PIEN HUANG, HOST:
Yesterday marks 10 years since a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed Michael Brown. He was an unarmed black teenager. Brown's killing drew attention to problems with policing in the community, and it was a turning point for the Black Lives Matter protest movement. Here's sound from one of the protests in Ferguson that NPR reporters recorded in August 2014.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hands up.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Don't shoot.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hands up.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Don't shoot.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hands up.
HUANG: One of the young activists who protested in the streets of Ferguson that summer was Alisha Sonnier. Now 28, she serves on St. Louis Board of Aldermen. Alisha, thanks for being here.
ALISHA SONNIER: Thank you for having me.
HUANG: So, Alisha, in August of 2014, you, like Michael Brown, were just 18 years old, and you were a recent high school graduate. I'm wondering what your plans were for the future before his killing.
SONNIER: I was getting ready to start my freshman year at Saint Louis University. I was going to be studying biomedical engineering. I was a Martin Luther King Jr. scholar. And so those were my plans - just to begin my studies and start pursuing an undergraduate degree. Michael Brown was murdered on August 9, 2014, and I was set to move onto campus August 20 and begin classes on August 25.
And so, you know, my life just completely changed August 9. I went out with some friends in response to Lesley McSpadden, who was Michael Brown's mother, doing a call for a vigil, and I didn't really know what was going on. We didn't have the police officer's name. We weren't a national movement. I just knew that I'd seen a mother on TV mourn her son and say how hard she'd worked to get him through high school and felt connected to her and felt connected to him and wanted to do something. And since she called for a vigil, I wanted to go.
I had no idea that I would walk into, you know, seeing police officers militarized for the first time, of seeing such large gatherings and groups of Black people, seeing protests in front of me in real time, seeing flames, feeling pepper spray. You know, I had a lot of firsts that night there were unpredictable but changed my life and did not allow me to see the world as I saw it before and put a lot of questions into my mind about who has power, who gets to make decisions, you know, who gets to decide what the community response is, who's funding this. So every night, continuously, even when August 20 came and I moved on to campus, even when August 25 came and I went to my first college class, I was still every night going out to Ferguson and participating in the protests.
HUANG: So there were a lot of firsts that first night, and they continued for quite a while. I mean, tell us about those early days of the protest. What was it like, and what did it mean for the community and for you to be there night after night?
SONNIER: That night was absolutely terrifying. I had never seen militarized police. I didn't even know that there were officers who wore that kind of gear or had that kind of equipment. I've never been in protests, but I think to see the protests and see just large groups and swaths of people, and then you begin to like, kind of hear chants and meet new people - but it's a very scary situation because you have flashing lights everywhere. You're experiencing chemical weapons.
I mean, we didn't even know what pepper spray or tear gas was at the time, so you don't know what's been happening. I knew that a community was very angry - at that time, did not have the full context of what the anger was. What I did know, despite not having any idea what it would grow into, is that I could not walk away now and that we were all kind of linked together.
HUANG: In the years since Michael Brown's death, there have been more widely publicized cases of Black people being shot, being killed by the police. How do you take this news when it happens? How do you personally respond to it?
SONNIER: It's always going to be absolutely devastating to me. Just yesterday at the Board of Aldermen, we passed a resolution on recognizing the 10-year anniversary, and Michael Brown's mother came and joined us on the dais. And every single one of my colleagues co-sponsored this resolution.
One of the things that I said, though, the ending of that resolution was all about the fact that we are not done, that we still have so much more work to do. And I think that with every death, with every instance of injustice, it is not just about police officers killing Black and brown people unjustly. It is also about really getting to the root of systems, of why does this keep happening over and over again?
HUANG: And Alisha, how do you think those experiences from 2014, when you were 18 years old, are going to continue to affect your work going forward?
SONNIER: I think they will impact me for the rest of my life. As I said, I would not be doing this work had that not happened. I don't know if I would have discovered my love for community, my love for people, the way that I believe in communities. I don't know if I would have had clear or strong examples of the fact that things yesterday do not have to be how they are tomorrow. I don't know if I would have experienced something that, again, would have empowered me. I was 25 when I first ran for office and then, at 27, got elected alderwoman. I don't think I would have enough courage. I don't think I would have been empowered enough. I don't think I would have believed in myself or my community enough to go for that or to believe that I would be chosen.
And so I think that it shows up in my work every day. I think often when I feel scared, when I'm about to do something that maybe it's challenging to the status quo or maybe that is unpopular, I think about the fact that Michael Brown is dead, and he will never be able to enter into another room again. Or he will never be able to do some of the things I've been able to do. And so therefore, as a person who's able to enter the rooms, be in the spaces and be in the positions, I have a responsibility to carry the work forward. And I think about that every single day. And so I think that will continue to impact me and will hopefully result in me maintaining integrity and maintaining principles and maintaining commitment and always being very well grounded in where I come from.
HUANG: That's Alisha Sonnier. She's the alderman representing St. Louis' Seventh Ward. Alisha, thanks for joining us.
SONNIER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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