'I could have been Mike Brown': your stories of racial profiling by the world's police

Hands up. Don’t shoot. The image of black men and women repeating this simple action at protests in Ferguson, Missouri – and across the globe – generates its power from what happens before that moment.

In Ferguson and too many places, police are more likely to pull over people of color for driving – indeed, often for simply being a person of color.

But there is lasting power in the stories people never forget. They are stories of “broken” taillights, of police brutality that doesn’t show up in an arrest report because there never was one, of no justice because nobody knew where to turn.

To help reach beyond Ferguson, the opinion departments of Guardian US and the St Louis Post-Dispatch partnered to gather hundreds of reader experiences. Our hope is that this sampling will help spur empathy – and then action, everywhere. These are your stories, lightly edited for space, privacy and clarity, and your hope for what’s next.