St. Louis demonstrators gather for ‘Ferguson October’ protest
ST. LOUIS – In October, a month in which St. Louis’ civic identity is normally dedicated to Cardinals playoff baseball, the city’s unresolved racial tensions are competing for center stage as hundreds and possibly thousands of demonstrators have gathered for a weekend of meetings and protests called “Ferguson October.”
A city’s pride now competes with a city’s grievances.
The months of unrest over the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown that have turned eastern Missouri into a hotbed of civil disobedience are no longer contained to West Florissant Avenue in the suburb of Ferguson, where Brown was shot by a white police officer on Aug. 9.
Instead, protesters have increasingly been spreading their anger across the greater St. Louis area, where racial division remains inscribed in various ways. In St. Louis an informal border exists between the city’s predominantly black north and predominantly white south, and between black residents and white political leadership.
Lines have also been drawn between the region’s fervent Cardinals fan base and passionate demonstrators calling for an end to police shootings. That division became especially explicit after a playoff game last week in which black demonstrators outside Busch Stadium were met by racist taunts from white fans such as, “We’re the ones who gave y’all the freedoms you have!” and “Africa! Africa! Africa!”
When at least several hundred demonstrators amassed in downtown St. Louis for a “Ferguson October” gathering on Saturday morning – with another Cardinals playoff game scheduled that night – it was probably one of the only areas near the stadium where most of the red clothing was not Cardinals gear.
Instead, the few demonstrators who wore red shirts had words showing their allegiance to groups such as the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, the National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Chicago Teachers Union.
One demonstrator wearing a red Cardinals hat was Michael Henderson, 43, of nearby University City, who was slowly pedaling a bike in front of the crowd as it marched forward and chanted slogans. “I’m not a Cardinals fan. I won this hat at bingo,” Henderson explained. “Cardinals fans, a lot of them, are part of the problem. … They are from that side of the fence.”
(In a statement made over stadium loudspeakers a week after Brown was killed as unrest racked Ferguson, Cardinals officials told fans that “we have all been heartbroken by a series of violent events that do not reflect who we are as a people.”)
James Page, 65, marching and chanting in the center of the crowd, was also wearing a Cardinals hat for an unusual reason.
“It is as exact a replica as I could find in the Cardinals store of the hat Mike Brown was wearing when he was killed,” said Page, a downtown resident. But he was also wearing it, he said, because he is a proud resident of the city “and proud of the Cardinals, even – I’m rooting for them all the way to the World Series at the same time I’m calling for change in our communities.”
The building sense of colliding contexts in St. Louis hit an especially ominous note when Saturday’s march ended at Kiener Plaza, where a fountain was dyed red – as it has often been during Cardinals playoff runs – and to some the water resembled blood boiling around a statue of a young man.