Professor Van Ry

The protests that have swept up Ferguson, Mo., following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, in part have been powered by the young people. Some are local and others have come there to help organize.

Antonio Parker, a student at University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that he has been at protests during the day.

“When I’m there, it’s calm, people are just chanting, trying to get their voices heard,” he said. “When I was down there, the police that were there during the day, don’t seem to be as on edge as they are at night, from what I’ve been told. A lot of people think that the message is getting covered up by all the looting, but I think the message is still being carried out—justice for Mike Brown.

“The Black community, we are tired of police brutality.”

According to Parker, students have been swept up in a common cause.

“The beauty of it is, there are a lot of college kids down there that are not there because they’re in the SGA, or they’re representing this program, or that,” he said. “They’re there because they have been there, and they continue to be there, because they want to be.”

Parker is a graduate of St. Louis Community College, a predominantly Black institution, where he majored in criminal justice. Florissant Valley, the campus from which Parker graduated, is just a half-mile from where the protests precipitated by the death of Brown are now taking place. He works in the admissions department there and mentors for the STLCC’s African-American Male Initiative. <Read more.>

Via Catherine Morris, Diverse Issues in Higher Education.