For Ferguson.
Ten years ago this week, we changed the world. Nearly every organization in the US today with a shred of militancy can trace either its existence or its rapid growth directly back to the lessons taught by the uprising that began with the murder of Michael Brown, Jr. in the Canfield Green apartment complex on August 9, 2014. Cori Bush, whose seat was just stolen from her by AIPAC and the Uncle Tom, Wesley Bell, was soon to begin the trajectory that resulted in her becoming the first Black woman to represent MO-1 in Congress. I had just turned 20 years old and had just started university. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of other people were going about their daily lives, both in and out of Saint Louis, not knowing that in a few days their lives would change.
My organizing and my politics developed from Ferguson. I started organizing as a direct consequence of the Ferguson uprising. I walked off my university work-study job and into a mass rally after meeting a handful of people from Philly who were staying at the church where I worked. I met people who are still friends to this day, and some who would become bitter enemies, but in that moment, we were all friends and comrades. Ferguson showed us what community looks like. OccupySLU brought the rebellion to my private Jesuit university, and many of my classmates became Communists, anarchists, and revolutionaries in general as a result of the conversations around the clock tower and in classrooms. Many people became aware of the struggle of the Palestinian people for the first time, and Twitter was full of comrades in arms from Nablus, Gaza, Bethlehem and Ramallah teaching STL how to fight tear gas and other chemical munitions. We learned how the cops all over the world are the same. American cops train in “Israel”, and the cops and soldiers of the entity train here. The solidarity between my own New Afrikan people and the Palestinian people (which goes all the way back to Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X and Huey Newton) was tempered and strengthened in the streets of STL in 2014. To this day, Black revolutionaries are the staunchest defenders of Palestine.
We learned what counterinsurgency looks like. DeRay McKesson, Al Sharpton, the Avakian cult, and others swarmed our city like vultures to a corpse, seeking support for their moribund organizations, clout, money, and opportunities to appear in front of a camera. Eventually, the foundation and federal money came, and wealthy white capitalists raised up their own counterinsurgency operatives and institutions to sate the masses’ anger and sap strength and prestige from the rebel youth. A Black highway patrolman marched in the protest. Wesley Bell was handing out college applications. Money flowed and sugar coated bullets flew. Revolutionary proletarian leaders such as Darren Seals and Edward Crawford turned up dead in mysterious circumstances. Obama fucked us over and the honeymoon of the first Black president (and all Presidents) ended in a haze of tear gas and and a hail of rubber bullets.
We learned how to use social media to build and develop people’s movements, and that the mainstream ruling class press lies. The fact that police targeted livestreamers for special brutality and arrest shows that they fear a camera and a microphone in the hands of a people’s partisan just as much as they fear a gun.
The Communist movement owes a debt to Mike Brown and his family that can never be repaid except through blood, the victory of the proletarian revolution and the defeat of this decrepit empire. Every communist under 40 undoubtedly was radicalized in major part through the rebellion. It prepared us for the (first) Trump era and the 2020 rebellions. It taught us to combat opportunism, rightism, and revisionism, and how to identify them. It taught us to reject phony peace and seek people’s peace which can only come through struggle. Thousands of new Communists were made by this struggle. We find ourselves in 2024 on the cusp of a new era of sharp struggle. Trump may be reelected, or Harris may be elected and continue the consolidation of fascism in blue. Regardless, fascism is already here. The brutal behavior of the police in Ferguson on the evening of August 9, 2024 and the thousands of people that pigs across the country have murdered since August 9, 2014 shows that they have yet to learn their lesson. As one of the first Maoist formations I came across put it back then, it won’t stop until we stop it. Regardless of what happens, the streets will call again. May they not find us wanting.
Free the Land. Make Revolution. All Power to the People. Martyrs are Immortal.
