Several weekend events saw a parade on Saturday led by Michael Brown Sr., starting at the memorial on Canfield Drive in Ferguson that marks the site where Brown was fatally shot.
Pausing along the route at a permanent memorial for his son, Michael Brown Sr. said, “Miss you”.
His death led to a wave of protests and riots that rippled out from the St Louis suburb across the US.
A plaque featuring a metallic dove has been installed on the sidewalk a few feet from the spot where Brown died, and the street where his blood pooled has been repaved.
“It makes me sick to think what happened”, she said, “I looked it like it could have been my sons or grandsons”. “I have to stay moving and going just to keep me from going insane”.
Several weekend events are planned to commemorate the first anniversary of Brown’s death. As peaceful protests continued into the next week, Democracy Now!
Although the protests were largely subdued during the day, they picked up after dark as hundreds marched outside Ferguson’s police department on Saturday night, mocking the handful of officers who stood watch.
The unity that broke out among disparate local groups in the days following his son’s death should be recaptured, Brown said. “We have to work together in order to improve things in this community”. “Every set that was out here, everybody who had problems with anybody – it squashed all of that”. We’ve pled five or six counts to kind of categorize the actions that we said took place on that day. “They are getting their message out”. And if Officer Wilson was injured in a physical struggle, why wouldn’t police show his injuries right away?
“My strength is in my beard”, Brown Sr.
During the march Saturday, police officers followed the protesters in patrol cars and handed out water bottles and popsicles as temperatures reached the low 90s.
The scenes of protests marked by periods of violence that played out in Ferguson last August and again in November when a grand jury found Wilson had broken no laws in shooting Michael Brown were repeated in cities including New York and Baltimore following similar killings of unarmed black men by white officers.
Seals believes, “Nothing’s changed for the positive”.
Michael Brown’s family has already urged peace, but with a protest movement that is clearly splintered, the Brown family is no longer its sole voice. I felt a need for people to get involved. Wilson was acquitted for the killing by a grand jury on November 25.
Racism has remained alarmingly pervasive in U.S. society even though the country is now run by its first black president.
For me, Ferguson underlines this: That the argument over policing in America remains an incredibly polarizing and explosive issue with no easy answers.
Now, one year since the shooting, Ferguson’s new interim police chief is black, the interim city manager is black and half the city council is black. “We are making change”, The mayor, Ashby said, is helping usher in that change. “That would be equivalent to the loss the parents sustained”, he said. “It don’t matter about no money, or winning no case, and none of that”. To avoid conflict, Wilson said when the family dines out, they go to businesses frequented by “like-minded individuals” and restaurants that “aren’t a mixing-pot”.