In the years following the death of her son Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police, Lezley McSpadden has completed her high school diploma, written a book, campaigned for social justice and joined Hillary Clinton on her 2016 bid for the presidency.
Now McSpadden says she is considering running for Ferguson’s City Council.
As Mother Jones reports, McSpadden made the announcement Monday during a panel discussion on police violence at Harvard University.
“We have to get behind people who look like us and get them in these elected seats so that they can really do what’s right by the community, and I’m going to start with me by running for Ferguson City Council,” McSpadden told the audience, who applauded her comments.
Mother Jones reporter Brandon E. Patterson notes that if McSpadden runs, she would be the second parent of a high-profile black victim of racial violence to make a bid for elected office this year. Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old Jacksonville, Fla., teen who was shot and killed by a white man for playing his music too loudly, announced earlier this year that she will run for a U.S. congressional seat representing her home state of Georgia.
When Michael Brown was killed, Ferguson’s City Council was predominantly white, with only one black council member. Currently, half of the six-person council is black. If elected, part of McSpadden’s responsibilities would include overseeing the same Police Department that killed her son.
That fact didn’t escape McSpadden’s attorney, Ben Crump, who also sat on Monday’s panel and is currently representing the family of Stephon Clark, who was shot and killed by police in his grandmother’s yard in Sacramento, Calif.
“What a legacy that would be—elected to the City Council and supervising the same police that killed Michael Brown,” he said.