Organized by the activist groups Hands Up United and Latinos en Axion, the gathering intended to build solidarity between the African-American and Latino communities in the Ferguson movement – both locally and nationally.
Several people shared their experiences of race – from people who grew up in Mexico to those raised in the impoverished neighborhoods of Ferguson.
Organizer Jay-Marie Hill tells me that participants consider them more as examples of direct action than true “protests” per se. “We don’t really call it a protest,” she tells me, “because it’s not quite a protest. A direct action is an event that rallies energy around a certain topic to help people understand the deeper meaning underneath it or around some events that have taken place. The point of #BlackBrunch isn’t to annoy people. It’s because people are enraged, and have strong feelings, and they want people to know about that.”
Despite its nearly 100-year history, Black History Month often excludes the contributions of African and Caribbean-born leaders and even some American-born leaders, who get buried beneath staples such as civil rights activists Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. These leaders and activists have earned their rightful place in history, however a disservice is done to countless other leaders from around the world who too fought for Black liberation.
