Black Lives Matter is becoming slightly more conventional

CRUMPLED paper roses, a broken vase and a brass plaque mark the spot in Ferguson, Missouri, where a policeman shot dead Michael Brown four years ago. Kesha Burnett, a resident of a nearby housing block, gives it a glance and hurries along Canfield Drive to her bus. Has anything changed for her since the black teenager was killed and mass protests erupted? “No improvement, there’s a lot of gun violence all over,” she says. “Police are trying,” she adds, “but police still harass”. “Police? They still act the same,” complains a youngster in a grey T-shirt. He draws on an e-cigarette by a McDonald’s restaurant nearby. “Nothing going to change, they’ll still be killing. They just mess with you, for real,” he says, declining to give his name.

As patrol cars pass back and forth, residents offer contradictory views on how Ferguson has changed since the protests in 2014. Cornelius Washington, who has lived there for 20 years, says “anger built up over time” and remains. “It was so corrupt, people were jailed for four months over a traffic ticket,” says Jamala Rogers, an activist and author of a book on the protests. She says harassment goes on. Others demur, claiming too much has changed. The owner of a liquor shop, of South Asian heritage, stomps from behind a thick glass cage over to his parking lot to show where chanting protesters spent two weeks last month trying to close his business. (Their motives were unclear.) He “called police 100 times” to shift them but officials dithered. “They don’t dare take action now,” he says. Nobody will risk another spark.

Ms Burnett does see one clear improvement over the years: “Black Lives Matter, I do think they help the community,” she says, referring to the grassroots activist group that made its name in the protests. Mr Washington says the name alone gave a welcome sense of pride. Activists first used the BLM hashtag on social media before Brown’s death—it has been deployed 30m times, says the Pew Research Centre. More important, BLM is growing into a substantial rights movement.

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of BLM, also set up its associated Global Network to co-ordinate groups in the “larger movement for black lives”. Members shun centralised decision-making, she says, preferring “distributed leadership” among some 40 BLM chapters nationwide. Still, a few founders, including Ms Cullors and Alicia Garza, earn most attention: Ms Garza this month called BLM “the civil rights movement of our generation”.

The activists say it has notched up tangible success. Ms Cullors sees rising social consciousness about black concerns, for example in more numerous and appealing depictions of black characters by Hollywood. The groups’ focus on police violence has also led to “a clear conversation about state repression”, she says.

Official responses to police killings, in some places, are also changing. Ms Rogers notes that St Louis, which contains Ferguson, has elected its first two black prosecuting attorneys in the past two years. They promise closer scrutiny of police behaviour. That approach has spread. In Chicago a policeman is being tried for killing a black teenager he shot 16 times while on duty. This is the first such murder trial of a policeman there since the 1970s.

Barbara Ransby, an academic in Chicago who just published a history of BLM, calls it a movement in transition. Its focus has widened from police violence to diverse social concerns, notably sexual politics and feminism. That has proved popular. Civil-rights groups used to be led by overbearing and middle-aged men, usually preachers, who hold little appeal for youngsters today. The new outfit’s approach is proving far more exciting.

Still, the movement has conventional problems. Ms Rogers describes having to manage a surge in donations for her organisation in Ferguson, whereas Ms Cullors says “we don’t have anywhere near enough funding” overall. The many groups nationally get by on less than $2m in total, she estimates. BLM lacks a slick media operation and is rather chaotic.

This is partly because its activists disagree over strategy. An “abolitionist” faction wants campaigns to shut all prisons, even disbanding police forces. Moderates, such as those at the Ella Baker centre in Oakland, want a focus on pressing local municipalities to spend more on public health. The biggest doubt is the “burning question, whether to participate in this fallacy of a democracy in America”, by getting involved in elections, says Ms Rogers.

Radical members, especially those disappointed by Barack Obama’s presidency, argue for sticking to “direct action” such as blockades of bridges and roads. Ms Ransby recalls how activists early on scorned “respectability” and “representative politics”. Nor were activists ready at first. DeRay Mckesson, who is popular on Twitter, ran for mayor of Baltimore in 2016. He flopped, winning just 2.5%.

Moderates in favour of elections, however, now have the upper hand. Ms Rogers says the elected lawyers in St Louis prove that meaningful gains can be made. Zachary Norris of Ella Baker points to elected officials who have been persuaded to help both ethnic minorities and immigrants in “freedom cities”, such as Austin, Texas.

Does that mean backing down from previously strident protests? Ms Cullors denies it, promising electoral politics to go with “building power of the most vulnerable” through education, campaigns and direct action. Ms Rogers, whose Organisation for Black Struggle in St Louis has been active since the 1980s, says Black Lives Matter is the latest example of a long, two-pronged struggle: for electoral change and more “power outside the arena” for black people. Both will come, she says.