Whose Streets?

Exclusive Interview With Filmmaker Damon Davis

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by Shirrel Rhoades

Ferguson is a small suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Roughly a six-block area. On August 9, 2014, a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed 18-year-old African American, setting off three waves of street riots that spanned nearly four weeks.

Local artist Damon Davis was only a few blocks away teaching at an art expo when he heard about the shooting. He says he was shocked but not surprised. “This sort of thing happens a lot where we come from,” he adds sadly.

When he went over to the scene of the shooting, a Quik Trip convenience store at Canfield and Copper Creek, he witnessed a candlelight vigil and a peaceful demonstration by mournful neighbors. Cars — driven by both blacks and whites — were passing by to drop off bottles of water in support.

But then things went sideways.

A crowd of angry black people and the infusion of 150 police and dogs and armored vehicles was just the tinder to ignite a fiery confrontation.

As one observer said, “I don’t think I could even count the number of police vehicles here.”

He became concerned when what he was seeing on TV didn’t match what he was seeing on the ground. “It was the opposite of what I was being shown by mainstream media,” he recalls.

Getting together with his associate, an producer-photographer named Chris Renteria, he set out to make a documentary. “I picked up my camera and went outside and started shooting photographs,” says Renteria.

They hooked up with Sabaah Folayan, a filmmaker from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Being an outsider, Sabaah needed entry into the community. “Sabaah and I were working in different silos,” explains Davis, but after some conversation they discovered they shared similar philosophical outlooks. They agreed to co-direct a documentary.

Sabaah Folayan started conducting interviews. Lucas Alvarado-Farrar began shooting video. As they followed up, key people in the video began to emerge:

Brittany Ferrell and her daughter Kenna. David Whitt. Montague Simmons. T-Dubb-O. Brother Shadid. Jamala. Tef Poe. Several others become familiar faces. And, of course, Lezley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr. (the victim’s mother and father).

The documentary that emerged — titled “Whose Streets? — is a mosaic of violent and moving images.

A phalanx of helmeted police bearing shields pushing protestors behind a barricade. Lines of neighborhood people chanting, “We are one!” and “No justice, no peace!” Armored vehicles called MRAPs rumble along the street, expelling smoke canisters that billow like storm clouds on the edge of the street. Broken windows. Fires and looting. State troopers with gas masks and M-16s strapped across their bodies.

Helicopters whirred overhead, loudspeakers ordering people to “Return to your homes.”

“This is our yard. You go home,” shouts a black man standing behind a wire fence.

Locals versus outsiders.

Yet life goes on amidst the chaos. We see Brittany Ferrell readying her daughter for school. “Participate in democracy. That is your right,” Brittany tells her daughter. A lesson for a lifetime.

Black Lives Matter becomes a theme. An entrepreneur hawks T-shirts that proclaim “Don’t shoot!” People march with their hands up as Mike Brown was said to be doing when shot.

The film doesn’t try to litigate the details of Mike Brown’s death. Citing the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King, Jr., it focuses more on people’s rights. Black people’s rights.

“Whose Streets?” was chosen as one of the films in the 4 Nights 4 Justice screenings at Tropic Cinema on Monday night. Producer Chris Renteria will be on hand for a reception and after-the-film Q&A.

4 Nights 4 Justice is made possible by The Michael Dively Social Justice and Diversity Endowment at the Community Foundation of the Florida Keys and the Tropic Cinema.

As for Damon Davis, he says he’ll “keep telling my story” through his art, music and film. Lately, he’s been writing a lot about the black experience. “You’re told racism is over but its not.”

Don’t believe him? Just watch “Whose Streets?”

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com