On Monday, August 18, I attended a march in Atlanta in response to the August 9 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I was in town to visit family, but when I found out about the protest, I felt like I needed to go.
The march began and ended on the steps of the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta. It started storming halfway through, but that didn't deter the protesters, and the rain stopped before they had finished circling Centennial Olympic Park.
The 2010 US Census reported Atlanta's racial composition as being 54% black and 34% white, out of a population of 420,003. When I searched "Atlanta #Ferguson" on Twitter to find out about the protest, a number of people were saying that what happened in Ferguson could easily happen in Atlanta.
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| The man on the left, Louis, is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. He was handing out posters and flyers and told me that now is the time for revolution, not peace. He said that he was for peace in the 60s until the Black Panther Party set him straight. Louis and the woman on his right started a chant of "Hands up, don't shoot!" |
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| 19-year-old Elle Lucier speaks. She organized the #ITSBIGGERTHANYOU march and spoke before and after. |
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| The photograph on this man's shirt is Robert Cohen's now-iconic photo of a man (@eyefloodpanties on Twitter) throwing a tear gas canister away from children. |
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| Marchers were asked to come in their graduation gowns. |
Thanks for posting these. My son was at this protest and found the atmosphere to be positive and focused, with people supporting each other in the desire to make a better world. A far cry from the way Fox 5 described it later that night - - they called it "A Night of Rage Downtown!"
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