They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement

Lowery’s work is set to gain even more attention because his book They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement is now in development to be turned into a series on AMC. This is according to Monica Judge, writer of The Root.

While Lowery was working on his story in Ferguson, he himself was harassed and arrested. He told his colleagues at the Washington Post:

"Multiple officers grabbed me. I tried to turn my back to them to assist them in arresting me. I dropped the things from my hands.

“My hands are behind my back,” I said. “I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.” At which point one officer said: “You’re resisting. Stop resisting.”

That was when I was most afraid — more afraid than of the tear gas and rubber bullets.

As they took me into custody, the officers slammed me into a soda machine, at one point setting off the Coke dispenser. They put plastic cuffs on me, then they led me out the door."

The terror and fear Lowery felt was also described by another author we're read in the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series. The author is Bryan Stevenson and the book is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Bryan describes what happened to him while sitting in his car listening to music:

"Having drawn his weapon, the officer and his partner justified their threat of lethal force by dramatizing their fears and suspicions about me. They threw me on the back of my car, searched it illegally, and kept me on the street for fifteen humiliating minutes while neighbors gathered to view the dangerous criminal in their midst. When no crime was discovered and nothing incriminating turned up in a computerized background check on me, I was told by the two officers to consider myself lucky. While this was said as a taunt, they were right: I was lucky."

Stevenson described this incident in his book, Just Mercy and also described it in an article in the New York Times Review of Books in June 2017.

Comments

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby, 2003

Nine of us met on Saturday March 16 th to discuss Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby, published in 2003. Although born 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker was predominantly reared in Littleton, North Carolina. Her Civil Rights and Human Rights career spanned over five decades, some of her work took place in New York and some took place in the South. Some of the groups she worked with are YNC L Young Negroes’ Cooperative League WEP Worker s’ Education Project NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference M FDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party SCEF Southern Christian Education Fund SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee She established her place in these movements as a behind the scenes organizer and never sought leadership positions. Her philosophy abou...

Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black

The author, Dr. Daniel Black, said “ T his book is what most of us in many ways would hope that our parents would do one day. And that is to give us their hearts, share with us their story . This is the story of a man named Jacob Swinton who is on his death bed, and he is writing a series of letters. It’s the epistolary form . The l etters are to his estranged gay son named Isaac. The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued July 13 th , 2024 , where we discussed this amazing book. Before this meeting, the group listened to a YouTub e video of an interview with Dr. Black that had been recorded earlier this year. This video can be found by searching All CT Reads 2024 Dr. Daniel Black on Yo u Tube. Wendy started us out, saying, “ I listened to it on audiobook, and Dr. Black read it. I really liked that because it brought it to life. The downside was places where I thought he captured something about his own experience or love, and I wish I had it on a ...

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas 2023

Book Discussion of In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas Thirteen of us met on Saturday Oct. 5 th to discuss Kai Thomas’s In the Upper Country , his debut novel. The story begins with an elderly woman who has escaped slavey from the US, and is now in Canada, shoots a slavecatcher who has tracked her there. A much younger woman, a jou rnalist name Lensinda is assigned the task of interviewing the old woman, who is now in jail. When Lensinda asks the woman for her story, the woman responds by saying, “A tale for a tale.” Thus, Lensinda is required to tell a story to receive the old woman’s story. This starts a reciprocal arrangement of storytelling over the interviews. Kai Thomas, author Wendy started us out saying, “I have to say I loved listening to it, but I also think that if I had read it, I may have absorbed more. I thought the language was just exquisite . I also kept feeling that each story I would lose track of sometimes, bu t I stopped worryin...

Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

Search This Blog