{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/cf9j38nf40/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Oral history interview with Brandon Fish part II"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/212/original/LOHI_aviarybanner2.jpg?1741032082","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2021-12-17"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["Brandon Fish was born in 1987 in/near Fort Lauderdale, Florida and moved to Charleston, S.C. at a young age. He is a well known organizer and activist within the greater Charleston area and director of community relations at the Charleston Jewish Federation. Fish was inolved in both the Occupy Wall Street and a co-founding member of Black Lives Matter Charleston."]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Copyright © Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture."]}},{"label":{"en":["Access Note"]},"value":{"en":["For more information contact the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, 125 Bull Street, Charleston, SC 29424."]}},{"label":{"en":["Access Statement"]},"value":{"en":["All rights reserved."]}},{"label":{"en":["Interviewee"]},"value":{"en":["Fish, Brandon, 1987-"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interviewer"]},"value":{"en":["Brown, Millicent E., 1948-"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Topical"]},"value":{"en":["Civil rights demonstrations","African Americans","Political activists","Black lives matter movement","Activism","Political participation","Community organization","Social movements"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Personal or Corporate"]},"value":{"en":["d'Baha, Muhiyidin, 1985-2018","Moye, Muhiyidin, 1985-2018","Scott, Walter, 1965-2016","International Longshoremen's Association","Charleston Jewish Federation (Charleston, S.C.)","Southerners on New Ground (Charleston, S.C.)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Geographic"]},"value":{"en":["Charleston (S.C.)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Geographic County"]},"value":{"en":["Charleston County (S.C.)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Contributing Institution"]},"value":{"en":["Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston"]}},{"label":{"en":["Media Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral Histories"]}},{"label":{"en":["Resource Locator"]},"value":{"en":["AMN 1168.001.007"]}},{"label":{"en":["Digitization Specifications"]},"value":{"en":["Mp4 derivative audio and video created using Davinci Resolve. Archival masters are all mp4 files."]}},{"label":{"en":["Date Digital"]},"value":{"en":["2022"]}}],"summary":{"en":["Brandon Fish was born in 1987 in/near Fort Lauderdale, Florida and moved to Charleston, S.C. at a young age. He is a well known organizer and activist within the greater Charleston area and director of community relations at the Charleston Jewish Federation. Fish was inolved in both the Occupy Wall Street and a co-founding member of Black Lives Matter Charleston."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Copyright © Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowcountry Digital Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowcountry Digital Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/212/original/LOHI_aviarybanner2.jpg?1741032082","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/298/957/small/open-uri20251217-4125201-qlgosi_1766000284.jpg?1766000286","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20251217-4125201-qlgosi.mp4"]},"duration":4574.015,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/298/957/small/open-uri20251217-4125201-qlgosi_1766000284.jpg?1766000286","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-cofc.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/298/957/original/open-uri20251217-4125201-qlgosi.mp4?1766000276","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4574.015,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["DTA Interview - Brandon Fish pt. 2 - Edited Transcript.docx [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nBrandon Fish, B-R-A-N-D-O-N F-I-S-H. Part two.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=0.0,5.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nGood. Brandon, because we spent some time allowing you to share with us some of your own personal motivation about getting involved in the activities in Charleston, we want you to just continue a little bit. You had given us your background and some of the skill sets that came out of your introduction through Occupy, and then your continued involvement into what then becomes the Black Lives movement of Charleston. So, we just want you to go back to how all of that plays out – you know, the work that gets done – but how does that work get done? You don't just say, “We’re going to organize.” So, to the extent that you can, would you just sort of share with us the kind of grunt work that had to happen?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5.0,73.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, Occupy is a good starting place for that, because I think during the Occupy movement, and when I say we, I'm referring to kind of a cast of progressive characters in the Charleston area that were identified at the beginning of Occupy, but probably by me, but before then probably with other things that were going on in Charleston. And they were the same people that would call on each other whenever there was something going on, some kind of organizing that needed to happen around a progressive idea, a progressive issue. And I think from Occupy, we learned a lot about do-it-yourself organizing on issues, educating ourselves about issues, how to incorporate other people and use their skill sets in the work that you're doing. I think we also learned a lot of lessons about riding the waves of interest in things. So, you know, during Occupy-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=73.0,131.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nDo that again for me. Riding the-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=131.0,133.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nRiding the waves of public interest in issues. So, for example, when Occupy was happening, really what allowed that movement to take off, or one of the things that allowed that movement to take out off was, this came after the recession, the bailout of Wall Street. People were universally upset about that on the right and the left. It was a unifying factor. People didn't like the idea that the government wrote a big cheque to Wall Street and people were getting, if you remember back to the time period, people were getting kicked out of their homes. So many people were getting kicked out of their homes and homelessness was skyrocketing. Families who were becoming homeless for the first time, that number was skyrocketing. And there was a very real sense that... and there was a chant, “The banks got bailed out. We got sold out,” that people said at the time, and that's how they felt: that everybody was suffering on the lower end of things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=133.0,191.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd Occupy really capitalized off of that moment. They capitalized off of the idea that our politics are heavily influenced by private campaign funding. And that was an issue that at the time, Tea Party people could get behind. They were upset about that as they had been shot out of the mainstream by the Republican Party. And at the same time, this was a very leftist sort of movement that came out of Adbusters and other far-left socialist and anarchist groups that were active in New York. They initially called for an occupation of Wall Street and ended up spreading around the country very quickly. So, I think in that movement and locally we had the primaries that came into town, we learned that that was a good opportunity to jump in on an issue, show up at presidential events, hijack some of that media attention by interrupting speeches.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=191.0,256.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I think people got a sense for how you could recognize that the media is going to be paying attention to this, or people were going to be paying attention to an issue, and now's the time to really grab a hold of, take advantage of that attention. So, it’s also a way to identify people that care about the same things that you do. So, after Occupy, we had this campus movement - a lot of the same cast of characters, a lot of the Occupy people, especially the younger ones were at the College or had connections to the College – so, a lot of the organizing that took place at the College were with some of the same people. Specifically, there's a character, he doesn't live here anymore. His name is Matt Rabin and he was very active in the Occupy Group, one of the lead organizers. And he was also going to the College when Glenn McConnell became president.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=256.0,313.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I remember circling up with him and a couple of others like Adrian Barry, who also moved to New Jersey recently, but also was at the College and worked at the College for a long time and saying, \"Listen, Glenn McConnell just became president of the College. He's a neo-Confederate; a lot of different groups are upset about this and don't really know which direction to go in with this.\" And we were like, \"We do.\" You make a hashtag, you start a Facebook group - because a lot of organizing was happening on Facebook at the time - you create a website, create a logo, you make something that looks very professional, and then you get active, you start doing press releases. We developed good relationships with some of the media, especially Paul Bowers at the City Paper, who was covering a lot of protests that were going on. We also knew to tap into, at that point the ILA Hall, the South Carolina Progressive Network was, at the time, organizing in Charleston.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=313.0,377.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey no longer have a presence here so much. There was a group called CAFE, there was a workers' group, and we knew that we could rally support from those folks. And if we wanted to, we knew from experience that we wanted to have meetings and things, what were safe places to go where they wouldn't be infiltrated and interrupted or driven off track. We also knew very well from Occupy how the police operate when you're undesired by the city. I had been arrested at a protest with 11, with 10 other people, where we went there intending to take a stand and ultimately be arrested. We'd been prepared to do that. So, we kind of knew the process of what it was like getting arrested, how to stage a nonviolent direct action. We'd studied a lot of Dr. King and other thinkers on nonviolent direct action and the importance of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=377.0,434.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nWe also knew what it was like to be surveilled by the police and how to be careful about that. I spent a lot of time being followed by police officers during the Occupy movement, followed around campus. I remember I got a picture. I used to be somewhat of a photographer, like maybe some of you, and I would carry around a camera everywhere I went and I was able to take a photograph of two plainclothes officers in the car giving me the middle finger as I took their picture. But I saw them outside of my house taking down license plate numbers. They would show up in meetings. People's Facebook profiles would suddenly be inaccessible. They would follow all the groups on Facebook and know where to show up, when to show up. I got pulled over for a while, every few days for a couple of months, and for things that they would cite things that I didn't do, like “You made a left at this red light,” and I hadn't made a left at the red light.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=434.0,497.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd they would ask for permission to search your car, out of nowhere. There was no reason to do that. We were all, you know, we were all educated, well put together college people, and it was Matt Rabin's experience too, and some others’, where they were just constantly being harassed. We were constantly being harassed by police. So, we had some experience with that also. And certainly that primed some of those characters to recognize that there's a problem with the way that law enforcement goes about their business. And certainly the experience that activists have with law enforcement, especially white activists that don't have that experience, previous experience with law enforcement, it really makes what Black people are talking about when Black Lives Matter comes up a lot more understandable and relatable to a lot of those activists that became targets of the law for the first time in their lives, law enforcement for the first times in their lives. So, that was certainly my experience with law enforcement.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=497.0,562.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nIt is scary to experience that for the first time in your life - scary to experience that at any time in your life, to feel that somebody with the power of the law behind them and weapons have the power to stop you in your daily life whenever, you don't know when, and they're going to do things that are not legal. It's not legal to search a vehicle without probable cause, and we'd be constantly subject to things like that. So, we already had an appreciation for that. So, when the stuff kicked off on campus, everybody kind of had this playbook for organizing a local movement, who to talk to, what to do online, how to talk to the media. People had some experience with that. So, when Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson – well, before that, even, when Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida - here was a big rally that a young lady had started to organize.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=562.0,624.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nShe had made a Facebook event, tried to get a permit from the city, and a lot of the people that were involved with Occupy - I can't remember if Occupy was active at the time or whether it was Fight for CofC [College of Charleston] - the student group, but they reached out to this young lady who was organizing this march and said, and basically told her, “You don't have to do everything the police tell you to do,” because they told her that she couldn't march anywhere south of Calhoun Street, I remember. And they say this all the time; they say this now, too. And that was kind of like the dividing line and  you were allowed to make noise on this side of town, but as soon as you start coming into the side of town where the tourists are at or the money is at, or city hall is at, you're going to have a problem.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=624.0,667.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd we told her, “So that's exactly where you should march.” And she ended up marching with a group of several hundred people from Marion Square to Washington Square Park, which is by Broad Street. And there were some victory dances along the way. People walked up to city council, city hall's steps and down them again. And we took pictures from city hall's steps and the people that were showing up for Trayvon Martin were not the same group of people that were showing up for Occupy. Occupy was very white and a lot of people who lived in the areas - and not just insulated in college, in the college campus - cared about the fact that Trayvon Martin was killed. And the people that cared about that were a different group of people, a lot more Black people, a lot more people from the east side area that just walked over to this protest.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=667.0,732.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd so I think at that point it was kind of tangible that this was an issue that needed to be resolved, that there is a lot of tension about in the Black community that I hadn't been exposed to that much up to that point. And when it comes to activism, something that I always tell people in terms of grassroots organizing is that you can't manufacture outrage for an issue. When the Occupy movement started dying down and people were like, \"Well, why aren't y'all organizing this better? Why isn't there more stuff?\" And it's because people stopped showing up, and you can't get people riled up about something unless they're already upset about it. So, the fact that there was so much energy from the Black community and specifically Black community in Charleston around the issue of police, of targeting young Black men, not just police officers, but also people like George Zimmerman who thought they were police officers, who acted like police officers.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=732.0,796.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nIt clicked something in my head in a lot of people's heads at the time that this is... to have that critical mass of people that care about an issue means that as a grassroots organizer, you've got a chance to change something. Because unless people show up, you have no power as a grassroots organizer. Nobody wants to hear somebody who just becomes a regular name showing up and complaining about things and making a lot of noise. I mean, it’s great, but unless you have people behind you, you're essentially powerless. So, anyway, it's a lot to say that there was already groups of people that were active organizers in the area, and it’s all about what was taking center stage at the moment. And after Trayvon Martin was killed, I think a lot of the stuff, a lot of the organizing happened on campus. A lot of different groups, as I mentioned in the last interview, started getting together like the Black Student Union also at that point, SONG, Southerners On New Ground, which was really coming out of the Women's and Gender Studies part of the College was getting active.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=796.0,862.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey were really involved with the Fight for CofC group and who else, Thomas Dixon showed up for that as well. It was the first time I ever met Pastor Dixon and Papa Smurf, a couple of other activists showed up to the campus and were very supportive of the student groups. At that point, after that - after he became president, which was a big loss for the movement, but there were protests on campus that were as big as since the Vietnam War, biggest protest since the Vietnam War. There were student walkouts, major student walkouts, the whole Cistern Yard covered with people. And then when the LGBTQ book was assigned and they tried to cut funding to the school because of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home book, those same groups took up that cause that took up the cause of keeping Glenn McConnell out of the state house, out of the College, because it was the same - almost the same issue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=862.0,931.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nIt was Columbia, this power structure in Columbia telling students, the College of Charleston Professors prescribing what they should be doing when they have no idea what they should be doing or interest in what they should be doing. And for LGBTQ folks, this was critical because so many students that were coming from Rock Hill, other places in South Carolina who were LGBTQ were coming to the College of Charleston and the city of Charleston. It was like an oasis for them. It was the first time they described it being the first time in their lives where they had people to look up to were LGBTQ professors where they were receiving some validation in their studies. This was like a safe space, an oasis, at the College. And the idea that from Columbia, they could affect that in a negative way was a scary thing for a lot of people. So, anyway, all of those people started working together.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=931.0,987.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, those ties were kind of already being built between progressives, between activists in the Black community, between the who I call the academic folks, like the SONG folks. I'm going to get very personal. At the time... I've had Major Depressive Disorder my whole life, and I've gone throughout my life in various stages through periods of deep depression to the point where I could be stuck in a room for three weeks at my worst points. And since then I've gone through some therapy and gotten on the right medication, thank God I haven't had an issue with this for several years, but Pastor Dixon, who had become a close friend of mine through who Fight for CofC started pulling me in, recognized that I had some set of skills as an organizer, started pulling me into some of the work that he was doing, especially with gun violence.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=987.0,1048.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nHe used to show up every time somebody would be killed in a gun violence incident and show up for the family and really give them a shoulder to cry on and then tie their story into the greater need to address gun violence. So, he started pulling me into those things and I started showing up for, he would come to my house and pick me up. He recognized that I was going through this funk, and he would come to my house and pick me up in his car and we would go to Orangeburg, where they're having a forum on gun violence or where the Orangeburg massacre had happened. And we would go to different things all across the state together. And I became very close with him, Papa Smurf, Rez, who was part of the South Carolina Rhinos group. And he had this thing at the time called the Coalition, and there were a lot of organizers working in it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1048.0,1099.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nElder Johnson at some point was working with them, wasn't working with them anymore, he was working with the MUSC workers. So, long story short, I started getting a lot more connected to the Black community in a way that I wasn't before. And I also was a big help to him, because there's a generational gap there, and at the time, he was not a fan of nonviolent direct action and things like that. And I brought a little more a radical bent to his coalition. So, in August, Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson and people hit the street. And I had not in my lifetime seen the amount of people hitting the street for a social issue, and it was very inspiring. I mean, to see people, first of all, to see what happened with Mike Brown and what pattern that represented was very emotionally... I mean, it's awful, and it really motivates somebody who wants to make the world better to do something about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1099.0,1167.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd so, seeing what was happening in Ferguson and the way that a community was coming out to react to something but also to push for certain reforms was very inspiring. It felt immediately like something that I wanted to be involved in. I didn't really know how to be involved in it, but what I started doing was watching these live streams that were coming from on the ground in Ferguson. A lot of these people were the same kind of activist journalists that were covering Occupy protests, where people were being - the livestream culture around protests had really taken off during Occupy - and people were watching live as people were being rounded up by police. They were documenting police violence in the Occupy movement. When they cleared Zuccotti Park, there was a lot of live streaming going on. It was the beginning of that kind of live-streaming culture, and that was happening all on the ground in Ferguson. And these live streams were crazy because police were rolling up in tanks and tear-gassing crowds of a thousand and more people. They're shooting at crowds. It was...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1167.0,1234.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nIt felt like a very historic moment. And I started this Facebook group called Justice for Mike Brown Charleston, and at first it was to just connect with other people in Charleston who were following what was going on in Ferguson and maybe wanted to eventually do some work around police reform. And so we started by just sharing live streams, what was happening in Ferguson every night, because every night that someone would go down, people would flood the streets, and there was action, and there were all these amazing activists that came out of this movement; DeRay Mckesson, Anetta, all of these Twitter commentators that were on the scene in Ferguson, that were live tweeting everything that was happening and really connecting with all the grassroots organizers on the ground there. I started connecting with them on Twitter. “Black Lives Matter” became the rallying cry of Ferguson. It was a statement, but also becoming a movement. But at its very root was a statement: that Black lives matter, that you can't just kill a Mike Brown, not anymore, and not expect a reaction to it, and that lives are not dispensable and that-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1234.0,1318.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nHow is that being received in Charleston?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1318.0,1323.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nI think at first people didn't know how to receive it, and there was a lot more support for it at that point than I think there would be now if you took a poll. But people were pretty supportive of the Occupy movement and if some of the horizontal movements that had come up, there was some widespread support of that. And you saw a lot of musicians and celebrities getting involved. In Charleston people were flooding to this Facebook page and they were paying attention to what was happening in Ferguson. So, there was a lot of movement in that sense.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1323.0,1358.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAt some point, I decided that what I wanted to do was go to Ferguson and live stream everything that was happening, report back to the Charleston community, get people amped up about this growing movement. And so I did a GoFundMe - which is funny looking back at it, because people now do GoFundMes for everything. It was a relatively new thing at that point. And I actually did an interview with Paul Bowers in the City Paper about what was happening in Ferguson, and I wanted to go live stream it as a Charleston activist to the activist community back here so they could see what was happening every day.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1358.0,1397.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nI had a couple friends give me a few hundred bucks, and I took a Greyhound bus to Ferguson with my camera and my laptop. I stayed in a cheap motel with some other people that had also, other people came because they wanted to go to Ferguson. I remember I got off the bus there, said... There was a train station, and I asked somebody, \"How do I get to Ferguson?\" In St. Louis, the suburb of St. Louis. And they said, \"You don't want to go to Ferguson.\" And I said, \"No, that's exactly why I'm here. I'm going to Ferguson.\" And he went off on a rant about the people in Ferguson and people showing up from out of town to go into Ferguson. And when I got to my hotel, I ended up... Well, actually, I went straight to St. Mark's Church, which was an organizing space for the folks in Ferguson.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1397.0,1450.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I was met with probably, well, I was met with what I expected, which was distrust as somebody that showed up, a white guy that showed up from out of town say, I want to help you organize. I don't know what I thought I was going to help with. I think I thought I was a lot more experienced at that point than I really was. And I ended up getting separated out into a National Lawyers Guild training room, and I did a lot of observing while I was there. Came back to Charleston right after that, after I ran out of money. I met a lot of amazing people in Ferguson. I was staying at a hotel with a guy from the national [laughter] not the National Socialist Party, but some kind of socialist group. There were a lot of folks in Ferguson from different groups that were trying to get a piece of whatever the attention was that was flowing into Ferguson at the moment.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1450.0,1504.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, there was a weird group from Chicago, a communist group that was egging on people to start fights with the police that that were showing up to the protest. It was a little crazy. I remember being at a protest, and then I'll move on from this topic, but I remember being at a protest and the police all lined up. The police told everybody to leave and nobody left, of course. And the police all lined up in a row, and they all took out these giant sticks. And this has happened in Charleston since, but at the time it was very, it wasn't a common sight to see a bunch of police lined up with giant wooden sticks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1504.0,1546.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey put on their tear gas masks – I had a gas mask, and there were kids there. I mean, this was like","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=1546.0,4290.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"at night. There were little kids riding their bikes through the space between the protesters and the police. And things were relatively calm, up until the police decided to line up with giant sticks. And it raised the tension from a two to an eight. And at the same time, you had over here this communist group that was going, \"Yeah, somebody throw a rock at the police! We need to fight them here and now - this is where we're going to win the battle!\" Oh, egging people on. And I remember thinking, “These people don't live here. They don't care about these kids that are riding bicycles. They don't care about the safety of anybody there. They want a fight.” And they were very open about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=4290.0,5204.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey wanted to create a fight that would lead to some class war. But there were a lot of groups like that that would show up - they had their own agendas - and that was a kind of preview of what would come to happen in Charleston and other places around the country. So, I got back to Charleston. I called somebody from SONG at the time, his name is Lyles, their name is Lyles. And I said, \"Do you know anybody organizing already in Charleston on the issue of police reform?\" I was very naive about what the landscape was at the time, but I always know it's a good idea to reach out and try to see what's already happening before you go and reinvent the wheel. So, Lyles said, \"No, there's not really a lot of organizing, grassroots organizing going on around this issue, but you should connect with this guy Muhiyidin d'Baha. He just moved here. He's trying to get the lay of the land.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5204.0,5264.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I said, \"Okay, yeah, I think I'll reach out to him.\" I reached out to him. I had a conversation that was kind of strange, and I ultimately didn't decide to meet up with him at that time. He reached out to me on Facebook under the name Moya Moye, which was his name, and he sent me some messages like, \"What are all of the factors in Charleston?\" Basically, power-mapping questions, like, “Who's in power over here? Who's in power over there?” and he was asking questions in a way that was very strange to me. And I remember at the time thinking, “I'm going to press pause and talking to this guy for a little while.” Dixon had - there had been a man killed here named Denzel Curnell, a young man who had been in the Army.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5264.0,5311.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nHe got into a wrestling match with the police officer, allegedly, and took out a gun and shot himself. Mysteriously, that whole interplay was missing from the footage at Bridgeview Apartments. Bridgeview, I had some experience with, everybody calls it Bayside because it used to be called Bayside, and it's a very poor neighborhood. It's really a development within the neighborhood of the East Side. And there's one way into the neighborhood and one way out. I have been in there with some folks during Occupy to put up new basketball hoops there and do some Christmas event with some neighborhood groups there. We really wanted to be supportive at the time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5311.0,5362.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd we had gone to city council to complain about the fact that the city wasn't paying any attention to this neighborhood. There's trash everywhere. The city wasn't coming to clean it like they would other neighborhoods. They had blocked off one exit to deal with violent crimes. There was only one way in and one way out. And a building had burned down before the fire truck got to it because the fire truck went to the other exit. And so we were talking about that at City Council. So, I had some familiarity with that neighborhood. So, Denzel Curnell was killed in that neighborhood. There was no footage of it. It was a weird story. And usually when it's a weird story, there's a more realistic explanation. And I showed up to, I called my friend Ramon who lived on the east side. His name is Ramon Caraballo.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5362.0,5413.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nHe was very active in Occupy. He was Black Army veteran, had a lot of run-ins with the police over the years, got arrested with me during Occupy. And so I called him to see what he knew about that, and he said, there's this vigil going on for him in, I think it was Brittlebank Park. We rolled up to the vigil and this guy gets out of a car. This guy rolls up in a Cadillac, okay, the news, we're sitting there talking with the family of the victim, Denzel, and his name was Jab, people called him Jaba, and some of his friends were there and they were crying and they were talking about wanting to get justice for this killing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5413.0,5464.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, out of nowhere, the news shows up, the cameras show up, and suddenly this Cadillac that had been parked in the far side of the parking lot, somebody hops out, walks up to us and the news cameras and acts like they're running the whole vigil out of nowhere. Nobody knew this guy. And he acted like he was running the whole vigil, and he was telling the family to quiet down that it is not there. It's not your turn to talk or that's not what we're going to say here. He was tone policing the family. This fellow was named Elder Johnson. Elder James Johnson. He was active at the National Action Network. He was their local representative. I didn't know him at the time, and he talked to the news for a while. News cameras left. Elder Johnson left. He actually had to do his interview on the other side of the park because the family had been so upset by his interaction with them that they weren't letting him continue on with his interview, and they ended up having to go film on the other side of the park.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5464.0,5527.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I remember thinking, these are the establishment groups that are active on this issue. They're not connecting at all with the people. It was very obvious to me without knowing this person, that their primary concern, based on their own actions was talking to the news camera and making a statement and ended up offending the family. And I just thought, this is a really bad MO for doing something about this. Dixon got together with the family and held a rally that we still have some pictures of somewhere on the east side in a lot that is owned by some church. And a lot of people came out to that. Dwayne German, the father of Denzel Curnell, some other folks to talk about the issue of police violence. And it was the first time I had, I was back from Ferguson, so I had this shirt fresh from Ferguson, hands up, don't shoot. That's what everybody was saying because Mike Brown had his hands up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5527.0,5595.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd so several people, first time we saw them, we were at that rally, Jessie Parks who was interviewed, that was the first time she had shown up. She was also involved with Occupy. What's his name, Dimitri Cherny, who was for all the early Black Lives Matter meetings, was there, walked up out of nowhere, didn't even know about the rally, just was walking down the street and said, \"What's this about?\" And connected with a lot of people who would go on to be his best friends. There were some college students that showed up too, that had been involved with Fight for CofC because Dixon had had a presence there, had shown up to this event. But it made really clear that there was a desire to do something about police reform in Charleston, and that this wasn't an issue that's isolated to Ferguson or just some other places, that this is a systemic issue that is going on in communities all across the country.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5595.0,5654.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd that Charleston was certainly no exception because as soon as I gotten back here from Ferguson, I am going give myself a disclaimer here that I'm a very naive ... I was a very naive person at that point. I was very uneducated about what was happening in the Black community and with police violence in general. So, my personal view at the time was, wow, it didn't take very long to recognize that somebody else was killed by the police in Charleston. Just in the time that I had been in Ferguson or this is happening here regularly, and talking to all of these people, the interactions that they have with law enforcement, look nothing like my pre-activism interactions with law enforcement. And so it wasn't through talking points that I got connected to the Black Lives Matter movement. It was really - everything that I've learned has not been from a book about activism, has really been from experiences.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5654.0,5713.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, I talked to a lot of people firsthand about what their experiences with law enforcement were. It didn't take a genius to recognize that those experiences were different than mine. Growing up in a suburb, in a white suburb where law enforcement makes you feel safe, I had experienced already the disparity in those experiences when I became an activist, and I realized how different law enforcement was suddenly treating me. And I kind of realized at that time that this is how Black people are getting treated all the time by law enforcement. It is not these isolated incidents. It is a systemic and serious problem. And talking to all those people in the neighborhood, everybody had a story about a negative interaction with law enforcement where they felt scared or their life was endangered. And so, it was-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5713.0,5764.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nLet me just kind of stop you for a second and say, with those kinds of realizations, how does that get communicated to a broader segment? I mean, some of the folks from the College of Charleston or whatever, because you're learning that this is not new, especially to the east side of Charleston, you know, Black folks. Tell us a little bit about how those lessons get communicated to a broader community - be they white or Black - but what has to happen to get this realization out there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5764.0,5807.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nWe often think about what happened in Ferguson, what happened to other places as very grassroots, organic, holistic resistance. But there also are other groups that show up, not just to disrupt what's happening in the case of this Communist party or whatever, but groups that say, “There's something happening here in Ferguson. Police reform is a major issue that we've been thinking about for a long time. Let's throw a bunch of resources into Ferguson.” And there were a lot of big national, progressive organizations that were giving money into Ferguson. It's become a big joke now, like everybody got a paycheck from George Soros or whatever.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5807.0,5844.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nBut there really were organizations showing up saying, here we have resources, not just financial, but also in terms of talking points. These are stats on what's happening across the country. And so there was a lot to work with at that time. So, when people decided, when I decided it was something I wanted to work on, I had a lot of talking points. I always lean on my own experiences as ways to share with other people like me, and learning firsthand from people what they're going through and then looking at stats that back that up, it was relatively easy for me to walk other people like myself through what this issue is, because-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5844.0,5892.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nNow, and how?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5892.0,5895.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd how. So, I'm struggling to remember the exact-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5895.0,5898.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nI know, but- BRANDON FISH\n\nThe exact message.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5898.0,5899.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThe exact message.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5899.0,5899.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThe exact message. MILLICENT BROWN\n\nAll I'm saying is, help us understand what is happening in Charleston. Are people meeting regularly? Are they meeting monthly? Are they being phoned on the telephone? Kind of how does this work?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5899.0,5919.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, we're very slowly getting there. So after that, after that protest, I think we decided - I don't remember who even “we” were - but at some point in there, I got to meet Muhiyidin in person. We met at the College. He was much more of the sensibility and generation that I was in than Dixon was. And so, when we were thinking about solutions and ways to organize around this issue, it was much easier. Immediately I found a partner in Muhiyidin because he had been active in Occupy. He also straddled a bunch of different worlds. He was somebody a lot more educated academically than I was. He had his Master's degree, so he very easily would - he was a very easy code-switching. He was very comfortable in an academic setting and among college students and among white college students. And then he would walk into a room full of Black folks from the east side and be just as at ease, just as easy to relate to people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5919.0,5990.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd him and I were of the same mind in terms of a lot of organizing strategies. Now, we're a very different mind in terms of the way that we process things. He brought a lot of spirituality into the mix. He was much better at emotionally connecting with people. I'm trying to think of a good way to describe it. But anyway, we met at the College of Charleston. He walked in with no shoes, wearing a hippie outfit with - almost like an Indian kind of outfit. And he had a girlfriend who was white, and a kid that they were both looking after.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=5990.0,6033.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nShe was, like, a total hippie. She was like... Anyway, at some point I connected with him and I connected with some of the people that I organized with Occupy, and we said we should have a meeting, talk about police reform, and ask all the people that have expressed interest, ask the people that have shown up at this Facebook group, ask all the usual suspects in the Charleston activist scene to come talk about what the problem... Identify what the problem is, talk about the stats behind that problem, and then talk about what the solutions are.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6033.0,6072.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I think things were really based off of accountability - police accountability. When we were looking at what's happening in Ferguson, there's no accountability for officers who behave in these ways. And without any kind of system of accountability, you have a problem regardless of what the results end up being on paper. So, a lot of what we talked about was accountability at the time. So, I reached out to Leonard Riley, I still have - I just went through these emails for this project. I sent an email to Leonard Riley from the ILA Hall to ask him if we could use one of their rooms, because we wanted to organize around police accountability or police reform. Muhiyidin facilitated that meeting. He planned it out. A lot of people showed up. We have a list of names still from this meeting, the agendas, we are very meticulous note keepers because of this idea of having people bring their strengths.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6072.0,6131.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSomebody volunteered to be the secretary of the meeting and to take notes on everything that happened. Somebody else volunteered to get that information out to everybody. But we started with an email list. We started with an email list, and I'm assuming a lot of Facebook communication, very little phone communication, except with older-generation people probably. But we had an email list that you could still go back and look at. And they came to the ILA Hall, I want to say maybe 20, 30 people, and said, \"This is happening all over the country.\" I think one of the things that really spurred it on also was that Eric Garner was killed. And I had to go back and look at the timeline, but Eric Garner, who in case you're a viewer who doesn't know anything about Eric Garner, was a man selling cigarettes in Staten Island, which is a very heavily... Like, it's an area with a lot of police officers from retired police officers and very police-minded people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6131.0,6187.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd a police officer had walked up to him, tried to stop him, and decided he was going to get him in a headlock, subdue him. And he ended up very violently tackling him to the ground, and saying - and Eric Garner kept saying - I can't breathe. That became a phrase that was kind of burned into everybody's mind. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. A video was shot of this. The guy who shot the video ended up getting charged with a crime. The officer involved was not, at the time, penalized. He never, I don't think faced any charges for his behavior.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6187.0,6227.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd that was a shocking thing, not to the Black community so much as it was to the white community, to see these things on video. To hear people talk about them was one thing. People don't believe other people when they talk, especially if it's not something that jives with their understanding of things are. But to see these videos take place, for white America... I mean for Black America, was just re-traumatizing, I think. And for white America, it was shocking. And, “I can't believe that this officer behaved in that way because my officer never behaves that way when he comes up.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6227.0,6265.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nWhat about in white Charleston?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6265.0,6266.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nIn white Charleston, I think among a certain group of progressive people, it was a big shock to people. And I think for other people, it was like, “Well, our officers...” - Charleston has a very exceptionalist attitude. Like, “Well, our police department doesn't behave that way and not in the polite city of Charleston, and we've never heard anybody complain about this, so it's not a problem.” And, you know, they've been ignoring people complaining for so long that people stop complaining in public ways about the behavior of these officers. So, anyway, what happened in December - right at the beginning of December – was... So, we had a meeting before December, I want to say the end of November. It was very well attended. There were a lot of smart people in the room that wanted to start drafting policy recommendations. Everybody was very nerdy, somewhat like myself, and was like, “Let's draft these policy proposals.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6266.0,6325.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nTo be directed to whom?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6325.0,6327.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nFor the City of Charleston Police Department. That's where it started. Everybody was in Charleston. This is our sphere of influence. Let's focus on the city of Charleston. It hadn't even come up yet how awful North Charleston was. And the police department, there was a whole other league of awful, from the city. But so Eric Garner, the guy who killed Eric Garner, his name was Pantaleano or Pantaleo or something like that, was up before a grand jury. Him being charged was before a grand jury. And right around December, right around the beginning of December, in 2014, they decided not to press any charges against this officer. And people were outraged. I mean, especially those people that did not have any experience with how police face no accountability were like, \"I just saw this video and nothing was done about this. This is an outrage.\" And for other people, especially the Black community was like, “This is how it happens.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6327.0,6385.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\n“And now we have this whole video. What are you going to do about this?” And I think that a lot of white Americans were shocked that nothing was done, and suddenly wanted to get involved in this movement to change the situation with police accountability, or to respond to what was happening in New York with Eric Garner. So, a lot of people suddenly wanted to be involved in this group that had already kind of started forming. And there was an immediate sense, especially from the activists that were organizers that had experience organizing - including Muhiyidin, who was just kind of finally getting a sense for how the community operated and who were the movers and shakers and how to organize in Charleston - it became clear that we need to organize a march right away, because when you have a whole bunch of people that are reaching out to get involved, you want to give them an outlet for their passion where you can kind of get them on the hook to doing other important things. BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, there was a march organized, it came out of that meeting. Later a lot of those people from that meeting got together to discuss how you would go about organizing a march with all the different groups in Charleston. It wasn't an idea like, “We are this organization, we are going to take credit for this march,” because we didn't have an organization at that point. It was more like, “Let's get National Action Network to promote this. Let's get the NAACP to promote this. Let's get the South Carolina Progressive Network... Let's get all these different folks to join in and collaborate in planning this and promoting this march where we're going to talk about police reform.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6385.0,6446.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, there was a march organized, it came out of that meeting. Later a lot of those people from that meeting got together to discuss how you would go about organizing a march with all the different groups in Charleston. It wasn't an idea like, “We are this organization, we are going to take credit for this march,” because we didn't have an organization at that point. It was more like, “Let's get National Action Network to promote this. Let's get the NAACP to promote this. Let's get the South Carolina Progressive Network... Let's get all these different folks to join in and collaborate in planning this and promoting this march where we're going to talk about police reform.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6446.0,6446.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, there was a march organized, it came out of that meeting. Later a lot of those people from that meeting got together to discuss how you would go about organizing a march with all the different groups in Charleston. It wasn't an idea like, “We are this organization, we are going to take credit for this march,” because we didn't have an organization at that point. It was more like, “Let's get National Action Network to promote this. Let's get the NAACP to promote this. Let's get the South Carolina Progressive Network... Let's get all these different folks to join in and collaborate in planning this and promoting this march where we're going to talk about police reform.” MILLICENT BROWN\n\nAnd is that what happened? BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd that's exactly what happened. So, in the beginning or middle of December, a big march happened - I want to say 500 people showed up. They-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6446.0,6484.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd that's exactly what happened. So, in the beginning or middle of December, a big march happened - I want to say 500 people showed up. They-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6484.0,6484.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd that's exactly what happened. So, in the beginning or middle of December, a big march happened - I want to say 500 people showed up. They- MILLICENT BROWN\n\nWhere?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6484.0,6493.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey showed up. The idea was to start on the east side in Mall Park and to march from there all the way to Marion Square, is where we were going to technically stop the march. The police... Man, we're getting into the nitty-gritty here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6493.0,6517.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nYeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6517.0,6519.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nMuhiyidin and I were a little more radical than some of the older activists, and the idea of asking the police for permission to protest the police was not something that really we were swallowing. So, besides, what we learned from Occupy is, you can't get anywhere by asking the police for permits. As soon as you ask them for a permit to do something that is going to be the least bit effective or be in the place where it's going to be most effective, they're going to say no. They're going to say no every time, and they're going to stick you - if they give you an alternative, they're going to stick you in some corner of Charleston where you can be sure nobody's going to see you - Brittlebank Park, some other place where there's no foot traffic, no tourists are going to see you, it's not going to interrupt any city business.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6519.0,6567.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd to make an impact and to get in front of the faces of people, you have to be in the tourist areas. If you want to be a thorn in the side of the city to do something, you have to interrupt something, you have to be disruptive - or else they have no reason to stop and listen to you and do anything differently than they did before, unless there's this looming threat that there's going to be some disruption happening. So, we were very determined not to talk to the police about this march. Dixon, who is my dear friend, and has changed a lot on this topic since then, was trying to foster a good relationship with the police department, with other city officials.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6567.0,6605.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd I think when we started organizing this march, the police started frantically calling everybody that they could find that was associated with it. So, I started getting phone calls from police captains and Dodgett. Of course, I didn't pick up those phone calls - and Muhiyidin the same, because our names were on the Facebook, maybe on the Facebook event or something like that. Dixon got the call and he picked up and he said, \"This is what we're planning on doing. Is this okay? Would you make sure the traffic is safe?\" Et cetera, et cetera. \"We don't want a bunch of people that going to jail.\" And his concern was for the safety of the... There are a lot of people showing up that have no experience protesting and whatever. Anyway, we were very upset when we found out about that. We were very upset because the police-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6605.0,6658.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nIt's obvious that you have a multitude of philosophies about activism at this point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6658.0,6669.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nWell, yeah. And I would say, at the time, that I had a reputation for - and had a mindset for - non-violent direct action, not in collaboration with law enforcement, but as an act of disruption. And what Dr. King talks about in the letter to a Birmingham jail [Letter from Birmingham Jail] - which is like a Bible - it's the go-to response when somebody says, \"No, you should wait. No, you should ask this person for permission. I don't know. You don't want to make too much noise, you know? You don't want to make these people mad.\" And his response was, you have to have that tension for anything to get done. People would rather have peace in the absence of justice. They would prefer that to tension with justice. They don't want that. People will fight you at every turn from creating that tension, the feeling of disease that you create when you say, \"I'm not going to get a permit for this. We're going to march exactly where you told us not to. We're going to make traffic difficult on that day.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6669.0,6736.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThe city's going to have to answer questions to people that they don't want to answer about why this didn't get done or why they couldn't get from point A to point B or why this meeting had to be canceled or why any number of things. And you have to make it inconvenient. As an activist, your job is to make it inconvenient for the people with power to continue doing the thing that you're trying to stop them from doing. Otherwise, they will go on not addressing it because it's uncomfortable for them to address it. And unless you can make it more uncomfortable for them not to address whatever the issue is, they're never going to pay attention to it. They're not going to pay attention to it now because they haven't paid attention to it for the years before this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6736.0,6777.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, the idea - what happened on that day? People showed up to Mall Park, Muhiyidin had people bring drums. I want to say somebody gave libation at the beginning. I was very nervous about the police. I'm a big worrier. So, I was just worried about all of the different factors that were happening in the background. Muhiyidin was really handling the - facilitating everything that was happening within the Mall Park. I ran with Ramon down the marching route to see where the police were at, make sure there wasn't paddy wagons waiting in Marion Square to load people into them - because that had been my experience when I got arrested - and there wasn't. So, they started the march and they started marching on the side- They marched at Columbus Street, then they got onto Meeting and they started marching on the sidewalk. The police told everybody to march on the sidewalk. They showed up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6777.0,6837.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey started driving along on the side of the street telling people, don't put your foot over there on the edge of the sidewalk and Smurf and some other people with the megaphones - everybody got to Marion Square. Marion Square - a lot of people talk, and there's still video of this - Dwayne German, Denzel Curnell's father, spoke - a variety of people spoke - and then the crowd started getting a little more amped up. And we said, I don't even remember who suggested it, but somebody said, \"Let's go take King Street.\" And it's exactly what the police didn't want. And the idea is when you have a critical mass of people, 500 people, if 30 people decided to march down King Street in the middle of the street, the police would just arrest them. When you have 500 people that are going to respond poorly to the police showing up and arresting organizers, you can do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6837.0,6892.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nYou can do it because the police are not going to stop you. They're just going to try to make the best of the situation. So, there's the least chaos for them to deal with, and they'll ultimately get out of the way. Make sure traffic is out of the way. And we knew that if you hit this critical mass of people, you don't have to listen to a permit. You can march down the street instead of on the sidewalk. And the decision was made to march down King Street. The crowd of people took completely over King Street, marching down King Street. There's some pictures of it on the cover of The Chronicle at the time. There's some coverage in the news, but The Chronicle was covering everything at the time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6892.0,6931.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nThe Chronicle being the African-American paper.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6931.0,6934.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nRight. And Barney Blakeney, who was the reporter that was covering all this stuff, was fantastic. There was also somebody named Brenda Peart, who filmed everything. She had a YouTube channel called The Humans of Charleston. She was filming everything from start to finish, live-streaming it. And so, we had these three-hour YouTube videos. You can still see your six-hour YouTube videos from some of these protests. So, different people offered to do different things at this march. Some people offered to speak, some people offered to bring drums, like I said earlier... The march went down King Street and went up Market Street. It was very deliberately arranged to cause the most disruption in the places where people – well, the powers that be - wanted the least disruption. So, it marched straight up Market Street from King Street straight through the Market, and then up onto the steps of the Customs House.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6934.0,6988.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd this was probably on a Saturday or Sunday, so, there's a lot of tourists around. I might've spoken at the Customs House, but there was a fellow named – God, I want to say Alfonso - who was an actor in various plays. His son had had experiences with law enforcement that were awful. And he volunteered to do a performance piece that was a slave auction, and did it on the Customs House steps. And I remember it was just incredibly moving and impactful. And that's where the protest was there for a while, and it kind of scattered off, but there were like 500 people. So, it was a huge thing in Charleston. There aren't a lot of protests, especially at the time, where there was 500 people showing up for something. And so I think everybody kind of went, \"Wow, who the hell organized this protest?\" Number one. And, “How do we reckon with that?” Because people knew who, the establishment people were ready. And suddenly they're like, “How? They've never gotten 500 people to show up to something. What's going on here?” I think it probably shocked the city a little bit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=6988.0,7068.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nYou see it as a turning point then for what we have been just broadly calling local activism. But that was a turning point for you, you think?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7068.0,7081.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SPEAKER 3\n\nAnd also, just a time check. We're going on about an hour now.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7081.0,7083.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nOh my God. SPEAKER 3\n\nWe just-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7083.0,7084.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SPEAKER 3\n\nWe just-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7084.0,7084.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SPEAKER 3\n\nWe just- MILLICENT BROWN\n\nWe are going to have to wrap it up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7084.0,7090.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, anyway, that protest happened, and there's a meeting right after that, and the decision was made to start a local group if it were to be called Black Lives Matter Charleston group. It was a debate that occurred within the group about what to call it. And Black Lives Matter for some people wasn't... You know, people had the instant reaction that people had at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is “All lives, but all lives matter.” People respond that way to shut down Black Lives Matter, but Muhiyidin considered at the time, calling it All Lives Matter. And our decision was ultimately to make it Black Lives Matter. It would've been a disaster if we've been called All Lives Matter... Jesus. So, a lot of that is playing out. Policies continued to be drafted.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7090.0,7144.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nWe were drawing on national resources for that. A lot of people started showing up who weren't showing up before. I'm trying to rush through this. So, a lot of organizing is happening in those next few months. There were meetings just about every week at the ILA Hall. People were coming together. A lot of people had a lot to contribute. There were lawyers, there were people who had experience doing a variety of different things. Marvin Pendarvis was at these meetings before he was in law school, before he was a legislator. Several other people showed up. We had Ittriss Jenkins from Charleston, who's a judge now, but at the time was a lawyer. He had started a police review board in Atlanta along with some other folks, and brought that idea, I think, to the table. Brandon Upson was very active, who was the president of Black Student Union when I was at college there and became a very successful political organizer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7144.0,7208.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd so a lot of organizing is happening at the time, but it's happening in the silo, and there are a lot of people are responding to things that are happening publicly, which activists have to do to continue to get their name out there, the name of the organization, or bring people who are interested in this subject into the organization. And then the time came that we - and there's emails about this too - where Walter Scott was shot. Now this was on Craig Road, off of Remount in North Charleston. As part of this Black Lives Matter movement, the focus had not shifted from Charleston to North Charleston, but North Charleston started being in the picture because was just so, there's so many awful things happening there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7208.0,7259.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nPastor Dixon and some other folks tried to talk to the chief of the Charleston Police. He wouldn't sit in a room with Pastor Dixon. He wouldn't sit in a room with Smurf, wouldn't take a meeting, wouldn't talk about the subject. Everything was met with immediate deaf ears. You start talking about police reform and the door slams in your face. They didn't want to have anything to do with it, and they didn't see it as a Charleston issue. So, when Walter Scott was killed, all the people, all the phone calls start with each other: “There was a man killed in a confrontation with a police officer.” All we had at that point was a police officer's story. Walter Scott was shot in the back five times, okay, out of eight shots that were fired. He was shot in the back five times and ended up dying on the base of a tree, okay?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7259.0,7317.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThe officer's story was that they had gotten into an altercation. He went for his gun, he shot him. Didn't add up, the officer's story, with what the facts of the ground were. So, Muhiyidin must have texted me, sent an email to the whole group that had been organizing with Black Lives Matter, who, most of them had - as people do - just kind of stopped paying as much attention because Eric Garner case was over. We had this big successful march, and then people go back to their normal lives and the people who have... Number one, people have to make a living. And number two, a lot of White people were like, “I focus on this and now I can go back to my privilege and my bubble.” And it's easier to do that, not to make any judgments, but that was... That seemed to be the headspace. So, anyway-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7317.0,7376.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nAnd because we're going to have to close this out now, the idea being that once the Walter Scott video gets out, that takes it to another level.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7376.0,7392.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, everybody showed up at the scene of Walter Scott. Muhiyidin was there painting a sign that said Black Lives Matter that went on the side of the thing - the side of the fence there. This was in some back alley. And Dixon and all of the regular folks show up, meeting the family, doing all this stuff, and the story's just not adding up. And the rumor starts going around and somebody saw this thing, that there's a video, probably because the officer saw and other people who responded saw Feidin Santana there in the corner. And they were like, “This is not what happened. What the officer's saying is not what happened.” Feidin Santana. We get home to a message from Feidin Santana on our Facebook page saying that, \"I saw this video, I have this video, I saw this happen. This is not what happened. I don't know what to do. I'm scared. I don't want to go to law enforcement.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7392.0,7453.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nBecause as you can imagine, for an immigrant to this country who barely speaks English, walking to work every day to the barbershop where he cut hair, he saw this happen and his experience with law enforcement was seeing them murder somebody in front of his eyes and, you know, he didn't want to take it to law enforcement. So, he also messaged - turns out later, he also messaged Dixon some other people that didn't respond, but Muhiyidin saw this message and him and Sean Ali went to see the video, went to meet Feidin Santana. He was really keen on getting this directly into the hands of Walter Scott's family. When I say “he”, I mean Feidin. He was intent on it getting into the hands of Walter Scott's family. And you can imagine he debated at the time, like, “Should I do this or should I just delete this video?” And ultimately he decided what he had to do was show the video. But these-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7453.0,7513.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nI'm going to interrupt you, Brandon, just because the specifics of that we are going to have from Feidin as well as others in Black Collective and everything. And I just want to make sure that when we close out with you, we go back to that point about how these various groups and how you feel about the impact of all these various organizations came together. They didn't necessarily stay together as you've said, but we get through these crises here in Charleston. And I guess our point is, where do we find ourselves organizationally? Is there going to - in your mind - are we waiting on another tragedy to get these forces back together, or are there lessons learned from what has happened on the world scene since not only Walter Scott, but Emanuel, George Floyd, you know? Where are we organizationally in Charleston?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7513.0,7592.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nNow?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7592.0,7593.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nYeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7593.0,7596.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nHuh. Well, I'm less qualified to talk about where we are now. I think Walter Scott being killed, it brought in a lot of national organizations into Charleston. It brought a lot of national attention into Charleston. New York Times was covering Charleston. National Action Network, Al Sharpton showed up and Jesse Jackson and all of these people, and wanted to know where to put their resources. And there was a fight for those resources. He wanted to give them to Muhiyidin and Black Lives Matter; other people ended up stepping in and taking that funding and it never saw, never got to the community. But at that time, there was a split in how to deal with what happened with Walter Scott. The community wanted there to be action. And there were organizing groups like Black Lives Matter were ready to take that path forward. While others were saying, “Let's have a meeting with the mayor of North Charleston and ask them to do something about this.” It was very different paths that were separating, and-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7596.0,7674.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nDo you see those paths still operating?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7674.0,7678.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nSo, I can tell you that we have an NAACP National Action Network here, in Charleston. They have offices. I don't think that they're at the forefront of advocating on any particular issue. I think that a lot of that work still falls to activists - to, and when I say activists, I mean grassroots activists - and a lot of those people get identified through response to things. Through response to George Floyd being killed, a bunch of people show up in Marion Square. Let's say, “Who's going to organize us? Who's going to say what's happening next?” And I think, bullhorn gets passed around...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7678.0,7728.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\n...people get identified as leaders and they get thrust into that situation. And a lot of them are starting from square one with how to influence policy or make a difference. And so you have activists in Charleston and they're learning from, first thing people do is go back and look at the people who did it better before, Dr. King, look at Malcolm X and SNCC and who were the great thinkers in racial justice movements in the past and what were their differences and what were the successes? And I think a lot of young people are doing that - are taking their lead from that. And you have folks like Marcus and-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7728.0,7772.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nMcDonald.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7772.0,7773.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nMarcus McDonald, Justin Hunt, Jason Jones, people that showed up. And these are people just like Muhiyidin and I, that something happens and if they fight each other, and those are the people in place that have the energy and the time to organize. And I think that those people ultimately are always going to be the tip of the spear, when it comes to affecting a social issue. They're going to be the people that show up at city council and make loud noise; they're going to be the people that are going to apply pressure. And when you have a city like Charleston, where I would say that this mayor and this police department is a... Yeah, I don't want to be on the spot here, but I think they talk more to activists and to organizations, especially nonprofit organizations, than the previous administration. Still, they flat out reject activists from the community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7773.0,7835.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nThey often won't sit in a room with them, but they'll try to put them... Like Marcus sat on a committee with the city, right? The committee is not doing anything now. But there was some willingness to talk to those people. And I think that without people like Marcus and Justin Hunt and Jason Jones, and these people that are going to keep putting pressure on the city and keep putting pressure on the county and the nation - whatever the governmental body might be - I think you don't have any movement. You are waiting around for the people, for somebody to get elected who has a conscience, who will then have less of a conscience as they go. That's what happens with politicians - with their political aspirations - almost without an exception.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7835.0,7888.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nSo, we have to accept the fact that movements have highs and lows and in many ways are dependent on specific points in time...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7888.0,7901.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAbsolutely.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7901.0,7902.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\n...where we see that energy explode.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7902.0,7905.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAbsolutely. And honestly, the success of activist movements always comes in waves. And it will always be about harnessing energy as it rises and preparing, when it's fallen, for the next rise in attention that people are going to be having. Because even people are affected every day by an issue, have to go to work every day. They have to make a living, they have to survive - which is hard enough as it is. And so, people are only going to show up when they think that they're on the verge of being able to make some progress. And so that tends to happen when things happen in the news, when things happen locally. And I think the best activists are very keenly aware of what that cycle of interest is, and are ready for the moments where it takes off and when it kind of goes away. And I think one of the most important things, one of the most important lessons that I think could be taken from this Black Lives Matter iteration that happened in 2015 to 2016, where they had success where others didn't, was in harnessing the power of the community.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7905.0,7981.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nOther groups showed up to the table like SONG, that had the most... They were well versed in radical Black feminist theory and every academic movement that had taken place, they knew all the right language. They had already debated all these issues ad nauseam, but when it came to connecting with community members, they had door slammed in their face and they were ultimately kind of pushed out. Muhiyidin, one of the things that he did very successfully -and the people that were organizing with him after Walter Scott was killed - is they went into North Charleston and had these town halls where they invited the whole community to come out, and people were sharing those experiences, and those people were identified as people that should be leaders in the movement.\n\nAnd his thing, and my thing when I stepped back, because I was asked to step back at some point and wanted to step back, when the Black Lives Matter movement really exploded in the country, and I think Muhiyidin wanted to step back because even though he went to high school here, he was from New York, and he always felt that the people who should be leading the local movement should be people who are rooted in the city, should be Gullah Geechee people. Should be-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=7981.0,8060.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nPeople directly affected by all of the circumstances.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=8060.0,8064.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nWell, and even just as importantly, the people who are going to bring their neighborhoods with them to the table, people who are deeply rooted in a place, who have all that whole network of people. They're not just showing up and trying to get other people's attention. They are keenly aware of what the issues are in their community and they're bringing other people with them. And when you talk to Donald and Akua and some other people, Muhiyidin identified them, specifically, as people that he wanted to see really take the lead - and not so much him. And I think people have to be aware, self-aware, when it comes to organizing, also, of what their limitations are, and try not to let their egos get in the way, because your ego blows up quick, because everybody is quoting you in the newspaper and saying, “Go talk to this person. They're the face of this.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=8064.0,8125.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRANDON FISH\n\nAnd it's very easy to let that get in the way of effective organizing. But like you said, it's all about harnessing those moments where people are willing to devote their energy to things because it's only by critical masses of people doing things that politicians feel any pressure. They got no reason to go listen to me, Joe Schmo who shows up at the city council meeting, unless they know that by not listening to me, 500 people are going to stop the X from happening or block off North Charleston City Hall from people coming in and out or doing the variety of other things that happen. Unless they know that you have those people behind you, what power do you really have?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=8125.0,8168.0"},{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957/transcript/87839/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MILLICENT BROWN\n\nOkay, babe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3440/collection_resources/164241/file/298957#t=8168.0,8170.0"}]}]}]}