Landmark racial justice reforms remain elusive in the US

Brown’s death 10 years ago in Ferguson, Missouri, was a watershed moment for America’s racial justice movement. It has thrust into the global spotlight long-standing demands for reforms to the systems that subject millions of people to everything from economic discrimination to crime.

Activists like Bush have gone from proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” to running for state, mayoral, prosecutorial and congressional seats — and winning. Local legislation was passed to do everything from abolishing prisons and jails and reforming schools to eliminating hair discrimination.

At least 30 states and Washington, DC, have enacted laws aimed at curbing abusive behavior since 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. While the past decade of racial justice activism has 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 steps we’ve taken, they ebb and flow,” said Bush, a community organizer and longtime pastor before becoming a Democratic representative. “We are still dealing with militarized police in the communities. We’re still dealing with police shootings.”

As the new generation of cellphone-wielding black activists rewrote the national conversation about policing, issues of public safety and racial justice moved to the center of American politics. Police cameras are spread. Tactics, including choking, were banned.

Ferguson sparked a shift in how communities approach police reform and misconduct, said Svante Myrick, who was the youngest mayor of Ithaca, New York, from 2011 to 2021 before becoming president of People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.

At least 150 reforms have been passed in localities and states.

“I know that someone’s life was saved, that there was an officer, that there was a meeting where a police officer might have made a different decision if it hadn’t been for 400 days of protest during the Ferguson riot,” he Bush said. “Maybe the world was waking up to the fact that it can’t just be an external strategy, there has to be an internal strategy as well.”

An example is Tishaura Jones, the first black woman to lead St. Louis, who worked to end the city’s “arrest and incarcerate” policing model and emphasize social service programs to help high-crime neighborhoods.

A new generation of leaders is putting this model into play at the national level.

“I’m someone who got into politics through the Black Lives Matter movement, after years of witnessing unjust crimes against black and brown people,” said Chi Ossé, a 26-year-old member of the New York City Council. York.

He used social media to organize protests after white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, who was black, in 2020, sparking a massive new wave of protests. “It turns out that I have a different kind of leadership style in my own community than the previous City Council members who represented this district.”

Lawmakers in Washington initially shied away from the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2015, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told three Black Lives Matter activists that they should focus on changing laws instead of changing hearts.

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

Brown’s death and the treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters also led many Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders to a reckoning. Organizations and individuals of all ages were encouraged to come off the fringes.

“We had gains,” Bush said. “I wanted to bring the movement to the House of Representatives, and I feel like I was able to do that.”

By 2015, Ferguson activists were welcomed to the White House to work on the Obama administration’s task force on 21st century policing.

While Donald Trump has embraced some criminal justice reforms, such as the First Step Act, he has remained opposed to racial justice activists throughout his administration. The move was met with disdain on the right. In 2016, the then-Republican presidential candidate called Black Lives Matter “divisive” and blamed President Barack Obama for worsening race relations nationwide.

Trump was president during the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020 after Floyd’s killing. During the protests, he posted: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

During a 2017 speech in New York, Trump appeared to advocate for harsher treatment of people in custody, speaking disparagingly of the police practice of shielding the heads of handcuffed suspects while they are placed in patrol cars.

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

The movement was again thrust into politics when Chauvin killed Floyd in May 2020.

The protests upended American politics and shocked even many who had spent years advocating for policies that were suddenly mainstream — community response teams, restrictions on police tactics, redirecting police funding.

Floyd’s relatives appeared at the 2020 Democratic National Convention; the following year, Democrats introduced a bill that would have enacted major reforms.

The George Floyd Police Justice Act would have banned chokehold warrants and restraining orders, like the one that led Louisville police to kill Breonna Taylor in her home. It also allegedly created a database listing officers disciplined for serious misconduct.

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