What Civil Unrest Is Really Like: We Survived the Ferguson Riots
by Karen Morris
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/we...erguson-riots/
When I mention the year 2014 do any events stand out in your mind? Some of you may think of births of family members or special anniversaries or incredible vacations that you took. You know the kind, the ones you wish you could take every year because they were just that amazing? Yeah, I love those too.
But when I think of 2014, two things come to mind. Let’s start with the second event.
We moved (usually a fun thing) in November of 2014.
But the reason we moved was because of another event that began in August of 2014 and continued through the end of 2014 and beyond. The first thing that I will always think of when I hear, “the year 2014” are the images of destruction from my town of Ferguson, Missouri – images of the riots that we saw and experienced first hand while driving down streets where ruin ran rampant (say that five times fast).
Businesses were destroyed. Personal property was demolished. It wasn’t even safe to leave your house depending on where in Ferguson you lived.
Some Background Details
We considered moving to Ferguson in the fall of 2001. We were expecting twins and decided to buy a house in an affordable suburb of St. Louis. We had friends who lived in the area, and they liked it. What greater reference to the quality of the community than someone who already lives there, right? We found a great starter house on the corner of two of Ferguson’s four main streets.
The house we chose to purchase had a small backyard, a decent sized front yard, and room for the two children we were expecting at the time to play. We purchased the house in December of 2001 and lived there between 2001 and 2014. We had our twins the following summer, and over the years, we added three more children to our family. In August of 2014, our children’s ages were 12, 12, 8,7, and 3.
How It All Started
We pulled into our driveway on the afternoon of August 10, 2014, having just gotten back from a trip out of town. After tucking the kids into bed, I got some things in order and started working on a project at my desk when a friend of mine messaged me asking if I was all right. Okay, that was a rather odd question out of the blue. I told her I was fine and asked her why she was asking. She told me that there were riots going on in Ferguson.
That one sentence changed the course of my life – literally.
I knew my friend, and I trusted her. But you know that feeling…the one that says, “It can’t be as bad as she’s making it out to be.” Yeah, it’s real, and it’s called normalcy bias. According to Wikipedia (which I’ve been told never to quote):
“Normalcy bias is a belief people hold when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned.” (source)
I didn’t know it at the time, but that was exactly what was going on in my head – it can’t be THAT bad because nothing like this had ever happened to me before. BUT since I knew she wouldn’t lie to me, I opened a new tab on my browser and started looking up “Riots in Ferguson.”
One of the local news stations was running live coverage on their website. I watched for a moment. Then I called my husband over, and both of us watched, aghast at what we were seeing. There was a wall of police and a mass of rioters. As we watched and listened online we saw and heard screaming and yelling, threatening gestures, profanities being hurled. I saw one side moved forward and the other side moved back. Then both groups shifted toward either the left or the right. It was almost like watching a sinister dance. But this was a dance that took a dark turn fast.
That night things got out of control. Businesses were burned stores were looted, most of them were still about a mile away from us. We watched and we were saddened, but there was no reason to believe that but the events were going to get closer to us. We were safe, right?
Yeah, there was that normalcy bias again.
Save
I’m putting a picture from Google maps in here to show you where things were happening and where we lived.
You’ll notice three main North/South streets, West Florissant (this is the street right off of which Michael Brown was shot and where the riots started), Elizabeth (the street we lived on) and N. Florissant (the west most of the main North/South streets). The main East/West street that you see had several different names, Chambers and Hereford are two shown on the map.
Our house was on the corner of Chambers and Elizabeth.
Despite what happened during the night, during the next day, things felt rather normal. The sun was shining, kids were walking to the school across the corner from our house, cars were driving by where we lived just like usual. But it was an uneasy, eerie feeling. It was like the calm that occurs when the eye of a hurricane passes over you and the sun comes out like life is happy and normal and there’s nothing to worry about until the second half of the hurricane hits you.
But of course, night follows day. And with the next night, there was more unrest. Again, thankfully, it was mostly contained about a mile from us.
The riots didn’t stop.
This cycle of fairly calm days and vicious nights continued the next few days. By Wednesday, we had seen that this wasn’t going to go away quickly. The protests seemed to be growing each evening – at least a little. So Thursday, I packed several suitcases and put them in the back of the van – where they stayed. Bug Out Bags are okay, but if you know there’s a good chance you’re going to have to leave for a few days (or permanently if our house was burned) it’s better to have three changes of clothes and night clothes for each person than to have just one.
by Karen Morris
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/we...erguson-riots/
When I mention the year 2014 do any events stand out in your mind? Some of you may think of births of family members or special anniversaries or incredible vacations that you took. You know the kind, the ones you wish you could take every year because they were just that amazing? Yeah, I love those too.
But when I think of 2014, two things come to mind. Let’s start with the second event.
We moved (usually a fun thing) in November of 2014.
But the reason we moved was because of another event that began in August of 2014 and continued through the end of 2014 and beyond. The first thing that I will always think of when I hear, “the year 2014” are the images of destruction from my town of Ferguson, Missouri – images of the riots that we saw and experienced first hand while driving down streets where ruin ran rampant (say that five times fast).
Businesses were destroyed. Personal property was demolished. It wasn’t even safe to leave your house depending on where in Ferguson you lived.
Some Background Details
We considered moving to Ferguson in the fall of 2001. We were expecting twins and decided to buy a house in an affordable suburb of St. Louis. We had friends who lived in the area, and they liked it. What greater reference to the quality of the community than someone who already lives there, right? We found a great starter house on the corner of two of Ferguson’s four main streets.
The house we chose to purchase had a small backyard, a decent sized front yard, and room for the two children we were expecting at the time to play. We purchased the house in December of 2001 and lived there between 2001 and 2014. We had our twins the following summer, and over the years, we added three more children to our family. In August of 2014, our children’s ages were 12, 12, 8,7, and 3.
How It All Started
We pulled into our driveway on the afternoon of August 10, 2014, having just gotten back from a trip out of town. After tucking the kids into bed, I got some things in order and started working on a project at my desk when a friend of mine messaged me asking if I was all right. Okay, that was a rather odd question out of the blue. I told her I was fine and asked her why she was asking. She told me that there were riots going on in Ferguson.
That one sentence changed the course of my life – literally.
I knew my friend, and I trusted her. But you know that feeling…the one that says, “It can’t be as bad as she’s making it out to be.” Yeah, it’s real, and it’s called normalcy bias. According to Wikipedia (which I’ve been told never to quote):
“Normalcy bias is a belief people hold when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned.” (source)
I didn’t know it at the time, but that was exactly what was going on in my head – it can’t be THAT bad because nothing like this had ever happened to me before. BUT since I knew she wouldn’t lie to me, I opened a new tab on my browser and started looking up “Riots in Ferguson.”
One of the local news stations was running live coverage on their website. I watched for a moment. Then I called my husband over, and both of us watched, aghast at what we were seeing. There was a wall of police and a mass of rioters. As we watched and listened online we saw and heard screaming and yelling, threatening gestures, profanities being hurled. I saw one side moved forward and the other side moved back. Then both groups shifted toward either the left or the right. It was almost like watching a sinister dance. But this was a dance that took a dark turn fast.
That night things got out of control. Businesses were burned stores were looted, most of them were still about a mile away from us. We watched and we were saddened, but there was no reason to believe that but the events were going to get closer to us. We were safe, right?
Yeah, there was that normalcy bias again.
Save
I’m putting a picture from Google maps in here to show you where things were happening and where we lived.
You’ll notice three main North/South streets, West Florissant (this is the street right off of which Michael Brown was shot and where the riots started), Elizabeth (the street we lived on) and N. Florissant (the west most of the main North/South streets). The main East/West street that you see had several different names, Chambers and Hereford are two shown on the map.
Our house was on the corner of Chambers and Elizabeth.
Despite what happened during the night, during the next day, things felt rather normal. The sun was shining, kids were walking to the school across the corner from our house, cars were driving by where we lived just like usual. But it was an uneasy, eerie feeling. It was like the calm that occurs when the eye of a hurricane passes over you and the sun comes out like life is happy and normal and there’s nothing to worry about until the second half of the hurricane hits you.
But of course, night follows day. And with the next night, there was more unrest. Again, thankfully, it was mostly contained about a mile from us.
The riots didn’t stop.
This cycle of fairly calm days and vicious nights continued the next few days. By Wednesday, we had seen that this wasn’t going to go away quickly. The protests seemed to be growing each evening – at least a little. So Thursday, I packed several suitcases and put them in the back of the van – where they stayed. Bug Out Bags are okay, but if you know there’s a good chance you’re going to have to leave for a few days (or permanently if our house was burned) it’s better to have three changes of clothes and night clothes for each person than to have just one.
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