Last week, after it was announced that there would be no indictment for the officers widely suspected of the murder of Sandra Bland, the Sistas of the Harriet Tubman Fannie Lou Hamer Women’s Collective gathered in front of One Police Plaza to protest the lack of justice for the Black women and men who have been killed by the police. A few days later it was evident that the group was only scratching the surface in what it was prepared to do to achieve change in a system the continues to blatantly disregard the lives of Blacks.
A call to the members of the Black community was put out to gather at Sistas’ Place a few days after the protest. When I walked in, it was evident that the call had been eagerly answered.
“We have to come together to change our minds and the way we think about this. We have to strategize with our people to build our own system,” said Noel Harris, who gave a powerful talk to open up the community meeting.
A renewed energy circulated around the room as people, who, as Harris pointed out, could be the next victims on those T-shirts and posters on any given day, stood to talk and give their suggestions. The old spoke, the young spoke, and everyone in between spoke. Across from me sat a young lady who had just moved to Brooklyn from Georgia, and she said more emphasis should be placed on community involvement when it comes to disputes, because if the police are killing us, then they should not be looked at as our help. The room erupted in applause and head nods. A chord had clearly been struck.
It isn’t a foreign concept—look at tribes within Africa—but it is one that Blacks have abandoned as they were given a false security of being protected under the law.
There was a sense of urgency, as there should be, to raise Black consciousness, especially among the youth. They can’t hide behind their youthfulness anymore. The death of Tamir Rice and a grand jury’s decision to not indict the officers who killed him proved that. A few tables in front of me sat three little boys, barely in their pre-teens, and each spoke. It hit me like never before how different white kids are growing up compared to Blacks. What world is this where, alongside worrying about multiplication problems and book reports, children have to worry about their skin color dictating their survival rate?
“Tamir Rice got killed just for playing with a gun that they made, then they said it looked too real,” said Harris.
Toward the end of the meeting, pieces of paper were handed out. On it were the names of Black men, women and children—the youngest was 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones—who had been murdered because in some way they made officers “fearful for their lives.” That is the trusted go-to defense for officers. It works so well that we have been conditioned to think that on those rare occasions when scraps of justice are thrown our way, we should be grateful. In a call-and-response fashion, the group yelled “murdered by the police” after each name was called.
“First they were killing us when we had no video, now they’re killing us on video and they’re getting away with that. How far do we have to go before we say enough is enough?” asked Harris.
The Sistas of the Harriet Tubman Fannie Lou Hamer Women’s Collective meets every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Sistas’ Place. For more information, please visit www.sistasplace.org.
