
Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I was at home and remember scrolling social media when I saw Mike Brown’s stepdad’s sign that said ‘Ferguson Police Just Executed My Unarmed Son.’ I thought, ‘What is this?’ and started seeing people’s reactions. I’m a native of St. Louis, born and raised. I grew up in Ferguson. My mother still lives there. So this whole thing, for a lot of people who grew up in that area, resonated even more for us.
Even though I’d done work in different movement spaces and was solidified in my pro-Blackness, Mike Brown Jr.’s killing turned that up even more. I thought, ‘What does it mean to be Black? To be a Black woman? To be a Black queer woman?’ All these intersections. And it was also challenging to think about white folks I had grown up with, gone to school with, and played sports with, because their response was very different from mine.
The initial day, I didn’t go out. I had plenty of friends though who did go down to where Mike’s body was. The second day is when I went out. Some things are so vivid in my mind and some are such a blur. Looking back now, it was surreal. We were just responding to things in that moment. Nobody knew what this event was gonna turn into. Some looked at it like it was a moment, not a movement. Like, that wasn’t gonna activate something. Plus, there were a lot of folks — I was one of them — still feeling feelings around Trayvon Martin being killed and there’s no disconnect. All of this work is a continuum of us doing liberation work.”


Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“My mother was the person who introduced me to movement work, using my voice, and advocating for myself. She always teases me that I’m her ‘militant child.’ I’m her only child, by the way. But actually, my first protest was with her. She was a Saint Louis Public Schools teacher and took me to a picket line when all the teachers went on strike for higher wages and more prep time. Mom taught, was a shop steward for every school she worked at and was in the union with the American Federation of Teachers Local 420. She used to take me to union meetings, too. I remember when she’d call off of work with her fellow teachers and they’d call this person who’d call that person. I’d ask her so many questions about it, so she was already exposing me to so many different things. We’d talk about Black history and movements. And at a young age, I had a lot of curiosity about civil rights, the Black Panther Party, and anything where people were working toward freedom. As I got older, I got into Black electoral work, petition gathering, and petition blocking. Then I really jumped in when Occupy Wall Street hit. The first social justice work I ever got into as a paid organizer was economic justice work.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I’ve never liked police. My mom and I would have exchanges a lot of times because of my experiences with the police and I thought they had a God complex. Growing up in Ferguson, my friends and I joked about not driving in particular areas at night. We’d say, ‘I’m not coming to your crib. I might get pulled over.’ I had friends who consistently got pulled over on their way to my place. That was just what it was. But after Mike was killed, my homeboys would be talking about experiences they all had with police on their way home from school and that was something I knew nothing about. Still, all of this was nothing new. It was something we lived with. And, as kids, we didn’t have the capacity to even know how to speak to it, speak out about it, or say, ‘This is wrong.’ We just lived with it. Fast-forward, we spoke up to say, ‘This has never been okay.’ We started thinking about police in our communities and the history around policing. I started digging into those topics a lot more, having conversations, and paying attention to the response.
I remember during that time there were a lot of conversations and debates about getting individuals to see the humanity in Black people; to see the humanity in Mike Brown Jr. There was a period early on in the uprising when I was going hard on that. And then I got to a point where I didn’t want to anymore. I didn’t have the capacity or time. It was flat-out stupid to have to defend someone’s humanity and how, even if he did something wrong, for this young man to be in the street, laid out, in this community, like that. Of course, people connected it to a modern-day lynching and what that means. And all of that is stuff I wrestled with and worked through. I remember driving over to West Florissant to hang out with friends when I was a teen. So to see tanks and tear gas in this community was wild. My mind could not grasp it as I looked at all the streets and houses I frequented when I was younger. That was a lot to hold. That was a lot to process. And a lot we went through as individuals and collectives.”


Courtesy of Kristian Blackmon

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“The following year after the uprising started, I got into work as an organizer as a career. I started at Missouri Jobs With Justice. Just like my mother, I was doing work around workers, worker’s rights, and unions. I was speaking to people to fight for living wages, fair wages; speaking to folks who needed healthcare, Medicaid expansion, and things like that. I’d been doing work in my church, too, and that was pivotal not just in who I am but around my activism and how it helped me stay grounded. I grew up in church, but not having a church I felt safe and comfortable in as a Black queer woman, I wasn’t in church anymore.
When I started visiting St. John’s, I heard Reverend Starsky Wilson preaching and he was very charismatic. It was the community that drew me in, too, because it’s such a welcoming space. So I continued to visit. But what led me to join was one Palm Sunday when we did a march to a payday loan company on Grand. Around that same time, I had been working on predatory lending and capping the interest rate on payday loans. To be in a space and with a community of faith speaking to issues like that, I had never had that type of experience.
To tie it back to the uprising, St. John’s was one of THE churches and Reverend Starsky was one of THE faith leaders active in the movement. The church became a place for many to come to and have fellowship in. When the Freedom Riders came into town, St. John’s was the church that hosted them. That was especially pivotal to me because they included a lot of folks who had grown up or been in the church but were no longer a part for various reasons. They may have been Black and radical, queer, or trans, and they were comfortable there. Us extending the invite to come to services and many of them worshiping with us, recommitting to their faith, and reconnecting with God was powerful for me. Witnessing that was helping me navigate everything happening at that time, too.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“At Missouri Jobs With Justice, one of the first campaigns I worked on was to raise the minimum wage in the City of St. Louis — and we won. Over 30,000 St. Louisans got an increase in their wages. And then the State of Missouri preempted us from raising the minimum wage. I was like, ‘What the…?’ So it showed me just how quickly we have to fight one fight after another and how sometimes you don’t have long to celebrate a win before you’re fighting for something else.
The economic justice work I was doing then and during the uprising developed me even more. It had me thinking about how I wanted to show up in the world, what I cared about, what I didn’t care about, how much harder I wanted to go in this work, and how much more I was thinking about humanity and what it means to fight oppression and these systems all the while navigating my own values. How do I speak up? When do I speak up?”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
Content Warning: Suicide attempt
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“I grew up very shy, so to come from the time I was a child to where I am now as an organizer, activist, and art curator, was not what I thought the trajectory would be. In this life I’m living, I didn’t even think I’d have the balls to speak to things in a way that’s unflinching and unapologetic. For me, what was bigger than getting over any fear of what people would think, or if I would disrupt my relationships, was getting towards liberating our community and our people. That’s the big value. I’m called to this. If you had a choice, you probably wouldn’t choose to do grassroots social justice work and be in these spaces. It’s heavy on your spirit, body, and mind. The sense of hopelessness can be disheartening. Even with community, it can be isolating when friends and family don’t necessarily understand why you’re so hard, so angry, so serious, so fixated on these important issues. Granted, I’m saying this as someone who recognizes how you have to find joy and happiness in all of the things, but learning how to balance.
There was a period where I was going, going, going: going out on the streets, going to a protest, speaking to this and that. As I’ve gotten older, I’m reevaluating what’s important to me. The unapologetic, unflinching — that is absolutely me. I’m gonna speak to things and show up fighting for liberation. I also had to realize the balance that needs to happen to sustain myself in this work and in life. I had a suicide attempt in 2019, and part of the heaviness of what I was feeling was tied to my work: ‘Am I doing enough? Am I showing up enough? Am I doing this right?’ This shit is heavy. There’s a hopelessness and isolation in it. With the current climate of the world and this country, there has to be something better, something different. And at that time, something bubbling up for me was that I just wanted to feel something different. I was in a low vibrational, dark, depressive state even though I was actively doing stuff. When I finally spoke publicly about my attempt, everybody was like, ‘I never would have thought that. You’re so strong and resilient and funny.’ I know they meant well with their responses. But the, ‘You’re a leader, we need you,’ added to already feeling like I couldn’t not show up. I was someone people looked to.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I started making personal work around Black women and girls. One of the first projects I did was called ‘Invisible No More,’ which spoke to Black women and girls going missing. Social media wasn’t what it is now. I heard of Phoenix Coldon missing and when her mother talked about how hard it was to get media coverage, I thought about who does get coverage. I was paying attention to Anna Brown, too, an unhoused mother who went to the hospital complaining about leg cramps, providers said they didn’t see anything, they discharged her, she refused to leave, they arrested her, and she ended up dying in a jail cell 20 minutes later of blood clots that passed from her legs to her lungs. I talk about a lot of stuff but also want to take action. And that’s how I got into art curation. I wanted to address stories like these and do it creatively, through art and poetry. These both had me thinking, ‘Who speaks for Black women and girls in these instances or with state-sanctioned and communal violence?’
Through Mike Brown Jr.’s murder, the uprising, seeing so much more Black death and state-sanctioned violence and how that impacts my psyche and spirit, I was always still in the work. But my curation and art-based work balances out and tips the scale for me, too. In this way, I’m able to create. And that’s brought me peace and joy. Even when it’s stressful to get a show together, what comes from it is something that is mine. It’s a concept or theme I’ve made. I dictate what it looks and feels like. I set the vibe and the tone. It’s something that’s come out of my spirit, my mind, and my heart. Putting it together makes me feel good and it’s solely mine.”
“What does it mean to be imaginative about what we create? If we can create things that are fiction, imagine how we actually create something in the real world. Imagine if everyone has access to healthcare. Imagine if everyone has access to housing. Things that are basic shit to me, but that’s not the world we live in. If we do it and the outcome isn’t doom, gloom, trauma, and death, what does it look like to challenge some people to maybe even do some work around, ‘What would that mean?’ For me, if I’m creating something and speaking to an issue, I’m also looking at, where is the hope? Because what sustains us artists and activists is the vision of what we want the world to be.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“To think about each time the anniversary of Mike Brown comes, there have been years when I reflected, I spoke about it, I went back to look at pictures and old posts. And there have been years when I didn’t want to think about it all. I didn’t want to reflect on everything around it in any way. There have been times I thought about who I’ve connected with and who’s become friends and family. I thought about relationships I had with people and now we’re not cool for whatever reason. And, of course, think about, what’s been my contribution, where it is currently, and where I want it to go. I challenge myself and how I show up because so many people from so many walks of life have come to Ferguson to do work here. They’ve done it with the best intentions and there have been some who have done it with the most ill intentions. There are those who did it to clout chase and did it with ego and those who were selfless. There are those whose names we know and those we don’t. Some people aren’t physically here with us anymore. All of these things I reflect on, especially as we experience 10 years of this. I can’t believe it’s been that long and sometimes it seems even longer.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“A lot of times, people say they get softer as they get older. I feel like the opposite. Everything around the Ferguson Uprising radicalized me even more. I’m for less bullshit. I want to use my voice and speak to things to push for our people to get free while also recognizing I don’t always have to be or want to be the person leading. As I get older, I think of how I can be supportive to help build leaders who can carry on this stuff. Because, honestly, — not knocking anybody, ’cause there’s a lot of them from the Mama Jamalas to the Percy Greens who have been in this work — but, I don’t want to be in my 50s, 60s, and 70s doing this. I joke, but I want to find an island where I am off the grid and disconnected from all of this. I want to live the later part of my life by the water being at peace. And I want to pivot out of grassroots organizing to dig more into my art, curation, and creativity. Art should speak to the times. I’ve done so many shows and exhibitions speaking to political issues and lifting up Black culture. If I’m not in the mood to be so in the streets, I’m still able to show where I stand and how I feel. Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at with everything.”

Courtesy of Kristian Blackmon

Courtesy of Kristian Blackmon
Courtesy of Kristian Blackmon

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝐹𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑛, 𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒?
“It was a neighborhood to grow up in. My mom and dad moved to Ferguson when I was young. I was my mother’s only child and my father’s youngest. I was a typical kid. My mom said I was busy always getting into stuff. So I was put into dance, I played the violin, I was into softball and basketball, and then I got into choir. I was a Brownie. I was in Girl Scouts. My mom was like, ‘This girl HAS to be in something,’ which makes sense now as an adult because I do a lot of things. I like to think I was a pretty happy kid. I was shy. I would not want to speak in certain spaces. Even with friends, I was timid with my thoughts and not offering up my opinions. I always loved to dance, but at school dances, I wouldn’t do it. So, elementary school — cool. Middle school, when I got braces — absolutely hated it. I didn’t start to come out of my shyness until my freshman year of high school when I got them removed. Coming out of my shell, I was prom queen. People don’t believe it until I show them the picture. At first, I was gonna run for homecoming queen, but a good friend said she was running, so I didn’t. Then she didn’t end up running and another one of our friends won. So I ran for prom queen by myself, but one of my guy friends running for prom king said, ‘We should run together.’ So we did. And we won. I have the tiara to prove it.”

Courtesy of Kristian Blackmon

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“A memory that’s stayed with me of one of my first experiences with bigotry was at the Ferguson Fourth of July parade. My mom and I were watching, there was a lady giving out candy, and she gave it out to every kid but me. I was the only Black child there. And she literally, gave one of the kids next to me a candy, looked me in my face and skipped me, and gave the next kid a candy. That never left my mind. I just remember thinking, ‘Why would she do that? We made eye contact.’ At that point, I was amongst so many different walks of life and played with kids from all over. And I learned how you should just treat people. Period. My dad was friends with and befriended so many folks across class, gender, race, ethnicity. I think that rubbed off on me as well. He only completed 10th grade. And he passed when I was 24. As I get older, my mom tells me, ‘There’s so much of your dad in you now. Something I also got from my father is that he always spoke his mind. He was extremely unapologetic about who he was. I never saw him intimidated by anybody. He could be in a room with the richest person and be able to engage, interact, and be himself. He knew how to command a room. He knew what to say. And he could just float through spaces. To look back at it now, that is such a beautiful quality.”

Courtesy of Kristian Blackmon

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“There’s something about being acknowledged for the work you do, and since my suicide attempt, I’ve gotten awarded, I’ve done a shit-ton more work, and, during the pandemic, I pivoted to doing housing justice and advocacy work. I’m currently the executive director of Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis, formerly known as Homes for All St. Louis. We have a hotline folks can call with any questions or issues — a landlord not fixing a leak, or needing help reading a lease, or relating to an eviction. We’ve helped people form tenant unions and associations. We’ve gotten involved in housing policy and legislation. We do work around utilities and energy burdens. Ameren and Spire have proposed consumer increases, so we speak to that considering folks are facing housing instability and increasing rent. We speak to how mold, pests, and sewage in basements impact health, too.
I love all social justice work, but by far housing has been the hardest work I’ve done. Working with tenants, the fear for them is the retaliation that might come if they speak out because we’re literally talking about their homes. So to get folks to want to organize, talk to their neighbors, or become a leader is often difficult. And having to fight back against counter-narratives, like, ‘This is the housing I deserve because of my education level.’ Or, ‘I’m a single mother.’ Or, ‘I’m an ex-felon.’Or, ‘I’m trans.’ Nobody should live in a house with infestations, heat or air not working, or holes in the walls. Whatever the case may be, everyone deserves equitable, affordable, safe housing they feel good about. Housing is a basic human right everyone should have. And there’s power in your voice when you speak up about these things.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑇𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑡 𝑎 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡 10 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠?
“Ya know, I try not to judge. But sometimes it’s like, damn. Not everybody is a protestor or an organizer or an activist. I get that not everybody’s gonna be in the streets. And I say that while I know people are like, ‘That’s not my jam, but I show support in other ways. I’ll cook some food for y’all. I’ll provide a healing space for you. I’ll at least talk to someone in my family about what’s going on.’ There are a lot of levels to it, right? But to do nothing…? Especially when we’re in such unprecedented times. To be so disconnected to what’s happening in the city, the state, the country, and the world — I find it infuriating. It’s disappointing that there are people who don’t want to take the time to even learn or read up on something. It goes back to seeing the humanity in somebody else. Something you think isn’t directly impacting you, probably is. Whether it’s your tax dollars going to fund genocide or committing violence on particular communities of people, violence impacts us all. It affects our kids.
It’s so easy right now to just not give a fuck about someone else’s humanity. Or, to comment on social media, make your opinions, and go on about your fuckin’ day. I get that you’re not called to do what I’ve done, but at the bare minimum, at least take the opportunity to learn, educate, and maybe even teach someone else. If you’re not the most impacted, what do you do? Especially, with white folks, what does it look like to have conversations with your friends and family who you know sit with -isms and phobias? Starting there helps you be able to do more. Sometimes that’s more challenging than yelling at a stranger. There’s something about your mom or dad or cousin or uncle who sits in hate and bigotry. And I know sometimes you can’t change hearts and minds. That’s why I’m gonna put it out there and keep on pushing. At the same time, I’ve had conversations with folks I love and care for. Some are in their headspace and I have to let them be. Some I continue to have dialogue with. And for others, they’ve said as a result, ‘I didn’t even see things that way,’ and things shifted.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“I think about leaving St. Louis at some point and then leaving the country. If I do no more work here, I will be okay with that. I’m grateful to have been able to do work here, across the State, and in some other places, too. But what’s kept me here is that I do love this city. We are a one-out-of-one city. We have a deeply rich history around movement and art. The Ferguson Uprising put a little bit more fire under the ashes. It set people up for how we are going to respond to this shit. Because once that happened, so much that happened in other cities and people responded. I like to think that’s how we responded here August 9th, 2014. People said, ‘Naw, shit is not okay.’ Look how this city showed up. Look how long people were outside. Most importantly, look at how people saw how we responded to Mike Brown’s death. They wanted to be in the streets, too.
A lot of people came to Ferguson during the uprising and have never come back. People who have gotten fame and fortune never poured back into the city. Or if they did come back, it was only around August 9th. It’s all important to highlight and can never be ignored. And, unfortunately, there are some people who were active in the movement and paid heavy prices with their lives. Josh Williams is still in prison. We lost Bassem Masri. We lost Darren Seals. We lost so many others that I did not name. But of the people who responded to when Mike Brown Jr. was killed, how did it impact their mental health? How did it impact folks who got arrested and had charges? As we’re thinking about this 10-year mark, think about the cost for some. We were just showing up. Line up 10 people from that time and they’re all gonna have a different experience of what they saw, smelled, and heard.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝐴𝑢𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑡 9𝑡ℎ, 2014, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑠?
“This is just a continuum, because there are things we’re still fighting for. But, the Workhouse has closed, reports have been made, systems have been forced to do things differently. We’ve seen shifts and changes in the political realm. People who came out of the movement moved into politics. We see movement-adjacent individuals getting into spaces that have to be called out, as exhausting and tiring as that can be. The school-to-prison pipeline has been called out and how we look at security and policing in schools and how we criminalize youth has been addressed. How we respond to mental health crises and things that don’t require police, too. People are having conversations about reenvisioning public safety, what it really looks like, and what we need. And, of course, challenging the funding of policing and what we should do with the money that’s more beneficial, innovative, and transformative. As someone who isn’t a reformist, who believes in transformation, because systems were created to oppress and bound people, let’s talk about how to completely dismantle and rebuild. I am someone who still wants to see more.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
“There have been a couple of times I’ve been in front of elected officials and have had to look them directly in their face and not flinch but penetrate them in some way. I’m never afraid, but it is a thing when I am about to be called in front of people with power. And I need to get them to see the seriousness of everything, what’s at stake, and call them out on it.”

Photo credit: Lindy Drew / Humans of St. Louis
𝑀𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢?
“When I think of unflinching progress, it’s continuing to speak to what’s happening, working to offer solutions, and making sure community is a part of that. It’s being able to stand firmly in the lane of work we’re doing and the vision we have, and asking, ‘What do we want this to look like?’ It’s not allowing yourself to be bought or shifted or swayed by money or someone’s influence. It’s if you say you about that shit, be about that shit. It’s truly being collaborative to work with those who have the same values and are in alignment with true transformative change. We can’t do this in silos. If one person or entity could have made all this change, it would have been done by now. It’s staying up on what is happening in movement. It’s being grounded in reality but also being imaginative to envision what is possible. It’s always making sure that those impacted are part of the work. The minute we think we have all the answers, we’re doing this wrong. It’s making sure we care for ourselves and are on a pathway of healing. There are images that won’t leave my mind. There are experiences that won’t leave my spirit. So, for me, it’s standing grounded in who I am and what I’m called to do. They say, ‘Say it even if your voice shakes.’ The liberation and transformative work is bigger than any fear and apprehensions I have. Cause this is about peoples’ fuckin’ lives.”