I was glad I was there, but even as we marched, I thought, “This is the gentle part.” And it was.

photo by Kelly Hayes

“Mike Brown means, we’ve got to fight back!”

That night, I arrived at the scene of Mike Brown’s murder around 7:00pm. A small crowd had formed. I took photographs and talked to a few people. The scene was calm. Then, out of the relative quiet, I heard chanting, as hundreds marched up the street to the memorial. At that point, the scene became infused with an energy I can hardly describe. Despite my exhaustion and my bad back, I could only feel what was being expressed all around me: uncertainty, heartbreak, rage, and an aching need for some kind of justice. But there was something else in the air. Ferocity. These young people meant it when they chanted, “We’re young! We’re strong! We’re marching all night long!”

The crowd moved fast, and I’m not actually as young and strong as I used to be, but I had no trouble keeping up that night. The energy of the march pulled me away from myself. All I could think was, “Take pictures, tweet, get this out there.” It seemed like the one thing that I could do that was of any real value. I could bear witness, and try to show people, in real time, just how powerful these moments were.

And they were powerful.

photo by Kelly Hayes

On a residential street, a black family came to their front door with their arms raised and chanted at the crowd. The crowd chanted back. I heard a woman call out to them, “We’re still here! Remember us! Remember this!” Who could live through that moment and forget?

photo by Kelly Hayes

On Florissant, a motorcyclist spun his rear wheel until the air filled with smoke as the march approached. As we passed, he and his friends raised their hands in solidarity with the protestors.

photo by Kelly Hayes

In front of the Ferguson police station, during a moment of silence, most of the protestors sat on the ground, but one young woman stood tall with her hands up, defiant and strong.

Moments later, the entire crowd pointed at a single star in the sky, chanting Mike Brown’s name.

“Cops are killers! Cops are liars! We’re doing this for Vonderrick Myers!”

On my last night in Missouri, I attended an interfaith gathering where Cornel West was slated to speak. The evening did not go as planned. I watched as the National President of the NAACP was heckled off stage by young people, with the young woman in front of me declaring, “The NAACP is an Uncle Tom organization!” Despite a planned lineup of polished public speakers, young people eventually overtook the stage to speak their own truth.

The event captured the tone of the entire weekend. It was the struggle between “awareness raising” and rhetoric, and blunt, bold action. Tef Poe summed it up perfectly when he told the crowd, “I don’t care how it looks. This ain’t made for TV. This ain’t your daddy’s Civil Rights Movement.”

Another young man read from Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, aiming his words squarely at those who had failed to support black youth in the streets, and all I could do was nod my head and choke back tears.

I won’t speak much of the violence that was inflicted upon the protestors. Others have captured those moments quite poignantly, and I have nothing to add. On a personal level, I have always found the anticipation of violence in protest situations more trying than the violence itself. When I have been struck or abused by police, I’ve hardly had time to process what was happening. But feeling pepper spray carried through a crowd by waves of moist air, and smelling the vinegar drenched scarves that marchers wore to protect themselves, I had time to think about the violence that was looming, and that would continue to happen, again and again, in one way or another, long after I’d gone home.

If you give a damn, anticipation can be unbearable.

Watching a young man stare down police, and proclaim that he’s not afraid, and wondering what that could cost him…

Hearing someone whose loved one was killed by police say, “I know who I am, and where I come from, and that I can’t die but once…”

Late Sunday night, we gathered at Vonderrick Meyers’ memorial, where stuffed animals and candles have collected at the base of a tree. While we waited for the crowd to grow, my mind wandered to the words of Langston Hughes.

“All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.”

photo by Kelly Hayes

No one else should have to die. But watching the police pound their batons against the ground in unison, I could hear the violence pent up inside them. I knew it was entirely possible that someone in this crowd would eventually be killed by one of these cops while breaking some petty law, or traveling home from school, or in a moment of protest. Hatred needs no justification, and neither do police.

I marched into the early morning hours that night, aware that this system could one day crush any one of the black lives that surrounded me, because it was built to do so, and because we haven’t broken it yet. But even while my heart was breaking, those people who shared their streets with me stirred my hopes as few things have. Because they reminded me that fierce young people will continue to chant, and march, and name the stars. And one day, I believe they’ll win.

photo by Kelly Hayes