Ferguson protesters improvised playful street actions to disrupt traffic corridors

Evidence

What they called “actions” made sure of that. These were often improvised acts of civil disobedience designed to disrupt business as usual. One example was called They Think It’s a Game. DeRay McKesson, a Bowdoin College alum who came to Ferguson after Michael Brown’s death, and Kayla Reed, an organizer for the Organization of Black Struggle, came up with the idea. One of the organizers asked what are the chances they think what the protesters are doing is a game—that it’s a joke? “If they think it’s a game, let’s actually shut it down by playing games,” Netta recalled. “Hopscotch, double Dutch, Backleg, anything you could play out in the street….And shut down all of the corridors because [we’re] playing games.” It was brilliant. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 589

Categorization

• XREF: This portraits young Ferguson-era direct-action organizers and their tactics, relevant context for judging Glaude’s electoral-argument frame and for the reader’s broader work on democratic non-electoral pressure.