The 2014 police killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked mass protests that lasted over a 12 months.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) is inviting Michael Brown Sr., the daddy of Michael Brown, whose homicide by the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked mass protests in 2014, to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union deal with this week.
As first reported by Politico, Bush is bringing Brown Sr. as her visitor to the deal with, which is scheduled for Tuesday evening.
“The police killing of Michael Brown in 2014 is what propelled me and lots of others into lives devoted to constructing a world the place Mike would nonetheless be right here with us — a world the place his life couldn’t be taken from him. A world the place Tyre Nichols and the hundreds of different Black individuals killed by police might reside lengthy, wholesome lives stuffed with pleasure,” Brown stated to Politico.
The killing of 18-year-old Brown — a Black teenager who was shot six occasions by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who finally walked free after a majority-white jury didn’t indict him — sparked over a 12 months of protests in Ferguson and past. These protests helped kind the muse of the Motion for Black Lives.
“With every passing day, we keep in mind Michael’s legacy: his love of animals and music, his dedication to household and group, his potential to ship pleasure to these round him; and his spark of a worldwide motion in protection of Black lives,” Bush stated in a press release commemorating the eighth anniversary of Brown’s dying in August. “I carry the mandate St. Louis despatched me to Congress with; to by no means again down in our combat to avoid wasting lives and finish systemic police violence.”
Bush has continually spoken out about Brown’s killing. Earlier than coming to Congress, Bush was an activist on the streets of Ferguson and an organizer with the Motion for Black Lives. Michael Brown Sr. has also become an outspoken activist within the years since his son’s dying.
“It’s a full-time factor. My mom instructed me I used to be all the time going to be a preacher or a trainer, and I ran from it, and sadly it received thrown in my lap the best way Mike left this earth. I had no selection however to have a voice. However I’ve accepted it. That is what I’ve to do. That is my life,” Brown Sr. told GQ in 2020, after a wave of protests emerged throughout the U.S. following the homicide of George Floyd.
“I’m his father. We share the identical identify. I lastly received all my energy to face up to this stress on my again,” he continued. “I nonetheless have people who suppose I can save this world. I do know I can’t. However I attempt to give recommendation. I do know he’s happy with it. And I’m nonetheless happy with him from the grave.”
Following the dying of Nichols, who was killed in January by 5 law enforcement officials who beat him to dying throughout a site visitors cease, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been pushing for adjustments to policing and urging Biden to talk out in favor of police reform throughout his deal with.
It’s unclear, nevertheless, what forms of reform lawmakers have referred to as for — typically, measures for police reform give much more funding and energy to legislation enforcement, exacerbating problems with over-policing, police impunity, and militarization of legislation enforcement.
Certainly, lawmakers in the Senate had tried to work on a supposed bipartisan police reform settlement after the footage of Nichols’s dying was launched, however the negotiations reportedly included proposals to allocate extra sources to police trainings — trainings that might solely additional empower police and try to placate activists with out offering actual options.
