If We Don't Get It

At a time of renewed activism, the story of the young people who bravely turned a local issue into a national movement for justice, from a professor of Black studies at Amherst who participated in the Ferguson uprising Stefan Bradley was a young professor in Saint Louis when Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by a local police officer. Bradley quickly became a key media activist during the protests that ensued, giving on-the-ground interviews to Chris Hayes, CNN, Al-Jazeera, the BBC, and others. And he conducted over two dozen oral history interviews with young African American protestors. In If We Don't Get It, Bradley, now a named-chair professor of Black studies at Amherst, shows how Brown's murder sparked a grassroots movement for democracy, led by young people of color, which transformed the way we talk about race, justice, and policing in the United States. Through the authentic voices of the movement's participants, Bradley describes the motivation and tensions coursing through the uprising's early days and weeks, the problems of media representation (and misrepresentation), intergenerational conflict over protest tactics, clashes with the police and politicians, and much more. If We Don't Get It also explores the new generation of elected officials, including Congresswoman Cori Bush, who emerged from the local movement's ranks. A story with deep relevance for the protests of our own time, If We Don't Get It offers a gripping account of how young activists, without previous political experience, succeeded in changing our national political narrative.