Posted on 08/15/2015 5:28:27 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When Bree Newsome visited Ferguson to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown Jr.’s being killed, she was not going back to the source of her activism. It was actually the Trayvon Martin killing in 2012 that brought her into what is now a national movement.
But in Ferguson she was visiting the place, she said, where people really began to fight back against a newly defined common enemy.
“Trayvon Martin, that was when I got pulled in, that was when a lot of people got pulled in,” Newsome told The St. Louis American in an August 14 interview. “But Ferguson was a flashpoint moment.”
Newsome is the Charlotte, North Carolina organizer who literally climbed her way to a national platform by scaling a flagpole at the South Carolina capitol and taking down the Confederate battle flag on June 27, aided by another activist, James Tyson. She has credited Ferguson as an inspiration for her daring action.
“I spent a sleepless week watching live feeds,” Newsome said of the Ferguson unrest. “I followed people on social media. I was so inspired.”
Now she appreciates that Ferguson also inspired many other people to get more engaged and active.
“Prior to Ferguson, there was a movement, but it looked like gradualism,” Newsome said. “There was a push for reform, but I don’t remember a larger conversation about dismantling white supremacy. Ferguson tipped it more in that direction. It gave it more of a revolutionary spirit.”
Reforming the police – to many – seems very ambitious, given how entrenched and powerful the police are. But it’s a walk through the park compared to dismantling white supremacy.
“Dismantling white supremacy means changing part of the very fundamental ideology that this country was built on,” Newsome said, adding, “not a great ideology, by the way.”
Gradualism versus revolution was much discussed within the movement over the Ferguson Commemoration Weekend. Those conversations continue. Newsome said, “It’s something I am still thinking about right now” when asked about it.
“I don’t think any of it will be an overnight win, but then I could be wrong,” she said. “I could not have foreseen Ferguson.” The uprising in Ferguson, she said, accelerated the movement more than anyone foresaw.
“A lot of the movement has been reactionary – there is an event, someone is killed, there is a protest,” she said. “These are reactionary things to bring attention, to create enough disruption that the problem can no longer be ignored.”
After Ferguson, she said, the almost daily police killing of an African American routinely “makes the evening news,” so disruption is succeeding on that point; the incidents are no being ignored. But the killings continue, so the movement continues and tries to find ways to be effective.
“We realize you don’t make change just by reacting,” Newsome said. “I am seeing a pivot by the movement. We are asking: ‘What are the next steps? What proactive stance do we take to make that change? What does that look like?’”
Bree visits West Florissant
Newsome was invited to Ferguson by the Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, a frontline pastor from North St. Louis. On the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown Jr.’s death, Sekou gave her an early morning tour of Ferguson, which was the first time she saw West Florissant Avenue or the Ferguson Police Department.
“Sekou pointed out parts of the city that had been on fire,” Newsome said. “He would say, ‘This is where a helicopter was beaming a light down on me and I thought I was going to be killed. This is the McDonalds where you saw milk being poured over people’s eyes.”
On August 9, 2015, however, Ferguson looked like any other non-descript American ring suburb.
“To be in a place that looks like any other town, but to know these things happened there, the only other climate I have seen like that is Baltimore,” Newsome said. “I went to Baltimore the day after the indictments in the Freddie Gray killing, and that town had been through a whole lot at that point.”
Newsome is a local organizer in Charlotte who was thrust into the national spotlight through a daring and historic direct action. She retains very much the vibe of a local organizer and was fascinated to mingle with people on the ground in Ferguson. She experienced the routine Ferguson movement pleasures of meeting up at MoKaBe’s and dining on a People’s Brunch prepared by Mama Kat.
“It was really amazing to meet all these different people,” Newsome said. “Some I’d seen on Twitter, from a distance. Clearly it is a protest community that has sustained itself for a year now. They are truly members of a community working together among themselves. It’s not as much formal organizations there, but just the people themselves.”
Sekou invited her to speak on a panel following remarks by Dr. Cornel West at Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson on Sunday night, the night of the one-year anniversary. The Brown family asked her to speak briefly at the memorial service on Canfield Drive earlier that day. She also joined the Moral Monday march to the Department of Justice building in downtown St. Louis. But she otherwise kept a low profile while here.
“This being my first time there I wanted to be in more of a supportive role, not always in front of a camera,” Newsome said. “I also understand as a local organizer the need to be respectful of other people’s space.”
In Charlotte, she is a local, unpaid organizer with The Tribe, a member of the Charlotte Branch of the NAACP and a paid staff organizer for Ignite North Carolina, which facilitates fellowships for young organizers, ages 18-30.
In Ferguson and St. Louis, she did not want to be close enough to a direct action to get arrested while her own charges are pending. She said she has a trial date set for November 19, but has not spoken with her counsel, Todd Rutherford (who is also the House minority leader in the South Carolina state Legislature), since she first appeared before the court after her action.
“I am charged with defacing state property, but we were careful not to deface anything,” Newsome said. “There was a flag back up in 45 minutes. I highly doubt they will give me the three-year maximum, but I honestly don’t have a read on what is likely to happen.”
In the meantime, no thanks, but she does not want to come to your city and take down your local racist symbol. She already has been invited “to come take down every Confederate flag in America,” but she would prefer to let her example speak for itself.
“I really want people to look at what I did and see what they can do, in terms of direct actions,” she said. “Some people have told me that what I did inspired them. That’s amazing. I want people to emulate my action.”
Not a racist thing.......a Saul Alinsky Marxist thing. And lots of useful idiots to move the plot along
Its always fun to listen to the sanctimony of the self-impressed.
If you attack an armed man and make him think you are going to kill him, expect to be shot.
Same mistake made by both St. Skittles and St Swisher Sweets.
Pulled in = brainwashed
I supports ...#freebrie....ER...#freebie,,no make that .freebree. Much!
In a sane America, she would be under constant FBI surveillance and summoned to Washington to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities regarding her affiliations with Communist Party front organizations. But sadly, the inmates are running the asylum....
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