~a column by Colleen O’Brien
I was in St. Louis the other day, and I met a girl named Morgan. She lives in Ferguson, Missouri, a town that’s been in the news since Aug. 9, when a policemen shot an 18-year-old boy who in two days was going to enter his first semester at a trade school to learn heating and air conditioning; his goal – to own his own business.
Articulate, fast-talking, poised beyond her years, Morgan said she’s about had it with the police and the media ruining what she believes her town really is – a working class community with high unemployment among young people, not unlike many towns across America — and misrepresenting it right and left: “Ten college-age African Americans on a sidewalk at a peaceful protest against the shooting of a boy in our community is not an ‘angry gang of blacks’”.
What Morgan believes is this: “The police are part of ‘the systemic problem’.” And, “Do you think reputable news people should quote ‘unknown sources’?” she asked. “Who knows who that is and if they have an agenda?”
Although she talked like she wouldn’t have time to say it all and was adamant about her opinions, she was neither angry nor sullen; but she is intense and determined to change things. Her redress is to start her own blog site and tell the stories of Ferguson herself. “I am not a spokesperson for Ferguson,” she said. “I can’t speak for anyone else, only for me, my ideas, my viewpoint, my experience, what I’ve seen happen and what I think about it.
“I would be safer from the police if I were walking down a street in Ladue (wealthy enclave of St. Louis about 10 miles from Ferguson) than I am in Ferguson,” she said. “I’ve had three tickets in town since the beginning of summer,” she added, explaining that when stopped she couldn’t give the police excuses or even say what was a fact — that she wasn’t speeding or making a wrong turn or that she did have the blinker on — because if she did try to explain, she might get hauled in for talking back to a police officer. “We don’t get a lot of air in Ferguson,” she said with a smile. And then with a sigh said she owes more than $300 in fines and that African American friends of hers have been picked up and thrown in jail for warrants on a busted tail light.
She said it’s not just that most of the police in her working class town are white but that the attitude from the top down (“the system”) propels the beat cops, black or white, to “harass” young boys walking the streets or even anyone young who’s driving.
She explained that one of the things the major media “advertised” about the town of Ferguson was that no one votes, so what do they expect? “Why would we vote when we know from years of experience that voting never helps us? They [politicians] come into Ferguson when they want a vote and then we never hear from them again.” No matter what arguments she hears regarding the need to vote, Morgan is dismissive. “Why?” she asks.
Morgan is tall, reedy, beautiful and dresses funky like a college kid. From her time in grade school through junior high, she said, “I was bullied about a number of different things. It could be anything from the way I walked to the way I talked to what I had on. I didn’t really understand what was going on because I didn’t know why the group of girls didn’t like me.”
By the time she was a sophomore in high school, in retaliation she herself became a bully. “But by my senior year, I started to mature overall as a person, and I began to see that being mean wasn’t helpful.”
When Morgan heard of a non-profit called HateBrakers, she called up the president of the organization and asked what it was about. The president took her to lunch, heard her story and asked if she would like to be interviewed as a HateBraker herself. Soon Morgan was in the HateBraker program called “Meet a Hero, Be a Hero,” teaching classes in her old high school on the subject of interrupting the cycle of hate breeding hate.
“They listen to me,” she said. “One of the girls just loves me and follows me around and wants to know how to be me. It’s embarrassing but it’s okay. She’s okay. She’s just a cool little kid.” All smiles at the idea of being a mentor, Morgan, I think, will be more than that. I think she will become a leader, a spokesperson despite her protestations, for her race, her town and her gender. She is studying communications at non-profit Webster University in St. Louis where degrees with an international emphasis are the norm; she is writing a piece for possible publication in the Huffington Post online daily website; she is as articulate and profound as any 18-year-old I’ve ever met. And she has a mission in her heart – to break the spiral of hate by teaching ways to stop it, spreading goodwill and forgiveness by example and by word.
We need many Morgans – all races, both genders, all over the world. I am impressed by her and expect to hear about her successes in the future.
