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2
Thursday, July 2, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS
Ann Arbor to
Ferguson holds
meet and greet
Activists hold
meeting to discuss
race-related issues
By ALAINA WYGANT
Daily Staff Reporter
Ann Arbor to Ferguson, a
local activist group protest-
ing police brutality, held a
Black Lives Matter communi-
ty meet and greet at Elks Pratt
Lodge in Ann Arbor Saturday
to encourage residents to talk
about the issues black people
in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti
face today and to plan Black
Lives Matter activism events.
Denise Bailey, one of the
organizers of the group and a
graduate student at the Uni-
versity, said there was a lot of
local interest in gathering to
take action for the lives and
civil rights of African Ameri-
cans in Ann Arbor following
the death of Aura Rosser.
Rosser, a 40-year old black
woman and Ann Arbor resi-
dent, was fatally shot by an
Ann Arbor Police Department
officer after she reportedly
approached officers with a
knife. The Washtenaw Coun-
ty Prosecutor’s office did not
press criminal charges against
AAPD Officer David Ried, cit-
ing “lawful self-defense” in
his shooting of Rosser. Ann
Arbor to Ferguson was formed
in response to Rosser’s death,
protesting
the
Prosecutor’s
decision and arguing that her
death was preventable and
one of a long history of police
brutality and discrimination
against African Americans.
Ann Arbor to Ferguson is a
consensus-based group that
meets every Friday and has
around 25 members during
the school year. The group
contains people of a variety of
viewpoints and has members
working on different projects
to combat racism against Afri-
can
Americans.
Previously,
the group held a silent protest
to raise awareness for police
brutality against black women.
University
graduate
stu-
dent Austin McCoy, an Ann
Arbor to Ferguson organizer,
said the group is working with
the City to form both a citizen
review board for oversight of
the AAPD and a policy of best
practices for the department.
Organizer
Shirley
Beck-
ley spoke at the event, invit-
ing people to join her in
“court-watching.” She specifi-
cally criticized the unequal
law-enforcement
she
had
seen, especially with regard
to charging African-American
children as adults.
“We do exist. We are here,”
said Beckley. “We keep trying.
We keep protesting. We keep
asking, and I don’t know the
solution. I’m a little tired of it.
I’m a black woman who has a
son and a grandson. I worry
about their safety.”
Doctoral student Princess
Williams, who worked for the
political campaign of Jackson
Mississippi’s former mayor,
Chokwe Lumumba, a civil
rights activist from Detroit,
said she has seen first-hand
the unequal treatment of Afri-
can Americans by the justice
system. She said that although
she values the north for its
progressivism, she said racism
still exists here, too.
“They’re going to be nice to
you, but they’re not going to
say they’re still thinking racist
things,” Williams said. “I feel
like something like Baltimore
or Ferguson wouldn’t happen
in Mississippi because we are
hyper-conscious of the racism
within that state, so if some-
thing happens, they’re going
to immediately jump on the
officials.”
She then spoke about the
murder of James Craig Ander-
son in 2009 in Jackson, Mis-
sissippi by a group of white
teenagers.
“When something like that
happens, we take it seriously.
Whereas, in the north, I feel
like people have this percep-
tion that, ‘oh, that’s not racist’
or ‘there’s not a lot of politics
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New York singer-songwriter, Ingrid Michaelson, performs at the Power Center as
part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival on Thursday.
INGRID MICHAE LSON
See FERGUSON, Page 8