Sabaah Folayan: You Don't Need to Wait for Permission to Become an Activist
We speak to the director of a powerful documentary about Ferguson.
Sabaah Folayan thought she was going to be a doctor. So how did she end up making a film about activists in Ferguson, Missouri?
The daughter of a single mother, Folayan always felt like she lived between two worlds: the elite school her education-focused single mother was able to get her into, and the poverty around her in South Central L.A., where she'd come home to see a black community dealing with systemic racism. "As a kid, I had to find a way to understand my place between those two worlds," she told ELLE.com last month in Park City, after the Sundance premiere of her documentary, Whose Streets?
In September 2014, a month after Michael Brown was killed, Folayan traveled to Ferguson, thinking she might be able to help with the trauma resulting from the ongoing conflict between police and protestors. But once she got there, she realized there was a much bigger story to tell. The city's grief and loss were palpable in the protests and vigils that took place, but it was being portrayed as something much more sinister: "It wasn't being registered in the mainstream media as grief—it was being registered as 'They're thugs'...this really superficial and sensational narrative about what was going on."
Folayan started talking to locals and writing about what she was seeing. Along with visuals by her cinematographer, Lucas Alvarado Farrar, Folayan's notes turned into Whose Streets?, equal parts activism and art, which she made with St. Louis visual artist and musician Damon Davis.
Watching Whose Streets? feels like experiencing the growing movement in real, albeit compressed, time. We're guided through new developments by on-screen tweets, which at the time were key in disseminating news that wasn't necessarily being reported by the mainstream media. "For me, social media was extremely important," Folayan said. "I wanted it to function in this film how it functioned for people on the ground."
Twitter connected people in the community, amongst the chaos that came with the police force's outsize response to the mostly peaceful protesters. Tear gas, rubber bullets, barricades, and arrests came thick and fast as residents tried to resist—all complicated by looters and arsonists who were put in the same box as protesters. "Social media became this other community that was invisible but present, and that was supporting and urging these activists on in their work," Folayan explained.
One of the activists we meet in Folayan's documentary is Brittany Farrell, a 25-year-old registered nurse. Farrell, whose passion for justice ignites the documentary, was eventually arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace. But her fight doesn't stop at present-day protesting and organizing; one of the film's most moving scenes shows Farrell teaching her daughter Kenna the words of activist Assata Shakur.
Seeing Farrell pass these tools for protest to the next generation is a sobering sight; it reminds us that racism and police violence will probably persist beyond this lifetime. But her energy is, as Folayan described it, "magnetic." She inspires her fellow Ferguson residents and influenced Folayan's own path: "I asked her, 'How do you find space to lead?'" Farrell's response, the filmmaker says, changed her life. "She said, 'You don't wait for someone to make a place for you—you take your place.' And that woke me up personally and inspired me, in doing this project, not to wait for permission."
"You don't wait for someone to make a place for you—you take your place."
Folayan's activism has taken other paths, too. She was one of the organizers of the Millions March in New York City, a protest against the lack of justice regarding Eric Garner's death at the hands of police in Staten Island, the same year Michael Brown was killed. Going to Ferguson, she said, taught her how to organize: "Community organizing isn't always marching in the street; it involves going to meetings, creative acts, and long-term strategies."
In the tumultuous and cruel political era Donald Trump's administration has ushered in, that knowledge will only continue to be relevant. How does Folayan feel about the new president? "It's just one of those universal things that speaks to the urgency of change," she said. "This happened under Obama, so I am not arguing that this is a new moment and it's time to start fighting back—because we've been fighting, we've been struggling." But she hopes that Trump's blatantly exclusionary policies will push even more people to speak out against injustice. "People's eyes are open now in a way that they weren't," she said. "I really hope that people who are awakened by Donald Trump are prepared to follow the leadership of those who have been awake."
