A decade of racial justice activism transformed politics but landmark reforms remain elusive

Michael Brown’s fatal shooting by police a decade ago set off more than a week of protests by thousands of people in Ferguson, Missouri

Cori Bush went from helping to lead an informal movement for racial justice to winning two terms as a congresswoman from Missouri, with an office decorated with photographs of families who lost loved ones to police violence. One picture is of Michael Brown.

Brown’s death 10 years ago in Ferguson, Missouri, was a defining moment for America’s racial justice movement. It cast a global spotlight on longtime demands for reforms to systems subjecting millions of people to everything from economic discrimination to murder.

Many activists like Bush went from proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” to running for seats in statehouses, city halls, prosecutors’ offices and the halls of Congress — and winning. Local legislation has been passed to do everything from dismantling prisons and jails and reforming schools to eliminating hair discrimination.

At least 30 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted laws meant to curb abusive conduct since 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. And while the last decade of racial justice activism transformed politics, landmark reforms remain elusive, more than three dozen activists, elected officials and political operatives told The Associated Press.

“As we look at the strides we’ve made, it ebbs and flows,” said Bush, who was a longtime community organizer and pastor before becoming a Democratic representative. “We’re still dealing with militarized policing in communities. We’re still dealing with the police shootings.”

A decade of activists’ achievements

As the new generation of Black activists wielding cellphones rewrote the national conversation on policing, questions of public safety and racial justice pushed into the center of American politics. Police body cameras are widespread. Tactics like the chokehold have been outlawed across the country.

Ferguson prompted an immediate change in how communities tackle police reform and misconduct, said Svante Myrick, who served as the youngest-ever mayor of Ithaca, New York, from 2011 to 2021 before he became president for People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.

At least 150 reforms passed in localities and states across the country.

“I know that someone’s life was saved, that there was an officer, that there was an encounter where a police officer could have made a different decision had there not been 400 days of protest during the Ferguson uprising,” Bush said in an interview. “Maybe the world was waking up to the fact that it can’t just be an outside strategy, there has to be an inside strategy as well.”

An example of that is Tishaura Jones, the first Black woman to lead the city of St. Louis, who has worked to end St. Louis’ “arrest and incarcerate” model of policing and place more emphasis on social service programs to help the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates.

It’s a pattern that a new generation of leaders is putting into play nationwide.

“I’m someone that entered politics through the Black Lives Matter movement after years of witnessing unfair killings against Black and brown people,” said Chi Ossé, a 26-year-old member of the New York City Council.

He used social media to organize protests for racial justice after white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, who was Black, in 2020, sparking a new and massive wave of protests. “It’s resulted in me having a different type of leadership style within my own community than prior City Council members who have represented this district.”

There's work to be done

Lawmakers in Washington were wary of the Black Lives Matter movement at first.

In 2015, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told three Black Lives Matter activists they should focus on changing laws instead of hearts. And a 2016 memo from the Democratic Party’s House campaign arm told politicians to limit the number of Black Lives Matter activists present at public events, or meet with organizers privately.

Ferguson marked a new phase. For perhaps the first time, a highly visible mass protest movement for justice for a single victim was born organically — not convened by members of the clergy or centered in the church — and often linked by mobile phones and sustained by hip-hop.

Brown’s death and the treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters in the days following also led many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders to an internal reckoning. Organizations and individuals of all ages were galvanized to get off the sidelines.

“We’ve had gains,” Bush said. “I wanted to bring the movement into the House of Representatives, and I feel that I’ve been able to do that.”

A movement meets a national political shift

By 2015, Ferguson activists were welcomed into the White House to work on the Obama administration’s Task Force for 21st Century Policing.

While Donald Trump embraced some criminal justice reforms like the First Step Act, he remained opposed to racial justice activists throughout his administration and the movement was met with scorn on the right. In 2016, the then-Republican presidential nominee called Black Lives Matter “divisive” and blamed President Barack Obama for worsening race relations in the country.

Trump was president during the racial justice protests that emerged in the summer of 2020 following Floyd's killing in Minneapolis. He posted during the protests, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” At the time, he signed an executive order encouraging better police practices but that was criticized by some for failing to acknowledge what they consider systemic racial bias in policing.

Earlier in his term, during a 2017 speech in New York, Trump appeared to advocate rougher treatment of people in police custody, speaking dismissively of the police practice of shielding the heads of handcuffed suspects as they are being placed in patrol cars.

Trump’s election caused many racial justice activists to shift their focus from individual police departments to how federal policies fund and protect police misconduct.

George Floyd’s Minneapolis murder

After an arduous Democratic presidential primary whose candidates debated how best to advance racial justice, the movement was again thrust into politics when Chauvin murdered Floyd in May 2020.

The ensuing global protests for racial justice upended American politics and shocked even many in the movement who had spent years advocating for policies that were suddenly brought into the mainstream, like community response teams for emergencies, restrictions on police tactics and even redirecting police funding.

Floyd’s family members appeared at the 2020 Democratic National Convention after the global protests; the following year, the party introduced a bill that would’ve enacted sweeping reforms for police accountability in his name.

The George Floyd Justice In Policing Act would have banned chokeholds and no-knock warrants, like the one that led to Louisville police killing Breonna Taylor in her own home. It also would have created a database listing officers who were disciplined for gross misconduct, among other measures.

The House passed it in 2021. But the Senate failed to reach a consensus.

Stand outside or be at the table

Ella Jones did not see herself running for office before the Ferguson protests. A minister and entrepreneur, Jones felt called to protest Brown’s killing but said that local Democratic leaders told her to run for mayor of Ferguson. She won a seat on the city council, and was eventually elected mayor.

“You can stand outside and scream at the system. However, you must be at the table where policy is made. So, some people may go into politics. Some people may go into establishing nonprofits, but it’s going to take all of us working together to make the change that we really need,” Jones said. “You have to be at the table, where policy is made.”

Ferguson's prosecuting attorney, Wesley Bell was on a promise to tackle police misconduct.

Bell told the AP in 2020 that legislators need to take a hard look at laws that offer protection against prosecution for police officers that regular citizens aren’t afforded.

“We see those types of laws throughout the country, and it is something that handcuffs prosecutors in numerous ways when you are going about prosecuting officers who have committed unlawful use of force or police shootings,” Bell said.

In August he defeated Bush in a bitter Democratic primary for the U.S. House.

Bush said she doesn't know what she will do after she leaves Congress.

“But the fight is still here, and my boots aren’t far from me,” she said. “So people probably should have wondered, is she more dangerous in Congress or outside of it?”