After months of speculation, the mother of Michael Brown has announced that she will be running for office in Ferguson, Missouri.
Lezley McSpadden grieved the murder of her son, who was shot four years ago by a white police officer. And now she is ready to bring change as a city council member in the Missouri town that failed her and her family, NBC News reports.
“Almost four years ago to this day, I ran down this very street, and my son was covered in a sheet,” McSpadden said on Friday. “I learned to walk again, and this is one of my first steps.”
McSpadden has been contemplating the decision to run for some months now, telling a Harvard University audience in April that “there are several people back home that are willing to help me get that going and make sure that I’m treated right.”
She joins a number of black women who are running for office this Fall in unprecedented numbers. But as one of the “Mothers of the Movement,” McSpadden’s work to fight police brutality already threw her in the political arena way before she even thought of running.
Michael Brown was fatally shot in 2014 by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson. Despite several witnesses who stated that Brown had his hands up in an attempt to surrender, a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson.
“If a mother had to watch her son lay on the street for four hours, and watch our community be completely disrespected by the people we elected, what would you do?” McSpadden says to anyone who questions her decision to run.
“You would stand up and you would fight, too.”
