Talib Kweli Opens Up About His Experience In Ferguson, Says His Life Was Threatened

As more details are revealed in the shooting death of Ferguson teen Mike Brown, those who took the streets to protest are opening up about their experience, including hip-hop activist Talib Kweli.

Billboard spoke to Kweli about his experience on the front lines. Read Talib Kweli's account in his own words below.

Was my life threatened in Ferguson? Oh, yeah. I had a cop telling me he was going to blow "my f-ing head off." I was with poet Jessica Care Moore and activist professor Rosa Clemente. We got chased, and people next to me got tackled. The cops were tackling people like lions tackle gazelles. I didn't get tackled, but I got stopped. They pointed guns at my group and they made us lay on the ground while they secured the area. And there was a black cop who got upset at the way the police were treating us. He said, "These people didn't do anything. You have to let them go." If he didn't step up, I would have been arrested.

In an essay published by Billboard, Kweli discusses millennial activism and the connection between the protest in Ferguson and the Civil Rights movement.

The American civil rights movement set the stage for the protests worldwide. It was the images of people being attacked by dogs, being sprayed by fire hoses for sitting at lunch counters, of people walking hand in hand with Dr. King, people like Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne marching on Washington, D.C. It was the people, risking their lives -- bodies on the streets -- who made it a movement.

I use social media a lot. I'm on Twitter especially, and I saw a disturbing trend of people congratulating themselves for tweeting or retweeting things about Ferguson. Social media is a great tool, but to say that it's responsible for the Arab Spring or the protests in Ferguson is a slippery, dangerous slope. Millennials are getting caught up in the activism they attempt with technology, but it's an empty kind of activism. You can't get real results without boots and bodies on the ground.

Read more of Talib Kweli's essay here.

Tags

Talib Kweli