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Laura Garcia of the Tribuno del Pueblo interviewed Beverly Jones about the meaning of the police killing of Michael Brown.
Laura Garcia: What happened the day Michael Brown was killed?
Beverly Jones: My daughter called me and said, “Ma, did you hear what happened?” And I said, “No baby.” She said, “There is this boy who just got killed and the police shot him . . . ” So with my daughter I have come out here pretty much every day.
LG: What makes you keep coming back?
BJ: I have known there has been this problem in St. Louis for a very long time. The issues are not new to me. I have been trying to be a community organizer. We’ve organized on issues of jobs, health, education, and housing. All of them stem from from a bigger problem. The element of this killing was so different. This young man was killed on a public street in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday when everybody was home. When they left him there that thing inside of us kept growing to the point where it exploded like a volcano.
LG: How do you feel about thousands of people coming to St Louis to join the protests?
BJ: It’s wonderful to see all these people. St. Louis and the killing of Mike Brown pulled the bandaid off a festering sore, not only in the St. Louis community, but across this nation. When that bandaid was ripped off, everybody rose up and said, “We are sick and tired of being sick and tired of you all oppressing us just because you can. Stop it, we don’t deserve it. I should not need to have a conversation with my children about the way you act when you see the police. Other people don’t have to raise their children like that. Why do I? My children deserve an opportunity to live and not be shot down.
LG: People expected this to die down, but it hasn’t, why?
BJ: Once a group of people commits to doing something, it’s gonna happen. And now that all eyes are on St. Louis, we cannot afford to lose the opportunity to make change.
LG: What struck me was seeing on CNN the police being totally militarized.
BJ: It’s ironic—we go all over the globe telling other people how to live. I am 51 years old. I was born and raised in St. Louis, and all of a sudden I see a military vehicle in my neighborhood. Oh my God, where am I? And so the imagery of the United States of America has been damaged.
“My children deserve to not be shot down,” says St. Louis mom
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….”My children do not deserve to be shot down.” My children deserve some CLEAR STATEMENTS ON ACTIONS required to meet their universal human needs of autonomy, celebration, meaning, community, play, spiritual communion, physical nurturance; for the uplift and benefit of themselves, and ALL OF HUMAN SOCIETY.