PoliticusUSA’s Justin Baragona was on the scene at the Shaw shooting in south St. Louis late Wednesday evening. 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers, Jr. was shot and killed by a St. Louis police officer at approximately 7:30 PM local time Wednesday. Soon after, a group of people gathered in the neighborhood and started protesting. You can check out Justin’s story about the shooting and aftermath here.
Late in the evening, with well over a hundred protesters blocking off the intersection of Shaw and Grand, two activists approached Justin and struck up a conversation. One activist, Scoolo, is a member of Lost Voices, a community organization that is trying to mobilize and energize young people in and around Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. Justin spoke to Scoolo and Kate Breslin, a graduate student at Washington University’s Brown School, for an extended period of time.
Below is a video showing some of that conversation:
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Due to the large amount of background noise from the protesters on the street, below is a partial transcript of the video:
Scoolo: I do! If Darren Wilson doesn’t go to jail it’s going to get violent.
Breslin: What?
Scoolo: If Darren Wilson doesn’t go to jail it’s going to get violent.
Breslin: What if Darren Wilson doesn’t go to jail until January or so?
Scoolo: There’s supposed to let us know sometime this month.
…
Scoolo: No justice, no peace. I’m out here every night. Lost Voices.
CROSSTALK
Scoolo: A-1 since day one. I’ve been out here since Mike Brown was laid out for four hours — dead.
Baragona: So, umm, with you being with Lost Voices, so I’ve heard that they’ve gotten rid of where you’ve gathered, you can’t gather there anymore. Have you gotten a new place? Now you don’t have to say any of that…
Scoolo: No. We haven’t got a new place yet. We’re still trying to establish it. You can go to thelostvoices.com.
Baragona: Yeah. But I know there was a building that you guys were using now they kind of boarded it up.
Scoolo: Police came and removed us unlawfully. We had permission to be there.
Baragona: Yeah, that’s what I understood.
Scoolo: Stepped on us. Stepped on us.
…
Scoolo: No justice, no peace. No racist police. No people.
