"We can never forget this."

[Content Note: White supremacy; police brutality; death.]

Today is the three-year anniversary of Michael Brown being fatally shot in the street by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, whom a grand jury refused to indict for the killing.

Breanna Edwards at the Root: 'This Is Ground Zero': Ferguson, Mo., Remembers Mike Brown on 3rd Anniversary of His Killing.

On Tuesday night, more than two dozen people gathered near the spot where Michael Brown Jr. was gunned down three years ago on Aug. 9, 2014, to mourn and remember the 18-year-old whose life was taken from him and to reconstruct a makeshift memorial in the spot where he died.

"We can never forget this," activist Meldon Moffitt told a group of residents and other community activists as they stood on the site. "This is ground zero."

Brown's death sparked months of protests and served as the catalyst to the Black Lives Matter movement.

...Moffitt has been a part of the demonstrations at the site where Brown was killed since the beginning, and he laments that despite all the cries of protest and demands for change, not much has changed.

"Where are the police and politicians tonight?" he said. "If they cared about the community, about making a difference, they would be here with us. They're a part of this, too."

Systems of oppression and violence cannot change unless people change — and it can't just be the people who are targeted for harm by those systems. It must be the people who enforce them. And the people of privilege who abet them, consciously and actively or via indifference.

It isn't enough for the powerful and privileged to remember. We must take action.

3 years ago, we went to the streets & stayed there for over 300 days because the Ferguson PD killed #MikeBrown. He should be alive today.

— deray mckesson (@deray) August 9, 2017

We owe it to #MikeBrown to dismantle systems/structures that harm people & to build systems/structures of equity & justice. Do the work.

— deray mckesson (@deray) August 9, 2017

Do the work.