(en) US, First of May Anarchist Alliance - A Brief Visit to Ferguson, MO by an M1 Chicago Member

On Tuesday, August 19, my wife and I decided (more or less spontaneously) to drive down to 
Ferguson from Chicago. As politically engaged people in general, and as white people 
parenting a black son in particular, we were both enraged by the murder of Michael Brown 
and inspired by the continuing struggles of the people of Ferguson. ---- We wanted to see 
with our own eyes what was really going on and to act as witnesses to a historical moment 
of repression and resistance. The goal, to the extent that we had one, was educational, 
for us, for our children, and for our friends and comrades unable to be there in person. 
Apart from what we had read on the internet, we had two other sources of on-the-ground 
information: I had been in touch that day with an older revolutionary already in Ferguson, 
while my wife had touched base with a younger friend/comrade who had been in Ferguson 
earlier doing legal observing and trainings. Both of them told us to be careful, but 
encouraged us to go.

We didn?t get on the road until about 1pm so we arrived at what people have been calling 
?ground zero? (the intersection of W. Florissant and Ferguson Road) around 6pm. Not 
knowing exactly what to expect in terms of either crowd or police behavior, we parked a 
couple blocks away and walked in, carrying supplies for ourselves and a 32 pack of water 
bottles to share with people in the crowd, which we successfully distributed within 
minutes of arrival. Whatever else people ?on the ground? want or need, water is always 
appreciated.

Apart from one person who yelled at us to go home, every other person we met in the course 
of three hours walking along Florissant welcomed us, although several repeated the 
injunction to be careful, and a few checked just to make sure we had contingency plans in 
place in case things got crazy (we did). It was clear from the moment we arrived to the 
moment we left that the only hostile and dangerous element of being there was the police 
presence.

If I could summarize the experience of being on that street on Tuesday evening in a single 
phrase, it would be ?diversity of tactics.? For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it gained 
currency in the run-up to protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in 
Quebec City in 2001, when local anarchists and their supporters tried to bridge the 
growing tactical disagreement within the then-vibrant 
anti-globalization/globalization-from-below movement around questions of ?peaceful? and 
?militant? protest. While many of us on the ?militant? side of the debate back then found 
the concept of agreeing to disagree about protest tactics to be appealing, it was not 
generally welcomed by a lot of the more mainstream protesters and especially 
organizational participants like unions, etc. So, at least at its inception, diversity of 
tactics remained more a theory than a practical reality.

By contrast, our brief visit to Ferguson seemed to me to reflect a lived reality of 
diversity of tactics. This is not to say that everyone simply agreed to disagree; the 
reports of sharp disputes among the crowd about things like fighting the cops, prayer as 
the solution to everything, legality and illegality, etc. ? all were quite clearly in 
evidence when we were there. But they played out in meaningful debates among participants 
in a common struggle, rather than angry or condescending refusals to engage with the other 
side. For instance, I watched a fascinating encounter between two older (60-ish) black 
men. One, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, approached the other, dressed in a clergy?s 
collar, and asked if he thought prayer was the solution. The clergy responded that he did, 
and the guy in the t-shirt then tried to convince him that he was wrong, and that if 
people didn?t fight back they would end up beaten down even more. ?If this [the 
looting/street fighting] hadn?t have happened,? he asked, ?would the world have took 
notice of what was happening here??

Neither of these guys seemed like they were interested in fighting the cops themselves, 
but both were openly discussing the pros and cons of the tactic, in the middle of a fairly 
crowded sidewalk where dozens of similar discussions were happening all around them. 
Watching them, I suddenly thought of the Ken Loach movie Land and Freedom, which has an 
amazing scene of Spanish peasants arguing about the proper approach to collectivization 
during the Civil War. (There is also a similar scene in his movie The Wind That Shakes the 
Barley, about the tactical and strategic orientation of the Irish independence struggle.) 
The idea that people?s collective consciousness shifts rapidly in the course of intense 
struggle can sometimes seem abstract, but here it was on full display for anyone to see.


There has been a lot of discussion about ?outside agitators,? and I think the recent 
Crimethinc. piece was really very, very good on the topic. What struck me most while we 
were there was the fact that almost everyone that I pegged as a likely supporter of and/or 
participant in street fighting, either based on the equipment they had with them or the 
inflammatory slogans on their signs or shirts, was black. I saw a fair number of white 
folks there, but the vast majority appeared to be reporters. Granted, we left just after 
dusk (around 9pm) as the demographics of the crowd were clearly shifting ? families with 
kids leaving, more young people arriving ? but white militants were in short supply while 
we were there. And believe me, I was looking.

Several visual images of the protest were really striking: people with slogans on t-shirts,
some hand drawn, some left over from earlier struggles, but many crisp and new with 
professionally printed pictures and slogans on them. Perhaps my favorite was ?Ferguson Fux 
Yo Curfew? with the now widely disseminated photo of a guy in an American flag shirt 
throwing what appears to be a Molotov or else a tear gas cannister, which seems to have 
been taken on one of the earlier nights of the protests. There were also lots of hand-made 
protest signs, but significantly there were no pre-printed or organizationally sponsored 
signs at all (in contrast to the professionally printed t-shirts, none of which indicated 
any organizational affiliation). There was a table set up by some unnamed local group that 
handed out free pizza, chicken wings, and water to protesters until they ran out of 
supplies around 8:30.

Of course the presence of the police was also striking visually, which is exactly what 
they want. I haven?t been to a major street protest of any size since Quebec City, and the 
difference in the appearance of the police was astonishing up close, even though I knew 
all about it in the abstract. The body armor, the automatic rifles, the armored vehicles 
with snipers on top, the whole thing was designed to terrorize. I won?t focus more on this 
here, partly because it?s been dealt with very well by others but also because ? at least 
by day ten or whatever it was when we arrived ? the terror function was no longer 
successfully served. People were incredibly angry and very careful about not getting 
arrested, but no one seemed scared. The cops never talked to anyone other than other cops 
(apart from our brief viewing of Captain Johnson?s daily walking press tour, and the one 
arrest we witnessed). They clearly knew they were there as an occupying army and they 
acted accordingly. I?ve seen reports of locals chit-chatting with the police, but we 
didn?t see any of that at all.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the experience of being there with kids. My wife 
and I felt strongly that our kids would benefit from seeing this intense sort of 
repression and resistance up close. I have never before taken my children to a protest or 
action where there was a clear risk of arrest or injury, and we took a lot of time in the 
car on the way down to plot out contingency plans and how to deal with the kids in 
particular. It turns out we arrived on what was subsequently described as one of the 
calmest evenings ? no tear-gas for the first time in a week ? but we were at least 
reasonably well prepared to escape quickly if we needed to. What we didn?t necessarily 
expect was that lots of local families were out there as well, with kids in pretty much 
the same age range as our three (9 years old, 7 years old, and 20 months old). We did talk 
with some moms of older children (11-15 years old) who told us they left their kids at 
home, but the family friendly vibe was clear. At least this was true until about 8:30, 
when the tone began to shift and we decided to get ourselves organized to leave. When we 
left around 9pm, I didn?t see any other little kids there at all.

Both before and after our brief visit, we talked a fair bit about our role in Ferguson. We 
weren?t there to fight the cops, we didn?t have much material aid to offer other than 
water, and we weren?t sticking around for the long-run. I have basically no use for the 
sorts of privilege-baiting that is implicit in ?white people stay home? arguments, but we 
did want to be clear about why we were there. At one point I got interviewed by a stringer 
from a major national news outlet. While the final article got the details mangled ? it 
identified our adopted son as our oldest child at 21 years, when in fact he?s the youngest 
at not-quite 21 months ? it did summarize our reasons for being there: 1) we (like people 
all over the world) are angry about the murder of Michael Brown, and 2) we (like people 
all over the world) are inspired by the struggle of the people of Ferguson against police 
brutality and white supremacy. Notably, that seemed to be perfectly sufficient for pretty 
much everyone we talked with while we were there. If I could summarize our reasons for 
being there in one word it would be ?solidarity.? A very small effort, but one we won?t 
soon forget.

embedded links:

The Crimethinc. piece: http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/r/agitators/index.html

The collectivization debate sequence from Land and Freedom: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzDufrLSMmo

And the scene from Wind that Shakes the Barley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z_z6lSgB_8