ABSTRACT
This study is an analysis of day-to-day microtrajectories of mobilization in Ferguson. It draws on the rich social media data available on interactions between insurgents and police in Ferguson, Missouri, when Michael Brown was shot by police on August 9, 2014 and protests erupted, at first spontaneously, and then through the nonviolent participation of Black civic and movement organizations. Smartphone video and photos published on social media provide richly detailed moment-to-moment coverage of thousands of interactions from multiple vantage points that day. We analyze the political dynamics of nonviolent actions in Ferguson by unpacking how specific forms of insurgent tactics, police reactions, and third-party responses to events unfolded from roughly noon to midnight on that day. We assess the effects of specific repressive action by authorities on instances of third-party support. and trace how harsh repressive action by police in Ferguson yielded an outpouring of third-party support, expanding the insurgency. Within twelve hours of the killing of Michael Brown, a dynamic had developed that contested the basic legitimacy of policing there. Unpacking these early events helps to understand why an intense, sustained, and mostly nonviolent insurgency developed in Ferguson, which allowed Black people to achieve much more political power there today. This includes winning half the seats on city council, appointment of a Black police chief and hiring of many Black police officers, election of a progressive Black district attorney, and the beginnings of redress of institutionalized racist practices in governance and policing in Ferguson.
