“They Can’t Kill Us All”: Lowery’s Book Resonates Even Deeper Four Years Later

“You’re gonna write your story, and you're gonna leave town and nothing is going to change. One day, one month, one year from now, after your leave, it’s still going to be fucked up in Ferguson.”

This quote, uttered by well-known activist Edward Crawford during the 2014 Ferguson protests, comes at the end of the first chapter of Wesley Lowery’s memoir and should be looked at as the perfect summation of everything that he attempted to accomplish in writing it: in sharing these powerful stories in the rawest way possible, through the words of those who were there in hopes that someday Ferguson, along with other city in America, will be even a little less fucked up than it was before.

“They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement” is a wonderful blend of reporting, personal narrative and informed analysis of the systemic injustices present in American society and goes on to exhibit how these power structures disproportionately target and harm the very black Americans they’re sworn to protect and serve. Rather than presenting a strictly linear narrative of the events that unfolded in the various civil uprisings that followed the various cases of deadly force used by police officers against black citizens, Lowery taps into the storytelling gene that most journalists tend to have and paints a picture for the reader that is equal parts insightful, sobering and unnerving.

Originally published in 2016, two years after Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, this book resonates deeply in 2020, a year in which police have killed at least one black person every single week through the end of August. This country has seen months of Black Lives Matter rallies, everything from peaceful sit-in protests to harrowing scenes of riots between armored police forces and angry, disenfranchised citizens.

Juxtaposing the racial justice movements from the mid-2010’s and the more recent ones of 2020 highlights a difference that is certainly worth noting— these stories, protests and demands for change are not going away anytime soon. In 2014, Crawford spoke of his frustration with the performative activism of more privileged people who are often unaffected by such racial issues, and the short attention span of the media when it comes to reporting on the ever-present danger of having black skin in America. In the past four months, the nation has seen countless eruptions of anti-racist protests that do much more than just skim the “current events” surface of racial tensions in America— 2020 racial justice movements have brought about police department budget cuts, the removal of Confederate monuments in southern states and resignations from any individual who can’t seem to attune themselves with this new wave of anti-racism that is reverberating across America.

Lowery’s cast of characters that he encounters on the road is a vast one, with most of them popping in for just a few pages before becoming yet another ghost of protests past. But the ones that left a more lasting impression— Johnetta “Netta” Elzie, Bree Newsome, Patrisse Cullors, to name a few— were relatable individuals that helped humanize the undercovered stories behind the greater Black Lives Matter movements. These activists were role models during the early stages of BLM and have inspired hundreds, if not thousands of young social justice leaders across the country in the years since. And those leaders are the ones spearheading the movement we’re living through right now: the continuous protests, the demands for justice, the calls for systemic reform. But this time, Crawford’s words will be heeded as a warning rather than a prophecy— when the protests cease and the reporters go home, things won’t be business as usual. If this is a revolution, then Lowery’s book was the blueprint. In the past five months, the people have proved that they will not make the same mistakes as before, and many will not rest until tangible changes are made to right the systemic wrongs inflicted upon anyone who’s not a straight white male.

Brittany Packnett, cofounder of Campaign Zero and a day-one protester from Ferguson, spoke with Lowery in 2016 and kept her statement simple yet eloquent: “If one of the central demands of the movement is to stop killing us, and they’re still killing us, then we don’t get to stop, either.”