About Ferguson

I said I would write about my wrinkled knees. Those knees marched in many demonstrations for ideals I believed in. I dragged my toddler oldest child into crowds where there was tear gas!

I was never more alive than I was during long nights when we, like minded young people, hashed out ideas for educating our young. I was never more alive than when we canvassed for and fought for our candidates we believed in. Nothing was too hard!

The young people taking to Tahir Square in the Arab Spring, the others all over the Middle East gave us hope for change.

Something life changing happens when young people are strongly pulled together about an issue. Maybe, as with the folks who took over so many public spaces in our cities a few years ago - the Occupy Wall Street- they are so fervent for a brief time and then it dies down. But those participating are never to be the same.

I think that change happens when a fragile eggshell of unrest, distrust, and long times of hurt breaks in an instant: The shooting of young Mr. Brown in Ferguson.

Now! That community has a galvanizing moment to effect change. America has generally left young black men behind and this is gnawing. Yes, hundreds of nonprofits and idealists and our president have tried to address this issue. But the interior of that fragile egg containing so much anger has been incubating for generations and is bursting. It is unlovely, not what we think of as patriotic American.

I have no idea what will happen in this case. Soon, the high emotions will calm down and there will be task forces and blue ribbon panels and investigations and many pundits explaining everything.

But I do know that the lives among those in Ferguson who demonstrated, thought about what was happening, and endured the broken glass and disrupted civil life, will never be the same. For two weeks they were ALIVE! What will they do with this stuff they have learned?