Zena Ozeir at a protest in downtown St. Louis.

DEARBORN — On Sunday, Oct. 12, around 2 a.m., a local activist was arrested in St. Louis while participating in protests against police violence towards African Americans.

St. Louis police apprehended 17 activists— including Dearborn resident Zena Ozeir— for rallying in front of a QuickTrip gas station. According to activists, officers used pepper spray and batons to disperse the demonstrators after declaring their assembly unlawful. The organizer stressed the peaceful nature of the protest.

Ozeir said the police used “brutal force” against the demonstrators, adding that a fellow protester who was also arrested was made to remove her Islamic headscarf while in detention. 

The protest was part of a larger campaign dubbed “Ferguson October”, which is demanding justice for 18-year-old Michael Brown, a Black teen who was shot by White police officer Darren Wilson in the St. Louis suburb in August. The police crackdown took place near the Shaw neighborhood, where Vonderrit Myers, another African American teenager, was shot dead by an off-duty police officer last week. 

Ozeir told The Arab American News she has wanted to join the protests in Ferguson since they broke out following Brown’s death. After contacting a solidarity group called “Muslims for Ferguson”, she headed to Missouri on Saturday to be a part of a Palestine contingent that participated in the weekend’s protests in Ferguson and St. Louis.

She said there has been growing solidarity between Palestinians and Ferguson demonstrators, especially after activists from Palestine tweeted  tips on how to deal with tear gas to protesters in Ferguson.

According to Ozeir, the Palestine contingent was perceived positively and welcomed by the larger crowd, which consisted mostly of young people.

Ozeir attended protests and candlelight vigils for Brown and Myers in Ferguson and downtown St. Louis on Saturday. She said people were protesting “happily and peacefully” and that there was genuine solidarity among the activists. 

At night, a rally of about 200 people was staged in the parking lot of QuickTrip, according to Ozeir. The gas station has become a symbolic place for the St. Louis area protesters after one QuickTrip station was burned down in the aftermath of Brown’s death. 

Ozeir said protesters linked arms in front of the gas station’s store, which was locked, before police moved in on them. She added that she was in the process of leaving when the police arrested her. The officers did not read her Miranda Rights, according to her account.

The arrested activists were booked at the South Patrol Police Station and then transferred to the St. Louis Justice Center.

Ozeir said that at the station, a police officer asked her if she was born in the United States. She replied that she was.

“‘You know, you can’t do this stuff in Islamic countries,’” she said the officer told her. when she asked what he meant by “this stuff”, the officer allegedly replied, “You can’t protest in those countries without getting shot.”

Ozeir said she rebuffed the officer’s claims, which she found abusive. 

“It was all very surreal to me,” Ozeir said of the experience. “I did not go down to Ferguson planning to get arrested.”

She said the force and the haste exercised by the police were scary and unjustified, adding that the protesters were in front of the gas station for less than five minutes. 

“There have been more than 100 people arrested in Ferguson and St. Louis since Michael Brown was killed, and Darren Wilson has not spent a second behind bars,” she said. “That’s extremely telling of what’s happening down there right now.”

Ozeir added that police brutality is not limited to Ferguson and must be faced with the same kind of resilience everywhere, including Detroit. 

Ozeir was charged with unlawful assembly. She said she will be coordinating with her fellow activists who were arrested to sort out the legal issue. 

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said via Twitter that the protesters were throwing rocks at the police, a claim that organizers strongly deny.

Beilal Chatila, a local activist and a Wayne State University law student, who was with Ozeir at the time she was arrested, said Doston’s claim is a false attempt to justify the behavior of his force. 

Ozeir described the claim as a “complete lie.”

“It was a violation of our constitutional rights to assembly and free speech,” Chatila said of the police crackdown. “The protest was peaceful. For them to show up in militarized gear and helicopters and have snipers aim at us crosses all legal boundaries. That in itself is why we went to St. Louis— to protest this kind of police behavior.”

Although Chatila was spared arrest, he said a police officer hit him with a baton and pepper-sprayed him as he was leaving the protest.

“We did not do anything wrong,” he said. “The police had no ground to act this way.”

Chatila said the police reaction solidifies the connection between police brutality in the United States and the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine.

“The police was using the tactics of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces),” he said. “They were hitting their batons on the floor to intimidate the protesters. Then, they said the protesters were throwing rocks. Nobody threw a single pebble. These claims are right out of the tactics of the Israeli army.”

Chatila said he was impressed with the youths-led protests in St. Louis and Ferguson. 

Ozeir was released without bail on Sunday afternoon and returned to Detroit, but tensions continued to boil on Monday, as St. Louis police arrested 49 people, including renowned African American activist and philosopher Cornel West.