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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is 
published every Thursday during the 
spring and summer terms by students 
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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 
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