'Family' feeling at Ferguson PD last night, to near calamity - Protestor's perspective on shootings

[bigtree]

20. interesting

...I wonder if you'd make the same commitment?

I don't believe he's currently employed in that teaching field and his time is entirely voluntary, enabled in part by random donations from the public.

*on edit:

from Salon, Dec 8, 2014:

“I didn’t want that to be the story about Mike Brown”: Meet the man showing America the real Ferguson story

DeRay Mckesson had never met Michael Brown. He’d never even been to the St. Louis area before Aug. 16, but after watching the protests break across his social media feeds, he got in his car and headed out, leaving a note on his Facebook page asking if anyone could help him find a place to stay.

“I didn’t know what was real or not,” he tells Salon. He had to see for himself, to be part of it. When he was tear-gassed for the first time, it only made him more committed to building a lasting movement.

That was almost four months ago. Since then, he’s become one of the most recognizable social media presences keeping the public updated on the protests in Ferguson and elsewhere, as they’ve spread across the country. He started an email newsletter that he co-curates with Johnetta Elzie, another young activist based in St. Louis, sending out articles, action alerts, photos and tweets about the growing movement. The newsletter serves to connect people with actions and with each other, to filter an overwhelming volume of news reports, and to maintain a narrative of the movement going forward.

To Mckesson, the newsletter is about “fighting this fight in a different way.” He remembers the night the verdict came down that George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot Trayvon Martin, would get off. “I remember it was like at night when the verdict came out and you were alone, you didn’t know who to talk to, you couldn’t find any information then, you didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t,” he says. “I didn’t want that to be the story about Mike Brown.”

As the protests have spread and continued around the country, blocking highways and streets, shuttering stores, dying-in in public spaces, Mckesson notes, “Ferguson manifests differently in many different places.” It is important, he says, to remember that when you are facing down violent police, it is hard to move beyond basic survival as a goal. People understandably have a hard time talking about systemic reform with a gun in their face or when they can’t pay the bills. That’s why, as an educator and activist, he feels compelled to stay in this movement. “You have to be alive to learn,” he says. All of the improvement in schools in the world will mean nothing if kids are being killed by the people who are supposed to protect them.


read more: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/08/%E2%80%9Ci_didnt_want_that_to_be_the_story_about_mike_brown%E2%80%9D_meet_the_man_showing_america_the_real_ferguson_story/