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This year’s MLK Unity
Event on Monday, January 18, 2016 at the University of
Toledo’s Savage Arena, according to many, was more
reminiscent of the actual King and the Civil Rights Movement
than those held in the past.
This occurred, some say,
because Paula Hicks-Hudson, Toledo’s first African American
woman mayor, and Sharon Gaber, University of Toledo’s first
woman president, “allowed it to happen” by including program
elements that had been vetoed previously by former Mayors
Bell and Collins or representatives of past UT President
Jacobs.
The centerpiece of the
event was the “Straight Outta Ferguson” keynote address by
Cori Bush, social justice activist. Bush’s story is
compelling as well as intriguing, as she affords us a rare
insider’s view of black struggle at the five-point
intersection of race, gender, work, home and community. In
addition to serving on the frontlines of the justice
battlefield in Ferguson, Missouri, Cori Bush is also an
African-American woman, mother, pastor and nurse.
This is part two of Pastor
Bush’s three-part story, A Black Mother’s Report from the
Frontlines:
Cori Bush on the Night “To Not Indict:” … I remember one night
in the Ferguson protest almost arriving home, which my home
was about 60 minutes away, and I was driving and I saw two
dark colored vans, maybe dark blue or brown.
I was very close to my
home and I knew once I got out of Ferguson that it was kind
of quiet and kind of peaceful. But I saw these two vans and
I stopped because it shocked me, and I froze. Then I
started to lose it, because in my mind I saw tanks. Tanks
were around my home now.
I remembered grabbing my
son at a protest one evening because at that time, if you
stepped off of the curb, if you stepped over the white line
by the curb, you could be arrested and could be attacked by
the police. We saw it happening over and over again. They
later came and said that’s unconstitutional, you can’t do
that, but anyway, this is what was happening at the time.
And so my son, my
15-year-old son that’s taller than me, that has a mustache,
that somebody could look at and say, “Oh, he’s a threat.”
My 15-year-old son, he decided, he said, “hey, I wanna test
my mother” and he turned around and he stepped over the
white line and when I looked and I saw him step over that
white line I reacted because I just wanted to save my child
because I feel like whatever I can do to him it won’t be
worse than what they’ll do to him, so I reached over and I
grabbed my child and I pulled him back across that white
line and I pulled him up on the curb and I was holding him
like this, and the tears began to flow from my eyes. I
didn’t want to hurt my child, but I didn’t want them to beat
him. I’ve seen people beaten for less.
On the night of the
announcement that was made to not indict Darren Wilson, I
took to the street as a protestor. I knew that it would be a
day where things might get out of hand. I didn’t care. We
just gotta get in the street. You know what’s about to go
down, so get out there. But, I made sure, because I realized
what was about to go down, I made sure I had everything. We
kept backpacks with us. I had a Hazmat suit in my bag, I
had everything. And so I went out, and I said well I’ll be
ready for whatever. If I’m a nurse today, a medic or
clergy, whatever it needs to be, a protestor, whatever, I’m
ready.
So I’m out there and
because it was so hyped up, people came from all over the
world to be here for that one day when that announcement was
to be a part of this history that was happening, even though
what they didn’t understand was, this is our everyday life.
When you go back home, this is what we have to live, and so
when you come and you yell and you tear up our city, when
you come and hit the police or whatever you think you are
getting ready to do, we’ve gotta sit here and we’ve gotta
take this and we’re the real Ferguson protestors and they’re
gonna call your actions - us.
So anyway, I’m out there
and people are falling out all over the ground because
they’re getting tear-gassed. I mean they tear-gassed us so
hard, and if you’ve never been tear-gassed before let me
help you, because my mind is…I don’t know what I was
thinking about when it comes to tear gas. I thought it was
a tank that was just spewing it out, and if it went one way
that you could go the other way.
But no, what I found out
was that through all of this that teargas is actually a
person that decides I’m going take this, (it looks like a
gun), I’m going to take it and pop it at you, and so the
whole time when we’re out there it is “pop, pop, pop.”
That’s all we’re hearing and they’re chasing us with teargas
and so we’re trying to get away from it, and I’m so used to
it, it doesn’t usually bother me, but it was so much this
night.
I was trying to help
people by pouring Maalox and just rubbing people…it was just
horrible, and so I had to get away for a moment, and so I
went away and I heard somebody yell out, “help, help, my
mom’s having a heart attack, help, help.” And I said uh-uh
(no). I kept going. Uh, uh, I’m not stopping, I’m trying to
breathe because I gotta go back and help somebody else, I
can’t stop with this, and plus I didn’t know if it was fake,
so I kept going.
I heard it again. I
...turned around and I went back to go help her. By the
time I turned around a young lady was holding her mother up
against a car and the mother began to slide down the car,
and so I caught her just in time and I was able to lay her
down to the ground, and what she said to me was, she named
two medications, and when she named those two medications, I
knew that it was a possibility she could be having a heart
attack. So I began to help her and people crowded around
and I’m trying to tell this story fast because I know my
time limit.
So we were trying to help
her, people crowded around and we knew that we had to get
this lady to some kind of help, but the problem was that all
the streets were blocked off. They (police) had us in like a
fish bowl. Everything was blocked off. We couldn’t get the
ambulance to come through so we had to figure out what could
we do to get this woman to safety. So what we did was we
looked down the street, there was MSNBC and CNN. Don Lemon
was out and someone else was broadcasting live.
I remember it was dark by
this time, so they were up under this tent, and so we
decided, because actually behind the tent was Ferguson Fire
Department and the Ferguson police station, but in front of
that was the united command, that was the police and the
National Guard and all of them, they were lined up in front
of it with the tanks.
So MSNBC’s tent was right
in front of it, so we said, hey, they’re live broadcasting.
If we take this body and we run it through the broadcast, in
the middle of the broadcast, if they shoot us it’ll be on
live TV and somebody will know it. So we said that’s the
safest way we can get this lady to safety.
And so we picked her up
and we were running down the hill, we’re yelling out, “hey,
she’s having a heart attack, she’s having a heart attack.”
I’m smacking her on her face and doing this to her, I’m
trying to keep her awake, “Lisa, Lisa, stay awake, stay
awake” and her eyes are rolling back and her tongue is
starting to hang out of her head, and I’m like, “no, don’t
you die on me.”
(…to be continued)
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
Black Mothers of the New
Movement
part 1 |
