A decade of racial justice activism has transformed politics, but landmark reforms remain elusive

WASHINGTON — Cori Bush went from helping lead an informal movement for racial justice to winning two terms as a Missouri congresswoman whose office is decorated with photographs of families who have lost loved ones to police violence. One photo shows Michael Brown.

Brown’s death 10 years ago in Ferguson, Missouri, became a defining moment for the American movement for racial justice. It has focused global attention on long-standing demands for reform of systems that subject millions of people to everything from economic discrimination to murder.

Many activists like Bush have gone from proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” to fighting for seats in statehouses, city halls, prosecutors’ offices, and the halls of Congress—and winning. Local legislation has been passed to do everything from dismantling prisons and reforming schools to ending hair discrimination.

Since 2020, at least 30 states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws aimed at curbing abuses, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. And while the past decade of racial justice activism has changed politics, meaningful reforms remain elusive, more than three dozen activists, elected officials and political operatives told The Associated Press.

“When we look at the progress we’ve made, it ebbs and flows,” said Bush, who was a longtime community organizer and pastor before becoming a Democratic Party official. “We’re still dealing with militarized policing in communities. We’re still dealing with police shootings.”

A Decade of Activist Achievements

As a new generation of cellphone-wielding black activists has rewritten the national conversation about policing, issues of public safety and racial justice have moved to the center of American politics. Police body cameras are widespread. Tactics such as chokeholds are banned throughout the country.

Ferguson sparked immediate changes in how communities grapple with police reform and misconduct, said Svante Myrick, who was the youngest mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., from 2011 to 2021 before he became president of the progressive advocacy organization People for American way.” group.

At least 150 reforms took place in localities and states across the country.

“I know that someone’s life was saved, that there was an officer, that there was a meeting in which the officer might have made a different decision if there had not been 400 days of protest during the Ferguson uprising,” Bush said in an interview. “Perhaps the world has woken up to the fact that it cannot just be an external strategy, there must be an internal strategy.”

An example of this is Tishaura Jones, the first black woman to lead the city of St. Louis, who worked to end St. Louis’ “arrest and jail” model of policing and place more emphasis on social service programs to help neighborhoods. with the highest crime rate.

It is a model that a new generation of leaders is implementing across the country.

“I am someone who entered politics through the Black Lives Matter movement after years of watching black and brown people being unjustly killed,” said Chi Osse, a 26-year-old New York City Council member.

He used social media to organize protests for racial justice after white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, who was Black, in 2020, sparking a new wave of protests. “This has resulted in me having a different style of leadership in my own community than previous City Council members who have represented this district.”

There’s work to be done

Lawmakers in Washington were initially wary of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2015, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told three Black Lives Matter activists that they should focus on changing laws, not hearts. And in a 2016 memo, the House Democratic campaign arm urged politicians to limit the number of Black Lives Matter activists present at public events or to meet with organizers privately.

Ferguson marked a new stage. In perhaps the first time, a highly visible grassroots protest movement for justice for a single victim began organically—not convened by members of the clergy or centered in a church—and was often connected through cellphones and supported by hip-hop.

Brown’s death and the treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in the days that followed also led many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders to an internal reckoning. Organizations and individuals of all ages were ready to get out of the game.

“We’ve made progress,” Bush said. “I wanted to bring a movement to the House and I feel like I was able to do that.”

Movement meets national political shift

By 2015, Ferguson activists were invited to the White House to serve on the Obama administration’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Although Donald Trump has supported some criminal justice reforms, such as the First Step Act, he has remained opposed to racial justice activists throughout his administration, and the movement has been met with disdain from the right. In 2016, the then-Republican presidential candidate called Black Lives Matter “divisive” and blamed President Barack Obama for worsening race relations in the country.

Trump was president during the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020 following the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis. During the protests, he wrote: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” At the time, he signed an executive order encouraging improvements in policing practices, but some criticized him for failing to acknowledge what they see as systemic racial bias in policing.

Earlier in his term, during a speech in New York in 2017, Trump appeared to advocate for rougher treatment of people in police custody, disparaging the police practice of covering the heads of handcuffed suspects as they are placed in patrol cells. cars.

Trump’s election has caused many racial justice activists to shift their focus from individual police departments to how federal policies fund and protect police misconduct.

Murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis

After a rocky Democratic presidential primary in which candidates debated how best to advance racial justice, the movement was drawn back into politics when Chauvin killed Floyd in May 2020.

The ensuing global protests for racial justice upended American politics and shocked even many in the movement who had spent years advocating for policies that had suddenly become mainstream, such as community emergency response teams, restrictions on police tactics and even redirecting police funding.

Members of Floyd’s family appeared at the 2020 Democratic National Convention following global protests; The following year, the party introduced a bill that included sweeping police accountability reforms in its name.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants like the one that led Louisville police to kill Breonna Taylor in her own home. It would also create a database listing officers who have been punished for gross misconduct, among other measures.

The House of Representatives passed it in 2021. But the Senate failed to reach consensus.

Stand outside or sit at a table

Ella Jones had no plans to run for president before the Ferguson protests. A minister and entrepreneur, Jones felt called to protest Brown’s killing, but said local Democratic leaders encouraged her to run for mayor of Ferguson. She won a seat on the city council and was eventually elected mayor.

“You can stand outside and shout at the system. However, you must be at the table where policy is made. So, some people can go into politics. Some people may go into starting nonprofits, but we’re all going to have to work together to make the changes that we really need,” Jones said. “You have to sit at the table where policy is made.”

Ferguson prosecutor Wesley Bell has vowed to investigate police misconduct.

Bell told the AP in 2020 that lawmakers need to take a close look at laws that provide protections from prosecution for police officers that ordinary citizens do not have.

“We’re seeing laws like this all over the country, and that’s what in many ways handcuffs prosecutors when you’re going to prosecute prosecutors who have committed unlawful use of force or police shootings,” Bell said.

In August, he defeated Bush in a hotly contested Democratic primary for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bush said she doesn’t know what she will do after she leaves Congress.

“But the struggle is still here and my boots are not far behind me,” she said. “So people probably should have asked: Is she more dangerous in Congress or outside of Congress?”