You don’t know how to write this story. It’s difficult, due mostly to the emotional proximity of it all. You feel everything, and at once. The heaviness of the air, the apathy of the authorities, the grief and frustration of the residents who deserve answers and not nightly tear gassing. When you arrive Friday evening, you note the feeling of relief at the Qwik Trip, where ash and rubble has given way to an outdoor community center. Messages etched in sidewalk chalk conveying support from far-flung places, people healing through laughter and dance. Despite being so blatantly lied to earlier, there is a glimmer of hope that justice will be served. Somehow. Someway. 

Later that night, you watch helplessly and in horror, as local law enforcement attack residents again. Friends and family caution you against going back out to help, reminding you of your parental responsibilities. But those responsibilities are what led you here. You are here because eventually, the four year-old who clutches his toy turtle every night will grow into a teenage boy. One who does teenage boy things. And he deserves to exist in a world where policemen don’t kill him for jaywalking, or fitting the description. 

Saturday morning you find yourself back at the Qwik Trip bowing your head in prayer to a God you don’t believe in, clasping hands with those who still do. You talk to people who have come from Atlanta and California and Florida, all of them black women. They have brought supplies and bodies. They march alongside you to the spot where Mike Brown was murdered. They listen, heads bowed, as Rev. Jesse Jackson leads another prayer. They take pictures and comfort one another. Later, they help residents hand out hotdogs and chips, and mind the babies running around as the bikers drive through. 

After a brief respite and another supply run, you are back in Ferguson by nightfall. Rain is beating the pavement, lightning strikes in the distance, but the people are undeterred. Despite the midnight curfew (and neighboring towns imposing earlier ones) they are out, and ready. You’ve just left what you thought would be a strategy meeting with organizers, painfully white organizers who flinch when they see you and your friends arrive. There are no residents present, and after your phones get a decent charge, you leave and hit West Florissant again. A friend wonders, aloud, if residents were given access to that space during the protests. Probably not, you respond. 

The trained journalist in you has so many questions. Why are residents continuously being punished for peacefully assembling? Why is the man who murdered a boy in cold blood allowed to flee the county? What the fuck is up with the local government? You push them aside. Besides, there will be a million thinkpieces by a million armchair revolutionaries/blackademics/concerned white people who will peddle their theories from a safe and comfortable distance while dismissing the power of “hashtag activism,” the same activism that made this concerted act of resistance possible. The power of “Black Twitter” is formidable, and you are seeing it firsthand. 

You leave for home today, not knowing what to expect in the days to come. You will get more supplies to share with residents, you will attend the scheduled vigil, and you will be back on a bus to Chicago by nightfall as residents once again fight for their humanity. You will think of the kindness and generosity of the people here, who hug you hard and feed you without knowing your name. You will continue to lend your support however you can, while you continue to fight for your own city five hours away. 

And you will remember Mike Brown, the boy who should have lived.