#SayHerName

The Value Of Protest

July 22, 2015 Tim Dechristopher, www.timdechristopher.com Strategize! #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Elections, police brutality

By Tim Dechristopher - As a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, my first reaction to hearing about yesterday’s Black Lives Matter protest at Netroots Nation was disappointment. This looks bad, I thought. Bad for Bernie, who is the only presidential candidate with any chance of challenging structural injustice. Then I watched the video of Sanders responding to the protest, or should I say, failing to respond and instead just speaking over and past them. He tried to just continue with his stump speech and seemed annoyed with the disruption. Several times he looked at moderator Jose Antonio Vargas as if he expected Vargas to control these women, once asking, “Are you in charge here?” The closest he came to discussing policing issues directly was mentioning his success with community policing in Burlington, VT, a city that was pretty much all white and pretty much irrelevant to the discussion of racist policing.

Why I Interrupted The Netroots Presidential Town Hall

July 22, 2015 Tia Oso, www.mic.com Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Women, Elections, Leadership, Politics, Social Change

By Tia Oso in Mic - I am Tia Oso, the black woman who took to the stage and demanded a microphone on July 18 at the Netroots Nation Presidential Town Hall in Phoenix, Arizona. I did this to focus the attention of the nation's largest gathering of progressive leaders and presidential hopefuls on the death of Sandra Bland and other black women killed while in police custody, because the most important and urgent issue of our day is structural violence and systemic racism that is oppressing and killing black women, men and children. This is an emergency. Sandra Bland and I had a lot in common. We were both black women, active in our communities and the Movement for Black Lives. We both pledged sororities: I'm a Delta, Bland was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho. I have also been harshly confronted by police during "routine" traffic stops and feared for my safety and my life.

The Motivating Forces Behind Black Lives Matter

July 21, 2015 Tasbeeh Herwees, www.magazine.good.is Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Women, Ferguson, History

By Tasbeeh Herwees in Magazine Good Is - The names of female victims of police violence—names like Rekia Boyd, Natasha McKenna and Mya Hall—however, remained unknown to most people. Cullors, Garza, and Tometi have been tireless in their campaign to change that, using Black Lives Matter to push for a more thorough rejection of state violence—one that considers the specific ways that this violence impacts the lives of black women. This means focusing on stories of black women who have been victimized by police or the prison system. But it also means cultivating a strong cohort of black women leaders within the movement at large. Unlike the Occupy protesters of 2011, who claimed to be leaderless, the co-founders of Black Lives Matter instead assert that their movement is—in their words—a leaderful one. And those leaders are frequently black women like Richards, women who are carrying out grassroots community work in their neighborhoods in service of a global struggle against police violence.

Activist Sandra Bland Dies After Minor Traffic Stop

July 18, 2015 Shaun King, www.dailykos.com Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, Black Lives Matter (BLM), police brutality, Sandra Bland, Texas

By Shaun King in Daily Kos - Sandra Bland died in police custody this past Monday. Visiting Texas from Chicago to interview for a college job at her alma mater of Prairie View A&M, she was pulled over for a routine traffic violation (failure to use her turn signal). Everything from that point forward screams racism and foul play, including her death in the Waller County jail Monday. The first red flag is that Bland was officially arrested on Friday for assaulting a police officer. What we see from a bystander video is her telling the officers she is in pain and cannot hear after her head was slammed on the ground by the male arresting officer. The video is below. We have now learned that Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith, who made the first public comments about Bland's in-custody death, was suspended for documented cases of racism when he was chief of police in Hempstead, Texas, in 2007.

Police Riot In Philadelphia, Attack Peaceful Protesters

May 27, 2015 Betsey Piette, www.workers.org Resist! #SayHerName, Philadelphia, police brutality, Racial Justice

The confrontation with the police had begun to develop over an hour earlier, before the bus incident, toward the conclusion of a two-hour #SayHerName vigil in remembrance of Black women, transwomen and children murdered by racist police and vigilantes. Nearly 50 demonstrators had gathered at the corner of Cecil B. Moore and N. Broad streets to light candles and chalk the names of hundreds of victims on the surrounding block. Toward the end of the event, people took turns reading the names of the victims, including women and children who had been lynched by racist mobs. Nevertheless, people peacefully concluded the vigil and many headed home, only to get calls a short time later alerting them to the arrests at the bus stop and the need to be present outside the precinct where the arrestees had been taken. Despite the late hour, nearly 60 people turned out, with many staying into the night.

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