Say Her Name: Protesters in Chicago Demand Justice for Sandra Bland

[marmar]

Say Her Name: Protesters in Chicago Demand Justice for Sandra Bland

Wednesday, 29 July 2015 00:00
By Kelly Hayes, Truthout | Report




This week, from Dallas to San Diego to the Midwest, activists and community members around the United States are answering a national call to demand justice for Sandra Bland, a Black woman and activist who died in police custody on July 13.

In Chicago, protesters lifted up Sandra Bland's name on Michigan Avenue on July 28, as hundreds of protesters lined a bridge over the Chicago River, urging those who believe Black lives matter to "say her name." While a great deal of public discourse has focused on whether or not Sandra Bland committed suicide, or died as a result of police brutality, participants in Tuesday night's event carried a broader message - that the system was responsible for Sandra Bland's death regardless of the specifics of her death. In the words of organizer Mariame Kaba, "I don't care about the CSI version of how she died. The system killed her. The rest is superfluous."



Attendees loudly stated - through speech, song and imagery - that Sandra Bland's unlawful arrest was, in of itself, an act of violence and a manifestation of a culture of anti-Blackness in US policing. Connections were also drawn between Black and Indigenous struggles, with the name of Sarah Lee Circle Bear - an Indigenous woman who recently died in a jail cell - being called out alongside that of Sandra Bland and Rekia Boyd, an unarmed Black woman shot down by police in Chicago, whose family continues to seek justice. ................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32130-say-her-name-protesters-in-chicago-demand-justice-for-sandra-bland

[daybranch]

1. The system did not kill her, those that instituted that system killed her

Say their name, say the names of those in that greedy class who seek more and more to make us the needy class. Ask yourself who does this racism, sexism, economic miserly in communities serve. Say their name, if you want to make Black Lives Matter you and white people of good will have to fight those who benefit most from it. Yes you have every right to outrage but you and we must have direction for that outrage if we are to reduce this poison of racism. We all need to understand that the images and indignities heaped like manure on Blacks around the country after the Civil War during Reconstruction were devices created to produce and maintain a split between poor whites and African Americans in the South but were found to work effectively in the North as well. W.E.B. Du Bois, the great Black educator and leader in his book Black Reconstruction explains to make slaves of poor whites as well as poor blacks by creating false images of the black people and portraying Confederacy as a symbol of Freedom and states rights and appealing to the insecure needy egos of poor whites who already needed to curry favor with the former slaveowners who controlled the land and thus the economy in the South. The poor white people willingly accepted this false racial supremacy and maintain it today in much if not all the states that held slavery to be legal during the Civil War. The rich were able by creating this unnatural schism between members of the same majority economic class, poor workers, to create greater control of the election process and the economic process that resulted. This is detailed in a book called "The People's History of the United States " by Howard Zinn, activist for racial, gender, economc equality, truth in history, and preventing wars. His message like that of DuBois lead us to know who is behind the racism and why. With the knowledge of how and why this is done, we can and must remove their agents from our government by standing together as the needy class the rich have made us and demanding our needs take preference over their greed. We must not let those who would divide us see this police brutality as not applicable to us because are white. There will be great effort to portray the victims of police violence as undesirable, worthless, and thugs in order to avoid the combination of outrage that should occur. We must avoid this racial split and WE MUST STAND TOGETHER TO REMOVE THE GREEDY CLASS FROM CONTROL OF THIS SYSTEM OF SUPPORTED RACISM AND POLICE BRUTALITY. Go Bernie, he names names!