April 17, 2021
“How many times can a man turn his head pretending he just doesn’t see?…Yes ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?“
Those questions were asked by songwriter Bob Dylan six decades ago and they still need answers. This year, this month, this week, the list of People of Color killed by police officers grew longer. Again.
The trial of Derek Chauvin isn’t even over and now two more names have been added to the list in just the couple of weeks since it began: 20 year old Daunte Wright, shot dead by a cop just a few miles from where George Floyd was murdered. And Adam Toledo, 13, shot dead by a cop in Chicago. Daunte was killed when a veteran cop who (claims she) mistook her gun for a Taser shot him by accident. Adam was cut down by a cop’s bullet while his empty hands were high in the air, silently signalling, ‘don’t shoot.’
On Friday night in Times Square, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams led a vigil of several dozen New Yorkers in verbalizing “we’re not OK.” His emotional address reflected the profound sadness that these latest killings have evoked, in addition to the anger and frustration that were already simmering. After Floyd’s death last year, streets around the world filled with people mobilizing for change. Black Lives Matter was the self-evident cause for which they marched. It shouldn’t have even been necessary to state such a simple and obvious truth, and yet the resistance to it was ferocious. Whether refuted with ignorance (‘all lives matter!’) or rejected with blatant racism (‘blue lives matter!’), the problem Colin Kaepernick drew America’s attention to just wouldn’t go away.
So here was Nia Adams from NY Justice League standing in the rain on a Friday night in Times Square stating this simple truth once again: Black Lives Matter. “We deserve to live.” She went on to explain that there’s a war against Black people in this country, and pointed to racialized Capitalism as one reason why.
NYPD Lt was promoted even after jury found that a shooting was no accident.
Shanduke McPhatter, is the Founder and Executive Director of the not for profit, Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes Inc. He spoke about an NYPD officer who ‘accidently’ fired his gun on a call a decade ago, killing 25-year-old Ortanzso Bovell. A civil court verdict led to the payment of $2.5 million to Bovell’s grieving mother. The officer, John Chell, continued to be promoted within the Department thereafter and was recently assigned to lead the Brooklyn North Detective Bureau.
The list.
Pastor Kaji Douša said she planned to read aloud the names of people killed by police but the list is just too long. It’s so long, in fact, that its present form almost resembles a roll of paper towels. So on this wet Friday night in Times Square, Pastor Kaji asked the assembled activists to help out by placing their hands on it as it was unrolled across half the length of Duffy Square, and that’s what they did.
A long list of names of people killed by the police.
