Road trip to resistance

ST. LOUIS — In a questionable Denny's somewhere outside of Michigan City, Ind., Crystal Gause told me she was ready to die.

We made a pit stop for a cheap lunch on our way to Ferguson. It must have been on her mind for a while; a thought like that tends to sit like oil on water.

Gause, 20, of Lansing, was among the thousands of other protesters flooding into the city for the “Weekend of Resistance,” as organizers called it. The police  shooting of another 18-year-old black man in St. Louis Oct. 8 only stoked the flames. The city prepared for a weekend of peaceful protests though Ferguson Mayor James Knowles had been telling media outlets that he worried it could turn violent.

In the two months prior, while most protests were peaceful, some police car and business windows were smashed. Police made arrests.

Three of us were heading directly into the nation’s epicenter of racial unrest; Noah, who only wanted his first name used, Gause and myself. Gause is taking a year off school at Michigan State University after studying arts and humanities and political science. Noah is an MSU grad with a degree in history education. I’m still working on finishing my philosophy undergraduate degree with journalism on the side.

The weekend offered offered a chance for the city to heal. But it also held the potential for violence.

Pinterest: "Road trip to resistance" 

“Is this really worth dying for?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, almost immediately.

She grew up in Cincinnati while the 2001 race riots were in full bloom. She grew up fearing the police.

“If this isn't, then what is?” she said.

She's fed up with racist and homophobic institutions. She's fed up with the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

She's fed up with oppression. Period.

Ferguson was her way of fighting back.

All of our parents were worried about us coming here. Gause's mother asked her to do whatever necessary to not be arrested.

The ride had felt more like a road trip to Chicago with friends before the weighty Denny’s death statement.

I had to rent the car because the others didn't have credit cards, proof of bills in their name or pay stubs on hand. None of us would call ourselves children. But I can't say we're exactly adults.

None of us knew what was going to happen. I had the tear-gas fears and they had their determination. Even the great St. Louis Gateway Arch was shrouded in cold fog when we got there.

'I keep my eyes wide open all the time'

Weekend protesters wanted Darren Wilson – the officer who fatally shot Michael Brown – to be indicted. They also wanted prosecutor Bob McCulloch to step aside. They believe he’s incapable of an impartial decision because of his family history: his mother, father, brother, uncle and cousin all worked for the St. Louis Police Department.

Beyond that, the goals of the protesters didn’t feel concrete.

At night, they chanted, “Fuck the police” and “Who shut shit down!” almost as much as they yell more directed demands like “Indict, convict, send that killer cop to jail; the whole damned system is guilty as hell!”

We pass rows of abandoned, derelict businesses that look like they've long since folded on our way to the family apartment of Mike Brown for a late-night vigil on Saturday. Metal bars cover the windows of the shops that are still open. Gause is singing snippets of that old Johnny Cash song: “I keep my eyes wide open all the time … ”

I wonder why they wanted to go to this vigil. How could they possibly identify with the death of someone they never knew, someone so seemingly far removed from their own social situation?

Especially Noah.

Gause is black. And the threat of police harassment always plagued her mind. She felt like she had to go.

But Noah, 22, is a short Jewish kid who grew up in the “boojie 'burbs of Detroit.” His parents own a steel yard. (Full disclosure: Noah and I were roommates for two years at a student co-op and I've seen Gause at a number of punk shows around Lansing.)

Could they possibly care about this on more than just a symbolic level? Or do symbols require symbolic action?

As what looks like 1,000-people march toward the Ferguson Police Department, a concerned-looking TV reporter tells the camera that the police “are nowhere to be found.”

Protesters here are fed up with racial oppression in general.

Gause and Noah placed themselves only a few feet away from the dozen or so stony-faced cops outside the police department while one of the other protesters blast NWA’s “Fuck the Police!” anthem from mobile loudspeakers.

Noah says he had no plans to back down. Even with the threat of tear gas, pepper spray and arrest, “the point of a protest isn't to show submissiveness.”

Their absence would mean two less protesters facing off with the police. It would mean disorganization if a handful left. If droves got bored and went home it wouldn't be a protest at all. So they stood.

It was an act of defiance and frustration.

A shift in consciousness

I spent most of the next day writing in an overpriced St. Louis coffee shop while the others went to more demonstrations. When we met up again for scheduled speeches inside Chaifetz Arena, Cornell William Brooks, president of the NAACP, was giving a fiery delivery about what the “selfie of social justice” might look like.

But the crowd rebelled.

Someone shouted for Brooks to “go to Canfield with that!” And moments later, they chanted for the locals, who’ve lived through tear gas and rubber bullets, to get the mic.

Teff Poe, a local musician and activist who was scheduled to speak criticized those who only show up to stand on a podium in front of microphones and cameras.

“People who want to take the time to break down racism on a philosophical level – y'all do not show up” in the streets for protests and marches, he said. “I can't stay home for this. They killin’ us, literally.”

The crowd and Noah and Gause are floored by the wild turn of events. I’m even moved.

I didn’t know whether to be a reporter or part of the story any more. Hell. I rented a car to transport two activists nearly 500 miles from Michigan to Missouri. You can hardly call that “impartial.”

They tell me I shouldn’t come if I’m “uncomfortable.” But I’m wondering how long does pepper spray burns.

Outside of the convenience store where Brown was shot, I tell Gause, “Tonight, I’m not a reporter.”

After the speeches more than 500 spilled from the arena taking to the streets for hours of marches – to the neighborhood where Michael Brown was killed, the Grove neighborhood and the St. Louis University campus. They spent the hours playing games, jumping rope, playing music and chanting, “join us!”

“My son was loved, and he's still being loved right now as we all come together,” said Vonderrit Myers Sr. when we stopped at a university clock tower. He’s the father of Myers Jr., who died last week in St. Louis.

“For all the young students, that's out here with us, God bless you guys. This is a pleasure to me; you make my heart easy,” he says.

And I began to feel the full force of the weekend; though I’m not yet sure just what it means.

Something compelled me to join them. Maybe it was the power of the crowd. Maybe it was shared indignation. Maybe it was the fact that Ferguson feels like it could be the beginning of something tremendous, in a world where white privilege and racial stigma come to define who we are.

There is no middle ground, I realize. Objectivity isn’t the absence of perspective; it’s the perspective of the status quo. 

But I still didn’t understand Gause’s steely determination.

On Monday I walked onto the balcony where we were staying to share a cigarette and hear her last-minute reflections. My deadline was rearing its ugly head.

I ask her what she’s going to tell her friends about this weekend, when they ask. 

She paused. Her cigarette had gone out. 

“Every action that we take, no matter how small, could be used to either uplift or oppress someone.”

I remind her that she told me she was ready to die just a couple days ago.

“Yeah,” she said.

“What is it you were thinking of when you said that?” I asked.

“Progress,” she said.

And before I could hear more, Noah walked onto the balcony to tell her it was time to go to the next demonstration. He had a massive banner strapped around his chest under his coat. Gause handed me her cigarette butt and made for the door.

“I guess I wanted to understand what it was that you meant when you said it was worth dying for?” I said.

As she turned to leave, she said, “This feels bigger than my life, I guess.” .