Overwhelming nostalgia hit today when a ‘memories’ notification popped up.
One year ago, today, at exactly this time,
Los Angeles was standing in solidarity with Ferguson , MI after the fatal shooting of 18 yr old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.
The officer was a 28-year-old white male Ferguson police officer.
On November 24, the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson in the shooting death of Brown.
Peaceful and non peaceful protests erupted nation wide.
CNN reported that thousands of people rallied to protest the grand jury's decision in more than 170 U.S. cities from Boston to Los Angeles, and that National Guard forces were reinforced at Ferguson to prevent the situation from escalating.
On Nov 24th, 2014 about 100 Angelenos gathered in front of LAPD headquarters in DTLA to stand in solidarity with Ferguson.
Emotions were high and the all around sense of frustration with police brutality both here in LA and across the nation filled the air.
This peaceful protest took to the streets to march. No less than an hour into the march, hundreds of LAPD officers began to kettle the protestors. Most of the protestors separated from the main group to rejoin infront of city hall. A small group of 30 peaceful protestors took the long way to city hall and were subsequently kettled by over a hundred police officers.
Without issuing a formal dispersal order, LAPD ended up kettleing anyone and everyone on the street. This included not only peaceful protestors, but also people coming out of work, going home and even homeless people .
Buses arrived and we were all shoved in. Hours later, we had not yet departed to the detention center and several requests of people needing to use the bathroom were ignored.
The woman next to me in the small cell within the bus, ended up urinating on herself after being denied for hours.
Once the bus finally began to move, the heavy silence of uncertainty and fear was cleared with one word, Freedom.
As we were driven through DTLA, a young black man who had been protesting began to stomp his feet rhythmically. He began softly singing " Freedom..Freedom...Freedom will show us the way. "
Others began to trickle in and the soft sung rhyme quickly turned into every person belting out at the top of their lungs a chant of courage, so much so that the sound of the officers protesting in the front of the bus were drowned out by this united voice.
Strength, courage, unity and hope for what we all believed in sent each one of us into our cells with our head held high.
Unfortunately this story does not end with a quick release and a slap on the wrist.
This first group of arrested protestors were held in the DTLA Metropolitan Detention Center for days.
We were held for days with no bail and no updates or information on our arrest.
As more and more people were arrested in the days following, the detention center was not equipped, nor prepared for holding as many people as they had coming in.
Food went from a hot gooey meal to granola bars in a matter of a day and not everyone received even a blanket.
But then something extra ordinary happened.
We organized.
Whenever a set of newly arrested people came in, we sat around the main eating table to introduce ourselves and exchange information.
We learned that there were a few activists from latinx organizations and a few from Black Lives Matter LA that were incarcerated with the first group and had lawyers working on getting us out.
We asked an officer to write down all of our names, wristband numbers and phone numbers for whoever got out first to pass along to the lawyers.
Upon the BLM activists release they organized lawyer representation for all of us and slowly we trickled out over the coming days.
It was outstanding to witness such quick and unhesitant unity and community.
Being arrested, held and denied a lawful explanation for our arrest, not only offered me a minuscule taste of the inhumanity a huge amount of people go through on a regular basis in this country, but was also witness to some of the most enlightening and inspirational moments of unity, love and courage that keep me motivated to this day.
Sadly, not much has changed since then, but those people organizing, marching, applying pressure and actively creating solutions are still out there. Bringing about real change, the kind that moves us forward as a society takes commitment and hard work. I am forever inspired by those who tirelessly get up, show up and work each day to ensure that justice prevails.
