We're Dying Too

[sheshe2]

On March 21, 2012 a group of four young black people—two women and two men—were standing in an alley on the West Side of Chicago talking about how they were going to get home from the party they had just left. It’s a scenario so common almost any one of us can remember a similar moment in our lives.

But on that night a white off-duty Chicago police officer, Dante Servin, took it upon himself to tell the young people to quiet down. After a verbal altercation with one of the men, Servin fired his department-issued gun in the direction of group members who, at that point, were standing with their backs to him. One of five bullets struck Rekia Boyd in the back of the head, killing her. Servin later claimed that he mistook a cell phone one of the young men took out of his pocket for a gun.

In the popular imagination a victim of a police shooting is almost always that of a young black man. Media headlines, presidential speeches, and rally chants all paint a picture of police violence as a problem plaguing black communities, but really, we’re only talking about young men. This time, the life of the unarmed black person taken was a young woman’s.

Boyd is one of hundreds of black women killed by police whose name has not grabbed national headlines or galvanized national movements. Chicago alone has witnessed the killings of Frankie Perkins, who police choked to death because they erroneously believed that she had swallowed drugs; LaTanya Haggerty, whose cell phone was mistaken for a gun; and Angelique Styles, who police fatally shot after coming to her home to address a domestic dispute.

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“#SayHerName” Say her name. Say her name.

[Mnemosyne]

1. ... nt

[niyad]

2. k and r

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. I know someone who answered the door and had a cop push his way in....

He slammed her down and put his knee on her neck because she was burning incense and he assumed she was trying to hide the smell of weed.