Witness To History: Ferguson Leader Dacia Polk On Black People’s Right To Self-Defense

Dacia Polk remembers all the ways she once felt afraid. The Ferguson Uprising leader remembers what it felt like raising her children alone and unsupported in Missouri’s St. Louis County. Barely in her 20s as the second decade of a new millennia stomped in, Dacia holds the specific memory of a poet who carries every large and every small detail that formed the bricks that formed the road she walked during her journey to self-transformation. It was one that would transform both her community and a nation.

In this week’s episode of Witness to History: Ferguson 10, our host and co-producer, Tory Russell, speaks with Dacia, the award-winning poet who spent years learning how to stay balanced and calm in the face of all manner of chaos, took her training to another level. She learned the art of handling weapons, large guns and small ones. She was the obvious person to lead the security for the protestors during the 2014 uprising that followed the Aug. 9, shooting death that year of unarmed, Black teenager Michael Brown Jr.

He’d been killed in broad daylight by a white (now former) Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson.

He’d been killed less than 90 seconds after Wilson first saw him walking with a friend down a Ferguson street at noon. It was a Saturday, 48 hours before he was to start college.

The Terrible Prologue

Two years earlier, in 2012, Dacia’s work to transform took on an extraordinary urgency. That year, news began to trickle out across social media: an unarmed Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed on Feb. 26, in Sanford, Florida. The killer was a white man, a vigilante named George Zimmerman who was part of the neighborhood watch. Trayvon, 17, was simply walking back to his father’s home. But a Black teenager breathing on Zimmerman’s watch caused the racist vigilante to become irrational and suspicious

Zimmerman called the real cops about the teenager who, in the real world, had run to the local corner store to get his little brother Skittles and iced tea. The cops told him to leave the kid alone. They said a unit was on the way and they would handle things. Zimmerman ignored the order and decided to instead aggressively approach Trayvon from behind. The 17-year-old hadn’t noticed him initially. He’d been focused on his phone call with a friend who needed comforting after being targeted by bullies. She heard Trayvon cry out and she heard him being shot to death.

The moment Dacia learned about Trayvon was the moment her focus became completely clear: she knew she was being called to protect her community. And then there was the public assassination at high noon of Michael Brown. She headed out, armed and ready, to defend her community.

We Have The Right To Protect Ourselves

Ten years after Ferguson, Dacia is still defending her community. A few months after Michael Brown was killed–and seeing and feeling the pain in her community as she did her own–Dacia created a loving space for poetry with her popular weekly open mic, WordUp!,which continues to thrive.

She’s defending her community by writing and speaking words that heal. She’s defending her community by healing herself from the trauma experienced during those militarized months–and the years of it that followed so many frontline organizers and activists.

Dacia tells Tory how she’s retained ownership of her own self–along with the right to defend herself against assailants. She tells him she wants Black people everywhere to know that too. She tells him that good leaders don’t actually make other people follow them. Good leaders show people how to lead themselves.

SEE MORE:

Ferguson X: A Conversation With Mike Brown, Sr.

Witness To History: Ferguson 10 And The Attorney Who Was Forged In Fire

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