Many protesters suffer from activism
She lay curled in bed for days, paralyzed by the stresses of a life that she felt had chosen her as much as she had chosen it.
About three years earlier, the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, had spurred Ashley Yates into activism. She would evolve from street protester in her hometown of St. Louis to Black Lives Matter organizer in Oakland.
But Yates would also feel the pressures of a job that seemed unrelenting: responding repeatedly to the deaths of black residents in communities across America, struggling to win policy reforms that would benefit black people and rallying others to support her causes.
And then, as last year wound down and Yates felt so depressed that she could not get out of bed, she was reminded of the most dire consequence of an activist life — untimely death.
A fellow activist, Erica Garner, who fought unsuccessfully for years to hold police responsible for the death of her father, Eric, died last December from a heart attack. She was three years shy of her 30th birthday.
And as Yates, 32, remembered Erica Garner’s radicalism and youth, her problems with money and stress, she saw herself. If someone as widely recognized as Garner could meet such an early demise, then who in the movement was safe, Yates wondered.
“It’s absolutely scary,” she said. “It’s enough to make you want to quit.”
Next month, the world will commemorate the 50th anniversary of one of the most prominent premature deaths in the history of the black liberation struggle, that of Martin Luther King Jr. And whereas he died from an assassin’s bullet at the age of 39, dying young continues to rock social justice activists today.
Over the last two years, at least five young activists who gained national prominence amid the Black Lives Matter movement have died. The causes range from suicide to homicide to natural causes.
The deaths have their own unique causes. But with each fallen comrade, activists are left to ponder their own mortality and whether the many pressures of the movement contributed to the shortened lives of their colleagues.
Along with the long hours, constant confrontation and frequent heartbreak they experience, activists work for little or no pay and sometimes struggle for basic needs like food and shelter even as they push for societal change.
An essential part of activism these days, those on the front lines say, is ensuring that they and their comrades work through all the stress, whether it’s with meditation, therapy or just taking breaks from the struggle.
“It’s much more front and center than it ever was when I was coming up as a young organizer 20 years ago,” Cat Brooks, an Oakland-based activist, said of self care.
In many ways, Garner’s story represents the perils activism can inflict on a life.
She grew up poor in New York. Her father died a very public death in 2014, one she would witness through bystanders’ videos of a police officer on Staten Island confronting her father on the street, putting him in a chokehold and tackling him to the ground. Eric Garner lost consciousness and died after crying out in distress, “I can’t breathe.”
Erica Garner’s activism, like that of many new to a cause, was initially driven more by passion than polished ideas. She held weekly protests on Staten Island, demanding that the officers involved be punished. Yet she doubted that race played a role in her father’s killing, she said in a CNN interview.
In late 2014, she connected with Reggie Harris, a political operative and activist, who helped her as she entered the world of activism. Garner read titles like “The New Jim Crow,” “Slavery By Another Name” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” She developed an understanding of structural racism and how race was a factor in her father’s death, Harris said.
He recalled a community meeting about three years ago in Brooklyn where Erica Garner spoke. She called out Staten Island Democrats, saying they were too scared to stand up for her father during an election, and she emphasized the importance of black voters banding together.
“For me, that was a turning point,” Harris said.
Erica Garner would meet later with lawmakers and law enforcement officials, travel the country to speak to activist groups and became a surrogate for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran for the Democratic nomination.
She developed an unapologetic style. She bluntly told off politicians and other activists when she believed that they were doing the wrong thing.
Her approach of rattling those in power left her isolated in some ways.
Whereas some activists have been able to parlay their work into a level of celebrity — speaking tours, book deals, cozy relationships with politicians and Hollywood A-listers — Garner did not enjoy those luxuries.