Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

Book Discussion of They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery. On the day of our discussion, there was still snow on the ground from a major winter storm and it was only eleven degrees. In spite of the freezing weather and difficult driving conditions, four of us managed to meet.  The one criticism we all shared was the “jumping around in time” in an otherwise great book. Our facilitator stated that the purpose of the book was to explain how activism of this generation started, an accounting of how millennials got involved. Fortunately for us, one of our members had shared a podcast from the Enoch Pratt Free Public Library in Baltimore, MD. The podcast series is called Writers Live and the particular podcast featured Wesley Lowery recorded Mar. 7, 2017. http://www.prattlibrary.org/booksmedia/podcasts/index.aspx?id=6951 In the podcast, Mr. Lowery relates that the purpose of his book is to tell t...

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." ...