52What was it about Michael Brown?^1
It was this moment of me being like, I can’t say that I value kids andwould
do anything for young people and I’m unwilling to at least go to stand insolidar-
ity with people for a weekend. They killed a teenager.
With the benefit of hindsight, do you think something like Black LivesMat-
ter was inevitable?
Nothing about it was predictable. In hindsight, we know that thepolice
violence the region faces, especially at the time, was unlike any otherinthe
country. So if it was started anywhere, it makes sense it started there.But
hindsight has also helped me understand that people actually justdon’t
believe in poor black people. So what you saw emerge was this idea—three
people must have started a movement.^2 It couldn’t possibly be this incredible
network of black people who did it without hierarchy, without havingstudied
organizing, without having read everything.
Do you consider BLM a success?
There’s still so much room for things to change, but undeniably theprotest
changed the conversation about racial justice in the country. If youthink
about the rise in black media, you think about what it sent to Hollywood—this
is a direct result of the protests in St. Louis and how they influencedthe
spread across the country. That’s huge. With the police, it’s sort of mixed.The
police have actually killed more people since the protest. That is nota success.
I think we know more about how that happens now and why the policeare
protected. And that is a good thing.
What were the movement’s mistakes?
Those of us who were there had no clue that the protests had resonatedso
deeply with so many people across the country. But I think there werea lotof
people in the nonprofit space that understood it really well, and theyunder-
stood that this could be a cash cow. I remember when they came toSt.Louis
and had this convening. We walked in the room, and it was literallylike,“If
you need money, just ask us, and we will find money for you.” I just sawit tear
away at this really interesting fabric we had woven together. Not thatevery-
body loved each other, because we certainly didn’t, but we hadn’t beenfighting
about money. Suddenly, the money conversation became the conversation.
That became the overriding fault line. If there’s anything I wouldhave
changed, I wish that we had all been a little more thoughtful aboutthat.
I’ve heard the argument that there is a direct line from BLM toDonald
Trump’s election, especially to the law-and-order theme of the Republican
National Convention that summer, which doesn’t really work withoutthe
image of black people protesting at the forefront of people’s minds.
I thi s th m the asteetering
for pe 014 er a ge peoplewho,
either their hope was challenged to the point that it was going to behardto
rebuild, or they just were like, “Wow, I just didn’t know that the countrywasF
ew american social movements shaped the 2010s
as definitively as Black Lives Matter, and few of its activ-
ists have proved to be as galvanizing—and controver-
sial—as DeRay Mckesson. The then-29-year-old school
administrator drove from Minneapolis to Missouri in
August 2014 to join the protests against the police killing
of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, intheSt.
Louis suburb of Ferguson. He quickly becameoneof
BLM’s best-known voices, playing a key role in updating
the rest of the country about what was happeningonthe
ground, all while being teargassed and houndedbylocal
law enforcement. But with the attention came criticism:Mckes-
son was dismissed as an unaccountable showboat by somefellow
activists and cast as “public enemy No. 1” by BLM’s detractorsin
government, right-wing media, and the police. When thoseforces
rode into the White House in 2016, Mckesson’s warningsabout
th eir power and cruelty seemed all the more prescient.DeRayMckesson