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American terms and conditions apply. A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbleached in today's episode of the show, if you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website. This American Life, dawg.

From WPEC Chicago, it's this American Life, I'm Emmanuel Barry, the show's executive editor.

I'm in for IRA Glass. This week, shows reported by a friend of mine said John Thomas Jr. last spring, he gave me a call. He wanted to talk about a show idea, his big pitch, a podcast series about activist.

I was not into it. I had covered protests in Ferguson the year Michael Brown was shot, spent late nights watching protesters standoff with police weekends at marches. I know how this goes. It's always the same story. Chanting Impassioned activists talking about why they came out. Hopeful, forward looking statements I watched as a story replicated in cities across the country with Black Death after black death.

So you and I talked for an hour. I wasn't sold. He ignored me and made the show. Anyway, it's a podcast called Resistance and I cannot bear how happy me saying the next few words will make Syeed, but it's good.

So you didn't make the story you'd get by going to protest after protest like I feared. Instead, you told stories that unfold over time about people's lives being changed by the decision to protest what happens with their personal relationships, home life, taking a backseat, exhaustion, egos, celebration and arguments. So you'd made the story that's always been there, but no one ever tells there's this perception of Black Lives Matter that it's this one thing. But of course, the larger social movement of our time is really a loose collection of different groups with different personalities, goals and methods.

And so you meet a series of stories about one of them, a group called Warriors in the Garden. It was started by about a dozen activists, mostly in their 20s, black and brown, a handful of women, but mostly men, their students, marketing directors, waiters and models. Derek Ingram, one of the founding members of the group, says a thing that unifies them is that each one of them is the loudest person they know.

Think about this like I saw 5000 people marching and I thought I can lead them. I need to get in front.

How narcissistic do you have to be to jump in front of 5000 people and just start screaming at them like I mean, but I did it all the ways in the garden did it.

And they found each other because they were all at the front of the marches. And very quickly, they became one of the best known groups in New York City organizing protest after the murder of George Floyd.

The group is cool.

They look cool and they build a huge social media following, when people showed up to their protest, they made sure they had a good time, which meant a lot of chanting and dancing and music being played. They were explicitly a nonviolent organization because they didn't want their events to feel like endless clashes with police. They wanted them to feel like celebrations are actual.

Marches are like club promoter, like we have digital campaigns like and a lot of groups don't roll like that. Like they make like these half assed flyers on camera. They don't even know what their roots are going to be. People are high out of their minds screaming, tagging shit like that's not how warriors roll.

There's a yeah, there's a level of professionalism, joy, not to, like, bastardize it, commercialize what we do. But like people have called us, like the summer jam or Coachella of protest.

I'm just saying, like they have they have really I mean, multiple people.

It's because it's a vibe like Mazzei laughing And on today's show, we're going to bring you some of what he found.

He got very interested in three of the warriors in particular, three people said really identified with men who entered the movement with similar ideas and motivations, who changed over the course of ten months and ended up in very different places with different conclusions. But the story is not just about them.

It's also about said here he is. When the warriors in the garden and people all around the world started going outside and protesting last summer, I'm kind of ashamed to say that I was on my couch playing video games. The most I raised my voice for anything was to talk trash to my friends over a headset. But it was during one of these games that my boy asked me, yo, did you hear about what happened to George Floyd? I hadn't yet.

But these days, your homies don't ask if you've heard what happened to a black man you've never heard of unless that man is already dead. And I really wasn't trying to hear that because I've been down that road before. Just six years ago in twenty fifteen, when I was in college, I went to some of the first Black Lives Matter protest in my city. I remember shouting the names of Trayvon and Tamir and Sandra and Akai and countless others until I lost my voice to tears.

But it didn't stop this shit from continuing. The name still piled up and there was nothing that told me that anything I could do would slow it down. My last act of resistance, the last time I thought it was worth it to engage with the death of another black man came three years later in twenty eighteen. The year the police killed my friend. His name was Marcus David Peters, the only man I ever met with two first names. We met while working together as I was in college, and the man was so strange and all the best ways he carried a flip phone and didn't have social media.

He's the only person in the whole dorm who outfitted his windows with satin curtains deep red. He would burn expensive candles on his kitchen counter that he probably bought from Williams-Sonoma or something like that. We worked out together at the school gym and our whole army staff would just fry him about how much of an old man he was, his two tight shirts, his cheesy smile, his bald head, the way he always reminded you to carry cash for emergencies whenever you leave the house.

A couple of years after we graduated, Marcus stayed behind to become a high school teacher in Richmond, Virginia. He was having a mental health episode one day when the cops showed up and murdered him just two miles away from where we'd gone to school. His death felt like this huge weight that all of a sudden now belonged to everyone who knew him and I didn't want it. I started doing anything I could to get rid of it. So my last attempt at activism was trying to get the leadership of our university to acknowledge what Marcus meant to our community, to make a commitment that they would prevent something like this from ever happening again.

I called their office and told other people to flood the phone lines, too, but then nothing from leadership. No statement, no acknowledgement I could have kept at it, kept pushing to make something out of this tragedy in order to feel a little lighter. I thought about flying back to Richmond and protesting or calling up his family to ask what they wanted me to do to help to get justice for him. But the longer I waited, the more the whole thing felt so damn heavy.

What am I supposed to do with this? When you become somebody who knows someone killed by police when police violence touches your life, what do you do next? I've struggled with this question for three years, ever since Marcus died. And it's that question that drew me to the Warriors, the group of protesters that I followed for 10 months. It's that question that drew me to three men in particular who were trying to answer.

The first warrior I met was a man named Chee Chee Osei. I called him up for the first time one evening in early June, but he was busy.

Haiji, I have to go and pick up on my surveillance.

Brandon, are you sure?

You said you're with who I am and she says he's with his stylist. I had done a little digging on social media, so I knew that he was really into fashion. Also knew that he was young, 22 years old. He had somewhat of a baby face, but takes really good candid photos that make him look much older and hella confident. Last May was the first time she had ever protested and like so many people that watch the video of George Floyds murder, arrest him and he decided he couldn't just sit at home anymore.

On his Instagram, you can see how quickly he took to protesting. He went from being CZI, the fashion enthusiast, to Chee, the co-founder of Warriors in the Garden, in just a matter of days.

The first day I wore shorts, I brought him water and some chapstick. That's the most immature, I mean, protesting outfit you could bring.

But he was still so new to all this. And she's Instagram video from that very first day. You can hear him crying from behind the camera. And it's obvious that he did not expect things to go as far as they did.

Oh, my God, I saw a police car get burned. I was like, whoa, it's really like this. I didn't know. Get that far. By the end of that first day, what was like your overwhelming feeling?

So I cried that first day in the middle of the protest, but then it was like anger. I've never been so angry at police officers before when these motherfuckers are beating us and spraying clouds of pepper spray for people frickin chanting.

Seeing police violence in person made me more determined to keep coming back to the protests. So on day two, she comes correct. He's looking like he's ready for battle. The next day I was, you know, safety glasses and and covered my entire face, pants, combat boots, not for combat before, you know, just toe protection by day three.

He looks like a seasoned revolutionary.

He's in Times Square on a stage holding a microphone in the middle of a sea of people, everybody trying to strike fear in our hearts. If they do not deal with us, they are fucking against us. Let them break you be peaceful, don't break. They want us to break, if we break, we give them what they fucking want. No justice, no justice.

The next time you want ours that when you wore the very beret was Dadri. That was when I was fighting my own. And people were listening to me and people were recognizing me. And I was like, let's go.

Let's if we're going to do this spring fashion to it, to Sochi was the first warrior I started paying attention to because it's wild to see someone so good at something they just picked up yesterday. The second warrior I noticed those first few days was Derek Ingram. He's the one who compared the Warriors protest to Coachella. He's always out there in a tank top and leather baseball cap. Derek and she above queer, but unlike Chief Derek, wasn't new to this.

And honestly, I was probably drawn to Derek because like me, he was skeptical of protesting. He tried the marching thing back in twenty fourteen and quit. When nothing much changed, he'd moved on. He was settling into New York City. He had a new apartment without roommates, finally saved up, got all this money, got my place in Hell's Kitchen.

But this was like my party pad, like get to know people, go to the club, bring somebody back, like like I thought this was going to be my summer.

But then George Floyd was killed and his friends pushed him to come back out in protest again. So Derek threw himself back in. The third warrior I started watching is a man named John EcoStar. John is extremely intense no matter what he's talking about, but it doesn't take more than a few minutes to realize he can be a real softie to John will tell you how much he hates white supremacy and how much he loves you. And there will be a vein popping on his forehead both times.

This is John.

It's Black Lives, maybe all day Orlov's. That's just how stupid. Of course, all lives matter. But right now, as black lives are getting taken the fuck out, most of the warriors are in their early to mid 20s.

John is older. He's 32. He's got kids. He grew up in the Bronx. And up until the protest, he worked as a security guard at the World Trade Center. When Derek asked John if he wanted to join the Warriors, he said, yo, you want to be a part of a part of the Warriors.

And I was like, so I'll be a part of that. Let's go. Fuck fuck.

Last summer, I kept coming back to see what the Warriors were up to and watch them lead. Protests of thousands walk for miles shouting Black lives matter. Hands up, don't shoot NYPD suck my dick. And my personal favorite. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. I also watched as they formed bonds with each other, sleeping over each other's houses, going out for drinks.

I rode along as they traveled to other cities to protest. When they talk about those early days, it almost sounds romantic. They use words like fate and destiny to describe meeting each other. It's logi corny, but kind of cute. The murder of Jorge Floyd brought them together, but it also brought police into their lives and the way they never been faced with before. I hadn't figured out the right way to deal with the space that police violence took up in my life, but they seem to be on a path to figuring it out for themselves.

The Warriors were pretty successful straight out the gate.

They started organizing their own huge protests. They got a ton of media attention and built a big social media following. CZI in particular became a really recognizable face in the movement. He figured out early on something that takes a lot of first time protesters a while to come to terms with, which is that at some point the attention will die down and the streets will clear. And then what?

Just a couple of weeks in, she was already starting to think about the future and then he got a text message A. Well, she was giving some critiques to my brothers and I over a group text a couple of weeks back about how young people don't know about their council members and was challenging me on all of this and that. And I didn't know. So I took it upon myself to do the research.

And so he learned who his city council member is. And he also learned that that guy wouldn't be running for re-election in 2021. It was going to be an empty seat.

Guess you're getting he texted his auntie back like, well, I think I'm running for city council now.

When I heard she was running, I kind of wondered if he just got caught up in the moment of last summer. He's a 22 year old. What does he know about policy facts and figures crafting a political message, how to reach voters? He started bringing in the Warriors to act as his political advisers last year about any incriminating post he may have made on social media, debated if he should tone down his chants, the merits of his whole baret look.

And then just a few days later, on June 18th, she attended a public meeting on Zoome with a bunch of New York political heavy hitters, the leader of the New York County Democrats, a sitting city council member, and a few other public servants who have been in the game for years. She took his turn to speak. I do applaud the passing of Initiative seven sixty eight, seven twenty one day and twenty twenty six to six seven yesterday.

But I'm looking forward to the proposed one billion dollar budget cut in their appeal.

Fifty eight like I heard that and my first reaction was like white. I'm on the ground. What is seven. Sixty seven to one. A twenty, twenty six to sit.

Like what. What is that. What. This is the moment where I was like, oh shit. This man has been doing his homework. This isn't just about my race and looking good for him. He's actually got receipts and he isn't afraid to show them. It was really impressive.

It's it's just the tip of the iceberg. I challenge you all to go further than one billion dollars and NYPD budget cuts. I challenge you to go further and passing legislation that prevents police brutality and systemic racism within policing. Ninety eight point.

He caps it off with this.

Also, I'm announcing my campaign for City Council District thirty six twenty twenty one GSA.

Thank you so much to we really, really appreciate you being here.

By June, the Warriors had a political candidate. By July, they apply for nonprofit status so their work could extend beyond the protest and in August and response to their activism and protest throughout New York, Gov.. Andrew Cuomo repealed fifty a. It gave the public open access to police disciplinary records for the first time in nearly forty years. This is the kind of legislative victory that she wants to secure for the movement by running for office. But he is still a warrior, which means he's still out in the streets with the rest of the group.

Being black and choosing to fight for justice is like putting a second target on your back, the first you're born with, the second you're literally volunteering for all summer. I watch protesters being tear gassed, coddled and beaten by cops. The cops were so persistently violent that the state attorney general would later sue the NYPD for, quote, pattern of using excessive force and making false arrests against New Yorkers during peaceful protests.

The warriors were already mostly black. They already had that first target. They were about to find out what exactly that second target could look like. One Thursday night in August, Quiara one of the warriors, along with Derek, decided to go out for drinks. We were drinking, we were dancing.

We were singing. It just felt like it was fun.

I had like a couple of shots and I had like two or three of those.

And I was slammed, slammed, had it fun. Like, we were just like hanging out outside, like we were having a blast.

Around 2:00 a.m., Chiara and Derek and a few of the other warriors split up from the bar and made their way home. Derek told me that he drank so much that night that when he got home, he tried to cook a whole steak at three in the morning, which who can't relate. He didn't end up going to bed till around 4:00.

What do you hear at seven 15? A knock at the door. Boom, boom, boom. Derek drags himself out of bed to go see who it is. I have like the chain, the Daboll chain on. I look at my peephole short white guy. He asked like the address and I tell him my address and then he asks my name and I told him my name and he was like, I have a warrant for your arrest. It was the police.

Derek had no idea what this was about. He asked the cop to slide the warrant under the door. He looks down, but he doesn't see anything. He didn't know what to do. So he alerts the rest of the warriors in their group chat that the cops are outside of his door. And pretty soon all the warriors are awake and alarmed. A lot of them start checking their own windows and looking through peepholes to see if cops are at their houses, too.

I was scared for him. I was scared for myself. I could come to my house next. I go knock on my door like, how is this going to end? When the rest of the warriors don't see cops at their doors, they start strategizing about how to help Derek, some of them want to head to his apartment ASAP, but they say now what if the cops are expecting us to do that? And once we show up, they just arrest everybody.

Then she comes up with another idea.

She instantly was like a like go live, go live, go live.

Everybody said go live document that. I mean, if they're banging on your door, lying about a warrant, people need to see it. The Warriors have been amassing a huge social media following all summer before it was basically just a tool to keep young people engaged in the movement. But now they were telling Derek to go live to their 40000 followers in the hopes that it would keep him safe.

I don't know what the fuck is going on. I like I like RNC and I have no idea what I did. So this is crazy.

In the video, Derek is wearing the same clothes he wore out drinking the night before, leather baseball cap and navy blue button down and a silver ring that shines whenever he touches his face, trying to figure out what to do in the comments. Derek's friends tell him to go back to the door and ask for the warrant again.

Officer? Yes. What's going on?

Did you have the warrant, probable cause to arrest you right then? Is there a reason they haven't called me about this investigation? Is it active? Active? Yes, sir.

Thought the cop says yes, it's active. It's for an assault, OK. That's why you're telling me you would be arrested. Yes. Oh, Jesus. So there's that sitting back down in front of the camera.

Derek takes the cap off a gallon of water and starts chugging it. He doesn't know why the cops are here. He wonders if this has to do with a complaint he filed against the police a few weeks back. Was this retaliation or something? He's not sure. An hour passes.

So I get a message saying that you're there's a bunch of fucking cops up in front of fucking Derek's crib. And I was like, what?

John immediately hopped on his bike and flew over the Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan as fast as possible from this guy. It's not unusual for cops to show up to arrest someone without a warrant. What is unusual, though, there is what John saw outside their apartment that day.

It wasn't just like one or two cops in a patrol car derricks, it looked like a full on tactical operation, large NYPD trucks, men in suits going in and out of the building, a battering ram, and even begun closing off the block with barricades.

So I get there following up on what the fuck y'all to see.

All those officers outside, bro, was intense. What I saw that kind of baffled me that let me know that. They're treating it like a terrorist. Wasn't I seen to canines when I seen the dogs? I think they they got him like he's a fucking terrorist.

For all his intense energy, all John can really do at this point is be a witness. So he stays out there on his bike.

Back inside, Derek realizes he's surrounded so young officers in the hallway, officers with guns, officer in empty apartments in the building across from me. They're banging on my door. They're literally peeking in my curtains. I had to put up a sheet, like there's over 30 officers here. At this point, Derek starts thinking about his parents, they don't even know what's going on, so he calls his dad and I face my dad because he doesn't know how to use it.

His first reaction was call the cops.

I was like, are you serious right now? I was like, You want me to call the police on the police? What are they going to do? Like, he was dead and he was like, no, like bring a captain out. I was like, nah, that's not going to work, man. Oh, man.

That's that's really interesting because, like, my parents are.

But like, that's what that's what parents tell you to do yours. They like something that's happening. Call the cops.

I'm like, yep, I like it. I'm sure my dad like yep. There's three out of my window right now, one of my balcony couple in the building across the street. He's like, oh my God, I'm sorry.

Derek's friends kept telling him not to open the door, but the Warriors didn't really have that many other options.

I didn't know what to do at that point, so I felt like I can get rid of the bullets if I open this fucking door.

But I was thinking about, fuck it, I'm a put my body on the line is going to make a difference. Like, I mean, just open this door if they shut me up.

Like that was a thought to like the thought, the thought of dying for the cause are getting hurt was definitely I thought briefly.

Wow.

What do you think that that came from Thadeus. That is McCarrell with Derek's childhood friend, they went to school in St. Louis and would run around church camp playing pranks together. Derek and Thaddeus lost touch for a while, but linked up years later after high school. It was 2014, the same year Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, not too far from where they grew up. That's when Derek went to his first protests, and that was with me there the whole time.

Unfortunately, he was struggling with like mental illness. Almost a year after the Ferguson protests in 2015, Thaddeus was at home. When he started having an episode. He locked himself in his house with a knife. So Thadeus, his mom, did what Derek's dad had suggested. She called the cops after a long standoff. Thadeus opened the door and he came storming outside and he was shot several times riddled with bullets.

And that's how I felt like I felt like I was barricaded in here. And if I surrender that, I could have met that same fate. Thadeus died.

It's messed up to feel a kinship to somebody in this way to know that you are part of some depressing brotherhood of people whose friends were killed by police. And I didn't have to be trapped in a room and get threatened by cops to identify with the thing that Derek is feeling now that he might be next. It's a thought that I've had many times since Marcus was killed, but I always talk myself down like there's no way something like that could happen twice in one friendship.

But here was Derek and that exact scenario. Three and a half hours in, the cops have officially closed off Derrick Street on both sides. So anyone else who wants to come and try and help is going to have a hard time. So she comes up with a new plan. He gets on the next train to Derek's apartment. And when he gets off at the stop, he ducks into a nearby corner store and buys a jug of milk. When he gets to Derek's block, he walks up to the cops at the barricade.

I said, what's going on here? They're like, there's an incident over here. We're closing the street off. I was like, I'm subletting it like one for six, like right over there.

I have my milk. I don't want it to get spoiled. They're like, Sorry sir, bubble. And then I, like, dropped my milk. His plan fails, but across the street from Derek's apartment, a small group of protesters have started to gather in a park. She runs over and joins them back inside. Derek is on the phone with a lawyer and things start to get even more intense, but literally cover my people. They had a battering ram.

So all of this stuff on my wall is falling. I heard a bop, bop, bop. Or maybe you're the one you use because you're just trying to get outside. Now you understand what I'm saying. Braudis you're telling me I'm not being hostile. I'm coming. I'm coming. I am chill because I'm like you. No, I got people in trouble.

And then another point and this is caught on camera. They were like, you know, why don't you be worried? I still don't know why. I said, why don't you be the worry.

You say you are. Derek only has two options stay inside. Open the door. And as a police ramp up the pressure, it's getting harder and harder to know which one to choose. The lawyers he's on the phone with. I've been trying to negotiate a peaceful surrender with the police, but haven't had any luck. So now they're just trying to help. Derek, stay calm.

There's a lot of. Yes. How did you realize that, Derek, Derek, could you acknowledge me, please? I'm treating you like a gentleman, OK? I'm so over you. Like, I just want to get this over with. And it's too much. It's too much. I hear you.

By noon, almost five hours into this whole ordeal, the crowd of supporters is getting bigger. A couple hundred people have tuned into the Instagram live to watch. And at this point, she is pissed he and the rest of the warriors realize that what they have to do now is start putting as much pressure on the NYPD outside as they're putting on Derek inside. So she grabs his megaphone and gets to work.

If there was a reason for his arrest, they would have arrested him by now. It's been five hours. Where's the warrant? Where's the warrant? Where's your worried? Where's your head at one point, like I could hear my friends, I could hear some of the protesters chanting from my windows, where's the war and where's your war and where's your warrant? And it was chief warrant. I felt protected because there were so many eyes on me.

I felt like they're not going to kill me. I love them, might hurt me. They might do some fucked up shit, but I feel protected, like that's how I felt.

This was wild to me because cops kill people in front of an audience all the time. But Derek felt comforted knowing that his friends were outside, so finally he decides to open the door.

I literally had my hands on the door and I see a message said, don't open it direct, don't open the door. They're leaving.

I hear cheering outside of.

I was like, shit, like, they are leaving, so I didn't open the door with no warning, no obvious reason, and almost as quickly as they'd shown up, the cops had packed up their stuff and bounced just like that after more than six hours. The moment the police left, John took off towards Derek's building.

Does go government a assume you see me? He said I. Was it somebody that loves them that was there? You know, it wasn't some fucking cop waiting to take them out and shit just like hell. Yeah, man, hug the shit out that man.

I'm proud of that man.

You united people.

The next day, Derek went with his lawyer to turn himself in at the precinct. They figured he'd be safer that way. So something like this wouldn't happen again. And that's when he found out the charges against him, assault of a police officer for allegedly shouting into a cop's ear with the megaphone at a protest. They also charged him with obstructing governmental administration, which basically means getting in the way of a cop doing their job. I tried to get more information from the NYPD about why all this happened, but they wouldn't tell me anything other than a generic statement saying a police officer had tried to stop Derek from entering a, quote, frozen zone at a protest and, quote, A struggle ensued.

I'm not sure that explains deploying the full force of one of the most militarized police departments in the country for one man for six hours. I couldn't think of any justification other than they wanted to intimidate Derek and the growing movement against police violence. Was shock. But he told me after the whole thing, he also felt pretty victorious. He had been able to capture the police, abusing their power to intimidate an unarmed black person.

That's literally that's what this whole movement is about. And that's what they did to me publicly in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. It made them look savage. Derrick did have a second target on his back, he was black and now he was a prominent enough activist for the NYPD to come after him. But the Warriors tactics, the thing they'd been doing all summer, made him safer. They won. A little while later, I was talking to John on the phone about that day at Derek's, he mentioned that he got a message from an anonymous account on Instagram.

He had noticed that at the time when he was focused on the cops.

But later on and as I'm looking at this. I open it and it says, you are next. All right, I look up, sparkling threat threatening. John laughed it off. He sent the guy in emoji of a middle finger and a message. You'll have to catch me first.

Coming up after the break, revenge, that's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

It's this American Life, I'm Manuel Berry, sitting in for IRA today, today on our show, said he, John Thomas Jr. is telling the story of three activist and the warriors in the garden who, like said, are trying to make sense of the question. What do you do when police violence finds you unwittingly? When we left before the break, the warrior's activism had started to draw the attention of police.

You're saying again? By the end of last summer, almost all the lawyers said they'd gotten death threats on social media, all except John. John got his first one that day outside their apartment when he was watching the police siege. He got in a message from an anonymous account on Instagram saying, you are next. I didn't really pay any mind to it like that because I acts like I actually because it's my first threat. I actually was a yo, I just got through and it was my first.

Right. What should I do? Oh, ignore it. I have so many and I and I said I am not going to worry about it. You know, I will be you know, we will be looking around, making sure everything's OK and then boom.

Then I called my pastor within two weeks of the siege at Derek's, John got on Instagram live. He was holding up bloody wrist to the camera. Hey, what's up, everyone, I just got hit by a car, I'm 100 percent sure they just they tried to kill me, they hit me and they booked it out of there.

He pans the camera to show a couple of nasty scrapes on and off his legs. Was he was riding his bike when he got here. Right leg, I can tell John is shaken up as he tells the people watching what just happened here.

I'm moving out of his way. I'm moving into moving more to my lane. And he just jumps to jump start. Justin jumps the line and gets me looks back and then bounces your man see me like he sees me.

Clear's I'm on a fucking ride fucking his mallet out here.

John says he looked up at the car as he drove away. I'm just a Chevy Impala, Chevy Impala, the kind of cars the cops are known to drive when they're undercover.

Shit, man. I don't even know what to what's I really think right now.

I just wanted to let you know, because this is some crazy shit right now. I can't even call the fucking police because they're not going to do shit fuck twelve. So I can't I don't know if there's a way that I can prove that it was them. I'm looking for some cameras. But anybody that's out here, any streets, man, just be careful. With protesting, Chee, Derek and John have all faced off with police. But John has spent years dealing with cops threatening his life.

He grew up in the Bronx, where cops are notorious for harassing the black and brown people who lived there when he was a kid. John says cops showed up to his house and pulled a gun out on him and his mom in their home. They were looking for somebody else later in high school. He and his friends were celebrating graduation at one of their houses. He says the cops showed up then to kick down the door and pointed guns at them.

John joined the Warriors because they were the community he'd been looking for, the people who would help them fight back against this enemy that loomed large over his life long before last summer. But when he got hit by the Impala, something started to switch for John.

I called them up a few days later, he said, changes everything cost to discipline me. That's what I believe because I was a fucking Impaler. These motherfuckers tried to take me away from my family. That's all I want now. I want revenge. This was the first time I had heard any warrior talk about vengeance, they talked about not backing down, about marching until they could secure some real wins for the movement in New York City, but never in the context of revenge.

The Warriors were deeply committed to nonviolence and John was committed to the Warriors, so he'd agreed to that, too. But after the hit and run, he was questioning everything.

You think I give a fuck about some peaceful protest now? Nah, man, I didn't do shit, bro. Every single one of these motherfuckers is in my face doing some bullshit. I'll knock them out. I don't think I'm an idiot. I don't put them in any. I don't I don't see them in the face, I don't I just I just don't I as cool. And I take the high road. This is an attempt on my life, man, I'm not going around snooping anymore like that.

She woke me the fuck up and woke me the fuck up. I have no way of knowing of the car that hit John was an undercover cop, the NYPD did not respond to our questions about this incident, but John didn't want to take any more chances. He told me he tried to get security camera footage from a nearby business to try and prove that it was a cop who hit him. But he says they wouldn't give it to him. So now he just doesn't leave the house without strapping a GoPro camera to his chest so we can review his own footage every night when he comes home.

He admitted he was paranoid, but I understood where he was coming from. He just watched his friend be trapped in his apartment for six hours by the NYPD. If Derek wasn't on Instagram live the whole time, he would have believed the shit they pulled. John didn't have evidence. He just had his word and plenty of examples to point to of police forces surveilling, harassing or killing black leaders. MLK, Fred Hampton, Nina Simone, Malcolm X, the list goes on.

John told me he started pulling away from the Warriors. The protests with all the singing and dancing just didn't seem right. It felt too much like a parade instead of a protest.

I love it when they're happy. I do, man. It makes me happy, too, man. But we just have no time for that. And when I see them, I just feel like they're losing sight of what's going on. I've been thinking about that solid, like solid. All is both. And we all had given up to you, I was I was fine with it for a little bit, then I started to realize what the what the fuck is going on.

A little bit of what the fuck is the rage? I'm not finished no more. The warrior stance is that black joy at celebrating and black life, in spite of everything that's trying to keep you down, is a radical form of protest. You take up space in the streets, you dance and chant unapologetically, but you don't engage with the police. You keep it moving. But John didn't want to hear that anymore. Me ask a fucking question.

One, Brianna Taylor was slain in her bedroom, was she giving up black joy? Was she listening to music or she Bhabha fucking head?

No, no music. It was just rings. Gunshots Why the fuck are we giving them up black joy? They don't deserve our black joy, they deserve the black rage. We have every ounce of it. This is war. There was a truth to John's anger that was hard to look away from. I recognized his rage when Marcus, my friend, was killed by the cops. I didn't realize how angry I was until I walked into a chicken spot on my block and I saw a customer threatening to fight my favorite cashier.

I didn't even know the cashier that well, but I wanted to beat the brakes off this customer for no good reason other than he was a threat to somebody I knew, somebody I liked. But nothing happened. So I just wandered aimlessly around my block and considered walking into traffic. But I never did. I just swallowed my anger and pushed it somewhere I could never access it again.

When I met John, he seemed to be at a similar crossroads, use that, swallow his anger or do something with it. And by now I knew from listening to him, but he's not the type to walk away from a fight the way you move and the way you use your anger. I don't know. Like, it feels like maybe the anger helps somehow. Like, there's there's like something there's something good about it. Like there's something that I could actually learn from it.

So with the anger, does it takes that person that is afraid and tells it, shut the hell up, let's go. I think I think you are not allowing yourself to continue to fight that you got you mad. And I think you who you were mad at was not on anybody else but yourself because you knew what you were doing was wrong. So you wouldn't you weren't mad. You were upset with the police or what they did help you.

But the person that you were really mad at was yourself because you were walking away from what? You you were believing it, you gave up on you one day at the end of one of our conversations in September, John invited me to a protest. Maybe he was trying to help me see something, or maybe he wanted to prove to me that he wasn't all talk.

But he told me to meet him at a park in the Bronx the next day I up it's about 4:00 p.m. When I pull up is a small crowd gathered at the center of the park.

No more than a hundred people. And the first thing you hear when you're approaching the crowd is something like if you're not comfortable being arrested, this is not the place for you.

I know some of us. I might be we don't like those buses, but it's not a Warriors protest.

This one was organized by a couple other groups, Johnson and spending more time with since his hit and run their protesters who are a little more willing to antagonize the cops. I find out from somebody what I already suspected. The goal of this protest is to march onto the George Washington Bridge and shut it down. There's a few warriors who have shown up, but I don't see Derek. He told me later that this was not his kind of protest.

I said, John, I don't think the Warriors should participate and I cannot participate. I think you like the idea of taking a bridge because it sounds cool. I didn't hear any demands.

I didn't hear it in game. I didn't know what the resolution was.

They may not have been a specific set of demands, but it was an end game. And it seems like the cops know about this plan to take the bridge, too, because just a few feet away from where we're standing, patrol cars and vans are starting to pull up to follow the march. A long row of red and blue lights flashing down the street for blocks.

I start looking around the crowd for John, but I spot cheer instead. My collared shirt today. Do I look like a politician today? You do look like a politician to the max in his sweater collared shirt combo, she tells me he's been asked to give a speech.

He walks up onto a makeshift podium in front of the crowd.

How are we going to change the course of this war, the course of this battle against criminal injustice in New York City? Criminal injustice.

Like John, she also believes that they're in a war, but he believes it's a war best fought through legislation from inside the walls of city council. Once he wins, not on the George Washington Bridge.

Our ancestors have fought so hard for the right to vote.

Once he finishes his speech, she gets ready to leave. So you're about to leave. Why don't you want to stay? Because I have other things to do for their campaign.

Matters to attend to today or tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, you too. The cops are already out here today.

You can tell that the energy is a little different here in the Bronx in terms of just the police that have already arrived. My power is outside of those bars.

I will not be arrested. I won't. I won't.

There's some of OK, there's some people here. I'm not snitching and bulletproof vests.

It's not my energy.

I can't be doing this. Did not call my nerves because she was right. What the hell was I doing out here? But before I can think about it too hard, I finally spot John. He's dressed in all black black pants, black long sleeved shirt, black Kaepernick Jersey, black ski mask and a black bulletproof vest. Just as she's about to leave, John calls them over a chat. They hug for a second. And afterwards I walk over to John and I surprised myself.

How are you doing? Was disappointed. Well, I'm proud that everybody's I had I wanted to come here because it just shows me who has heart.

But then it just shows you how many people are Kappen, how many people just running my mouth.

I'm not an asshole. I love my school. But where's she now? Not long after the protest starts to move, it's important that we keep it tight and that we keep it structured. All right, let me. And in the end, if you really put your fists in the air, the George Washington Bridge is a major revenue source for the city.

The protesters believe if they shut it down, they'll cost the city money, get a lot of news coverage and a lot of attention for the movement to. As we marched from the park into the streets of the Bronx, John moved to the small crowd, checking in on people. After a while, we finally reached the George Washington Bridge. And when John sees it, his eyes seem to light up through the holes in a ski mask.

No, this is the bridge. Oh, shit. Let's watch this beautiful ship, I'd never seen the George Washington Bridge on foot all four thousand seven hundred and sixty feet of it, just towering right in front of us. I look over at John and he's having a moment.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. It's very sad. And I feel sorry for young guys, but who are also there, who are pretty ready to roll. We're taking half steps. This is a film only right now. Let's go. Oh. John rushes to the on ramp with other protesters, they grab a giant construction concourse and placed them in front of traffic and pretty soon the whole upper deck of the bridge, eight lanes wide from New York to New Jersey.

There's no cars, just a small group of protesters suspended above the Hudson River, standing shoulder to shoulder arms length, hyped about what they're accomplishing. I find John darting around the crowd. How does it feel?

How does it feel to lose a few? I mean, that's how I feel. John and the other activists keep the upper level of the threat shut down for about an hour, the whole time we're up there, the police are nearby watching, looking annoyed. They have the bridge. But what these protesters really wanted was to show how violent the cops can be. They want to prove the police will act with impunity, hopefully get it caught on camera.

It goes viral and they make their point. Yes. After 45 minutes, cops finally move them off the bridge relatively peacefully, but unsatisfied. The group marches towards a nearby precinct and the whole way they're more cops start to appear from the dark, dressed in riot gear right behind us. When the group gets to the precinct, there's more cops waiting out front, too.

This is where we stay. This is where we stay. We got it jammed up. This is where we stand.

At that point, the cops have had enough. They gave a quick dispersal warning, not long enough for people to actually respond to, but long enough to say they did it. I got the sense that they knew what this was to, so they gave them what they came for. They started charging towards us and violently snatching people out of the crowd.

This is the New York City police. You are unlawfully in the roadway and obstructing vehicular traffic.

We all started running away. And in the chaos of bodies bumping into each other, I tripped over somebody trying to escape. I quickly got back up and backed away from the crowd to look at what was happening from a safer distance. And some people were crying, others were screaming in pain, and John was still darting around the crowd. It definitely felt like a war. And I think some people didn't realize that's what they were signing up for. I saw John walk up to a couple who were frozen with fear and crying in each other's arms, and he told them to go home to get out of here.

The night ended with at least six people arrested. One of them was a good friend of John's. I understood then why Derek didn't show up for this and why she left. It all felt pointless. When I spoke to John later, I told him that when we went out there, like by the end of it, like people were trampling over each other dog, like people were like literally crying, like, I don't know, it just didn't seem like it just didn't seem like the anger was useful in that moment.

It seemed like it was more destructive than anything. You didn't see it again. You didn't see it then.

John tells me the goal here was to expose the police and their brutality, that this is how they will make sure their message is heard.

Isn't that the point to prove how disgusting this system is? I am looking at the goal. The goal for me is abolishing the police. Tearing down the whole system. So in order to have everybody see why, because as people that don't see why. Let me show you why. Keep exposing them, keep exposing them, keep exposing them until everybody sees oh, no, I just hope that there's like a more safer way to do it.

There's not. And if there was, we would have gone about it that way.

But every time we go safely about it, nothing happens.

There is no safe way of doing this. I'm sorry.

I did see the thing John wanted me to see. I saw that the police were being unnecessarily violent. I'd experience that at lots of protests. But I also saw this other thing. I saw John telling people to get to safety and trying to pull protesters out of the grasp of cops. But he couldn't save everyone. He couldn't be everywhere at once. If you are running headfirst into a war, you're going to lose people. But I guess we're losing people either way.

The Warriors felt like John was crossing the line. They sat as a group at the beginning of all this for a nonviolent group. John was flirting too much with chaos and vengeance. They told him they were worried about him and encouraged them to take better care of his mental health because they knew John suffered from depression and he was off his meds. They had a series of disagreements about how to move forward with John, but eventually they decided to just air it all out on his own call.

Here's Derek. He literally said, I want every single person to say their issue with me back to back. I won't interrupt you because I want to hear all of this and I want to know how to respond.

And immediately it just turned into an attack on me. It didn't feel like. I didn't feel like they wanted to to keep me. They felt like they were just trying to find a way to out me. It was the first thing they said. Started it when she doesn't trust me.

Because of I'm a liability, a slight I'm risk, some say I told John, I said I personally would not like you in a group anymore.

Because of your actions personally, we all love John personally, but when you. See kind of the shift in character and a shift in beliefs, we had to come to an agreement like, OK, what's best for the group? The Warriors told John that if you are going to stay in the group, he'd need to commit to three things. First, that he'd make his mental health a priority. Second, he'd need to pledge his loyalty to the group.

And third, maybe the biggest point that he'd need to commit to being non-violent.

But he didn't want to really address our three demands. He couldn't he couldn't commit to them.

And I just couldn't focus. I was I was mad and I was angry. And it wasn't supposed to go that way. It was supposed to be something really, really calm, really. I thought respectfully. But nobody was doing a. Finally, the Warriors decided to call a vote on whether John should be allowed to stay in the group or not. They voted no. Later in his apartment, John, still replaying how things went down. I love this is this is fucking Linguistical Survival Island.

I'm sure that. I have voted out like, what the fuck you, I realise that Lego Legos unreal for me.

He cycles through a bunch of emotions, laughing, shouting about it on his bedroom wall. I see this black and white photo of the Warriors together from the beginning because a family.

I learned that it was my family, I spoke to Derek, Derek. I love you, man. Don't get a twisted. I mean, I didn't like how the shit went down, but I love you, it just hurts. It hurts, they betrayed me, bro. It's been hard and. Those warriors, many betrayed men, they betrayed me and left me out there in court to rot, wrote me Dirk.

Ever since my friend Marcus was killed, I've been sitting with this question, what am I supposed to do with this weight with the Warriors? I think I had this expectation that when police violence lands in your lap, there's only one right way to deal with it. I thought with John T. and Derek, I might finally figure out what that one way was. But the three of them have each landed in three very different places. John is still running headfirst towards cops at protests and getting arrested now with a different group of people.

He's not playing it safe and he's OK with that. She is nine months into his political campaign. I've gone out canvassing with him. Just the other day, I watched him basically obliterate his opponents at a debate.

Do you feel like you're becoming a better politician?

I don't like to consider myself a politician. I would say I'm more of a public advocate and I'm running to be a public advocate. I'm a candidate for public advocacy.

So the answer is yes, you've become a better. Does it sound like I have just sidestepped my question and put your own rhetoric out there and like the most seamless way, so I've become a better public advocate.

That's the right answer. OK.

They're still going to protests all the time with the Warriors in chief, but he's going to be a high profile activist now with a huge platform. He's now working with places like Amnesty International and Reebok to bring attention to police overreach. He's found his life's work. All three of them have figured out what I still have in. On Martin Luther King Day, there was a protest at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and everyone was there to see John and Derek. By now, tensions had cooled and they were all smiling and talking to each other, just catching up.

At some point, dancing broke out, as it always does. People formed a circle and she got in the middle for a second and hit a few moves. I looked off to the side and Derrick was joining in. When I turned around, I couldn't believe it. There was John getting low, dancing along with them. I'm always happy to see them together and enjoying themselves like this. I'm also haunted by this other thought. It's this. Think of all the other things these talented, creative people could have been spending their enormous energy on.

Like how far could she have taken his love for fashion if he'd never seen that George Floyd video? What could John be doing it with? All the time he's been spending going to neurological appointments for injuries from being beaten up by cops. What if Derek's apartment could have just stayed a party pad and didn't have to be the site of a police siege? Who could these three men have been if their paths weren't defined by these tragic events that day, their dancing?

And for a moment, they're just people. She is just a 22 year old dude with his friends. John is an angry and Derek gets to just be there for the both of them. I think I've been paralyzed by this question of how to respond to police violence, because for me, every answer feels like another loss.

Toward the end of the night, we march to city hall and then the police started violently arresting people. That ended things. The way they always end up. Well, do I know? Said John Thomas, Jr.. You can find said show resistance on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

There's already so much pain, so much pain, so much pain. There's already so much pain and there ain't nothing else. And you see the other side of this. Our program was produced today by Chana Joffe. Walt, people who put our show together today include Ben Calhoun, Dina Titus Cole of EBITA, Kornfeld, Hilary Elkin's, Damian Gravestone, Nelson, Catherine Reymundo Neriman, Ari Sapperstein, Robin Symeon, Alissa Shipp, Laura Czartoryski, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker and Diane.

We are managing editor Asara Abdulrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Ana Carlson. Richard Semester, Eileen and Bobby Berry, Sara, Mikveh Wallace, Mack and the entire resistance team, our website, This American Life Dog, where you can stream our archive of over 700 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PUREX, the Public Radio Exchange, thanks to my boss, IRA Glass. He has an instruction manual for anyone who hosts the show.

It's confusing how it starts. Just all caps.

There is no safe way of doing this. I'm sorry. I'm Emmanuel O'Berry, IRA Glass.

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