FERGUSON, Mo.—Brightly colored ribbons flutter from a wrought-iron fence along the downtown business district’s main thoroughfare, snapping in the harsh winter breeze like dozens of tiny Buddhist prayer flags, each inscribed with words of inspiration: “Be Kind,” ‘‘Hope and Love,“ ’'Change the World.”
Up and down South Florissant Road, paint has transformed the sheets of plywood covering windows broken during last month’s rioting into works of art. Red hearts, white doves and peace signs in all the colors of the rainbow mingle with quotations from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, even the Beatles.
Messages of healing are everywhere, but the wounds in this city torn by anger are still raw and, for some, very deep.
Before this summer, few outside St. Louis County knew that Ferguson existed. That changed on Aug. 9, when white police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Today, angry protesters from New York City to Berkeley, California, carry signs declaring, “Ferguson is Everywhere.”
To many, the name has become a byword for racial injustice, for what’s wrong with America.
