TIME

HOW FERGUSON WOKE US UP

Police lock down a neighborhood in Ferguson amid protests in August 2014

On Aug. 10, 2014, my first day of protest after the shooting of Michael Brown Jr., I stood outside the Ferguson Police Department and asked an officer why, on the night prior, he had brought German shepherds to a black community in grief, evoking the trauma of the mid-century civil rights movement. “Well, did anyone die?” he replied.

If that’s the standard, I thought, that’s precisely the problem.

“Yes. His name was Michael

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