Joshua Stephens

Joshua Stephens is Interim Editor of WIN.

#BlackLivesMatter: A Quiet Renaissance for Nonviolent Resistance?

On August 9th of 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by white police officer Darren Wilson, in the majority-black suburb of St. Louis, MO, Ferguson. Brown was unarmed, and according to multiple witnesses had his hands raised when Wilson fired the final shot. The salient features were emblematic of a longstanding, simmering crisis in the US, and the suburb exploded in protest, eliciting a predictable militarized response from police. Activists in Palestine began offering tips for dealing with teargas exposure, and #Ferguson began trending internationally on Facebook and Twitter.