According to the website Killed by Police, law enforcement officers have sent over a thousand people to early graves so far this year. The overwhelming majority of those killed were young black men. As each killing was reported, members of Support the Dream Defenders group joined in the community mourning for those gone too soon, and added our voices to the chorus of condemnation for a system that remained unresponsive to our concerns. We railed at a culture that seemed to place little or no value on human life in general, and even less on the black life in particular. We cried along with heartbroken mothers, and we howled with despair at our helplessness.
And then Darren Wilson decided that he would kill Michael Brown because he could.
Police murdered an unarmed boy and left his body lying in the street unattended for over four hours and something shifted in our collective consciousness. Enough was enough! We had to act, and we did.
In times of uncertainty and turmoil in the past, Americans have fought back in four principal ways: at the ballot box, by long-term populist appeals, with protests, and through legal action.Come take this leap of faith over the Great Orange Divider with us.