What Killed Michael Brown? & SF update...

Hi all,

Today marks nine years since the moment Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. What I remember most about that day was how so many people rushed to judgment before the facts were known. I was sitting with my father in front of the television and we made the point of not making up our minds until the facts rolled in. We believed that when that happened, things would right themselves. Well, the release of the autopsy reports and other evidence turned out to be a debacle. Over the next four months we watched in real-time the split of America into two narratives: the racism/systemic racism narrative vs the truth.

This split was why my father and I made the documentary, “What Killed Michael Brown?” By then, there had already been three feature length documentaries that pushed the false Michael Brown narrative. We wanted to allow truth to have its say here. We knew that people would argue that there is no such thing as truth and that it is subjective. But in this case, it was there all along, in the Department of Justice reports. I remember reading the Grand Jury witness testimonies (we turned it into a powerful sequence in the film) and thinking, how could all of these voices be ignored? They say, “Believe black voices.” Why not these black voices? How could the media, corporations, universities, and even the President of the United States ignore these voices of truth? As my father has said over one million times: “Race is power.”

We still see the abuse of this power everywhere, even 9 years later. Many institutions continue to teach that Michael Brown was executed by a racist white cop. Today, Congresswoman Cori Bush tweeted:

She repeats this same poetic truth every year for one reason: by wearing down truth, she’s counting on us to buy into the false narrative and see it as the “truth.”

On the positive side, we continue to receive emails from people who stumbled upon the film and they often say that they had no idea there was another side. It’s not surprising when you consider how many people live in digital news echo chambers. Thankfully, we have had support from independent voices in the media, such as my friend Zaid Jilani, who I had befriended after he watched the film:

We continue to push the film every chance we get. I’m flying to DC tomorrow to show the film to a group of young Americans training to be leaders. We have presented in zoom sessions with groups all over — my father just spoke to a group in Italy and will speak to one in the UK shortly.

We’re doing our best to hold the ground and I do want to thank you for being our steadfast supporters since day one. Many of you have brought copies to give away or asked local libraries and universities to buy the film. It means much to us.

As for the other news, we will be traveling up to San Francisco/Oakland to finish the filming up there. Yes, we have been planning for our safety — what a strange thing to have to say before visiting a city like San Francisco.

We have an interview set up with Seneca Scott who has been a one-man force in forcing Oakland to reckon with the violence that has only worsen since George Floyd. Scott was one of the voices behind the Oakland NAACP letter that went viral weeks ago. You can read it here and it is worth a read.

We also have interviews with other local residents. One of them will be with the couple that was behind the overthrowing of three San Francisco School Board members after the ridiculous controversies surrounding the fight of the murals and the renaming of schools — all in the name of decolonizing. Meanwhile, kids are failing in record numbers. Don’t worry, this White Guilt doc will have plenty of optimism — we just have to wade through the muck to get there. Of course, I will send pictures after the trip.

Be well,

Eli

PS, please forgive any typos. I wanted to get this out quickly today as I plan for my DC and SF trips.