Say Their Names Page 3

  Family therapist Porsha Jones advises that parents take a stronger position on instilling pride in their young Black men when they have “The Talk.”

  Too many Black children believe, “I could be next,” Jones said, a burden non-Black youths do not have to bear.

  “That’s such a powerful force, believing what you have seen on television could happen to you also, that the police or a random person could take your life just because you’re Black.”

  It becomes a mental game.

  “Black parents have to implement a talk around new protective factors,” Jones said. “But we have to balance the message so that he does not believe he is less than. You must communicate a sense of all love for your child and let him know that he is not broken, that he is equal. Reinforce his attributes and make sure he understands his heritage. This is necessary to reinforce because this is certainly not about him.”

  Coates, the sociologist, equated the trauma Black males feel to Reconstruction, when gangs of whites would hunt down and kill African Americans for sport and with no consequences.

  Arbery’s death in Georgia was also hunting. He was on a jog when he was essentially run down by a father-son vigilante duo, eventually got into a struggle with a man who pulled a shotgun on him and killed him. Arbery had done nothing wrong. The men were not police officers, though the father had once been an officer and had also worked as an investigator for a district attorney’s office.

  “When these [vigilante] cases occur, [Black young men] must try to defuse,” Coates said. He said his son had an incident where he tried to run and was fortunate he was not shot in the back. Coates hugged his son “with tears in my eyes, knowing it could have worked out tragically.

  “[Defusing a situation] goes against their brain and instincts,” Coates said. “But it’s not about being a coward. It’s not about backing down. It’s being strategic. It’s about living.

  “It’s the time we are living in, it’s infuriating that we have to take these measures. But we do. Black people have to be strategic about protecting their lives because there are clear forces that are against us…And it’s the ultimate form of racism in America.”

  The Matter of Young Leaders

  Out of the agony of 2020, which sparked national insurrection about an American system that has disproportionately kept its knee on Black people’s necks, came a collection of young leaders who, simply, are not having it.

  They are younger than the founders of Black Lives Matter. In some cases, they are too young to vote. But as teenagers, they possess an innate sense of responsibility in a moment in history that calls for responsible stalwarts.

  They are leaders, the next wave of rabble-rousers, that promise to be needed, as the changes required will not occur at warp speed. Indeed, the process will be painstakingly slow, so deliberate, in fact, that it will require more energy and passion and strong voices to keep the movement moving over the years. And, again, these emerging leaders are young women.

  In 2020, four high school students were among the many young people who, inspired by BLM and devastated by the George Floyd killing, emerged as prominent voices—and plan to stay there.

  At eighteen, Brianna Chandler concluded what many Black adults have not: “We don’t need politicians,” the St. Louis native said.

  “We are all we have as people and all we need as citizens. We don’t have to rely on politicians.” That position is one of the reasons she has taken on a role as “a student of a revolutionary movement,” she said.

  To that end, Chandler organized a “teach-in” in her city for local students to learn about racial injustice. The idea was that the more they knew, the more they’d be inspired as she has been, and the more young people would join the fight.

  “We have to bring sheer radical hope,” she said. “We’ve lived under capitalism for so long that it’s taken a mental toll.”

  That mental toll is played out in passivity, which is the polar opposite of Chandler’s posture. “One of the pitfalls of activism is that people get tired. You post ten messages on Instagram and you’re done. No. Real activism comes from conversations and commitment.

  “Social media plays a large role, yes. The educational system is not filled to the brim with Black history or the liberation movement. Social media is good for sharing what we can from home and reaching a lot of people around the world. It’s good for getting donations. We have a mutual need.”

  And when fatigue sets in? “It’s comforting knowing that I am not alone,” Chandler said. “There is no hierarchy in this. We all carry this weight equally.”

  Her sentiments were shared by Tiana Day, a seventeen-year-old in the San Francisco area. Much of her life she said she had a “burning desire to protest injustices.” But she “didn’t know what to do. I felt hopeless. But I wanted to do something. I never had that talk with my dad. We made it to the suburbs and never thought we’d have to face racism, police brutality.”

  Inevitably, she learned that racism was everywhere. She also learned that her father marched while at San Jose State in protest after the beating of Rodney King by police officers in 1991 and that her grandfather was a part of the Black Panthers movement in the 1960s.

  “I was shocked that my father hadn’t told me about his activism. But it made sense. I had that burning desire. It’s literally in my blood.”

  Her father and family were proud when Tiana led thousands in the first-ever Black Lives Matter march across the Golden Gate Bridge in a demonstration after George Floyd was killed. At the apex of the bridge, she spoke to the mass of people. Doing so was liberating.

  “I want to share my voice,” she said. “We need representation. We need a future to fight for. These are the most influential times for us. There is so much to fight for: against police brutality, for climate change and women’s rights.

  “My family has had the strength and persistence to keep going. We have to take a stance now if we want to see change when we are adults.”

  She founded the organization Youth Advocates for Change. “One of the things that keeps me going is thinking what if, as an adult, I get a call saying my son was shot, my friend was shot,” she said.

  The burden of balancing school and activism and the state of America drains her, she said. “Sometimes depression sets in and I cry for twenty-four hours. I feel so helpless. But I always find a reason to get back out there. We have work to get done.”

  Politics, however, is also not in her future. She said Joe Biden would receive her first-ever vote for president over Donald Trump, “because I relate to him the most…Politics are messy. You have to step on people to get up there…I have enough anxiety. My name is out there. My address is out there. It’s very dangerous to stand on that pedestal. There are people who absolutely don’t agree with what I’m saying…But it’s in my blood.”

  Zee Thomas asked permission from her mother to become an activist. Given the go-ahead, the sixteen-year-old went full bore and ended up leading a march of 10,000 protesters in Nashville, Tennessee, against police brutality.

  “The oppression we’ve felt has lasted hundreds of years and it won’t stop,” Thomas said. “People think that teenagers don’t care about what’s going on around the world. We care. Tennessee is a red state, but we still care.”

  She said it is imperative that Black girls take the mantle. “Because if we don’t, it won’t get better. We have to continue the generational strength and pass it on.”

  Soft-spoken and withdrawn when not speaking in public, Zee said taking on a leadership role has been a challenge, but worth the effort. “I have severe anxiety [about public speaking],” she said. “It’s very frustrating. Sometimes I want to do more, but physically I can’t.” But she said she will not stop. “It’s empowering.”

  Asked what it takes to do what she’s doing? “Bravery.”

  Shayla Turner found her bravery when she saw a peer speaking to students about racism. It was a Friday during her sophomore year. She skipped class
and was moved. “I said, ‘I can do that.’ And I did.”

  At eighteen, she connected with community and grassroots organizations and grew more impassioned by the day. She spent some of her week of graduation campaigning in her hometown of Chicago to improve the city’s schools.

  “My anger and passion covers up my introverted nature,” she said. “I have a passion and rage and desire to make change.”

  She said she cried when she voted. “But it was not a good thing. I was counting on voting for Bernie [Sanders]. Kamala [Harris]’s policies…there were a lot of Black and brown people in jail because of her. So, I literally cried.

  “All this is happening [in America] because of racism, and the people at the bottom are suffering. It’s so corrupted because it’s rooted in corruption and based on racism and white supremacy.”

  She is so emotional about her work that she said she “overexerts” herself. “My mom has to remind me to take a mental health day. So, I cut off social media and relax. I don’t think I’m obligated to fix all that is wrong. But I would feel guilty if I did nothing.”

  Peters, the professor who studies civil rights movements, said young activists represent a wave of revolutionaries who have and will continue to immerse themselves in the movement to make Black lives matter.

  “The fact that there are generations who are younger who now know that protest is possible,” he said, “that coming together is possible, that there could be significant cohesion and a way of attacking and demanding is powerful. This is important.”

  The Matter of Minneapolis

  A city was deconstructed in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. Minneapolis had a reputation as a progressive place that championed inclusivity and mobility, with a downtown replete with high-end shopping and fine culinary options.

  Outside of the Chamber of Commerce’s depiction, Minneapolis also had a reputation for tension between its police force and its Black male population—and for sound reasons. Black men and women were appalled when, in 2015, Jamar Clark, twenty-four, was shot during a scuffle with two white Minneapolis police officers. In July 2016, cops shot Philando Castile in his car while his girlfriend recorded the tragedy in St. Paul, the state capital and neighboring Twin City. Police also shot to death Mario Philip Benjamin, thirty-two, when responding to a domestic incident in 2019.

  In each case, the shooters were either not arrested or found not guilty.

  In between those occasions, in 2017, a Black police officer named Mohamed Noor, born in Somalia, shot and killed a white woman in a dark alley, something Noor called “a mistake.” He was the only Minnesota officer to be convicted in an on-duty shooting in recent history.

  And then George Floyd happened, and the powder keg the city had become exploded.

  Andrea Jenkins, the Minneapolis city council vice president who represents the neighborhood where Floyd was killed, lives a five-minute walk from Cup Foods at 38th and Chicago, the site of the tragedy.

  Jenkins said she shopped at Cup Foods for decades.

  “I’ve been there hundreds of times.”

  The Memorial Day 2020 when Floyd was killed, Jenkins said she was at home, watching Netflix, a show called The Politician. She did not learn of the tragedy until she received a call late that evening from a colleague and then the mayor of Minneapolis, asking if she had seen the video.

  She hadn’t. It took her forty-five minutes to find it on Facebook. It was 1 a.m.

  “It was sickening,” Jenkins said of the video that shows Chauvin resting his knee and the force of his weight on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, twenty-nine seconds as Floyd begged for relief. “Absolutely sickening.”

  And then she thought: “Here we go. Here we go again. The overall disregard for human life, disregard for Black life. I didn’t really start thinking about the social unrest that would eventually ensue or any of that. It was just a real emotional response [and] feeling.”

  That same feeling permeated the Watts section of Los Angeles in August 1965, when a white California Highway Patrol officer stopped a Black man named Marquette Frye in his vehicle on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. A roadside argument broke out, which then escalated into a fight with police. In the commotion, witnesses said the police injured a pregnant woman.

  Frye’s encounter was the accelerant on the fire—the culmination of consistent mistreatment by white officers—that sent Black residents into a fervor. Six days of civil unrest followed, with Watts set ablaze in the most destructive uprising: thirty-four deaths and $40 million in property damage.

  Fifty-five years later, it happened in Minneapolis. Jenkins was aware of the Watts riots, also called the Watts Uprising and Watts Rebellion, and was fearful the same could happen in her city. After all, the parallel was striking: Both cities had a history of violence against Black people by law enforcement. Both cities had citizens who were fed up with the disregard. Both cities were one incident from an explosion. And America itself was rife with police brutality cases.

  The difference that made all the difference: In Minneapolis, Floyd’s death was captured on video—all nine minutes, twenty-nine seconds. There was no hiding behind the shield, no tainted, one-sided reports from enabling police officers. The world saw George Floyd murdered.

  The world heard him beg for his life. It saw a cop, Chauvin, show no concern that the man could not breathe. It saw three other officers hold him down—and none of them come to the aid of a man who had been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

  And so, the next day in Minneapolis, there was a rally as the nation and eventually the world shrieked in horror while viewing the video. The anger was palpable, the pain intense. But because so many Black men had died at the hands of law enforcement, few Black people were surprised. They had been desensitized to the violence. But that did not lessen the anguish or rage.

  The gathering in Floyd’s memory was peaceful, Jenkins said. “It was very peaceful. I mean, there was deep anger and frustration,” she said. “But it was being expressed, you would say, in traditional ways. You know, there were speakers.

  “There were people from all over the city, people just kind of gathering, and supporting each other, calling for justice. Then that scene moved to begin marching down eastward on 38th Street towards the third precinct, which was about two and a half miles from 38th and Chicago.

  “Things started around five in the evening. We cried and all of those kinds of things. I spoke. Many ministers and community activists and [the] community took off towards the precinct, maybe about seven-thirtyish, to march that two and a half miles to the police station.

  “I did not go that far; I have multiple sclerosis, so walking that distance in a large crowd was not healthy for me.

  “When I learned that it became this confrontation, I was surprised. There have been many reports about it, that the police maybe overreacted…I did not anticipate it.”

  “Actually, there was nothing to be surprised about,” said Greg Agnew, a Minneapolis native who has had encounters with white officers. “You have a situation where a man gets killed as George Floyd did in a city with a terrible history of police not only killing Black men, but constantly harassing us. Yes, there would be confrontations during the protests because the cops still act like cops and the Black people are tired of it.”

  Jenkins said she called the police chief and “begged” him to not use tear gas on the demonstrators. The fact that she knew that type of aggressive tactic would be employed speaks to the history of the city and America.

  But the inspector on duty, who had the authority, called for tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear, elements that sent a clear and alarming message: They were prepared for war with the protesters, even if the protesters were only there to make a statement.

  Those actions set the scene for the next night of protests, nights and actions that would define Minneapolis in this moment. Chaos erupted. Fires. Looting. Destruction. Leaders of the protests, who implored peaceful protests, decried the dis
ruptions and were often recorded stopping white marchers from painting “BLM” on buildings and inciting mayhem.

  Jenkins said she stayed at her partner’s home and watched it all play out on television for four days.

  “Minneapolis was spared the damage that could have come because the BLM movement isn’t about violence and destruction,” said Ray Richardson, a radio host who has lived in Minneapolis for more than twenty-five years. “We had a right to be fed up and pissed off—and not just because of George Floyd. There’s a history in this town that pushed us to the edge. But the organizers pushed an agenda that was not like the 1960s nonviolent marches, but still not to turn things into chaos. It takes away from the message.”

  “It was very spontaneous,” Jenkins said. “I mean, there were clearly reports of white supremacists in the area definitely involved…like cutting a fire hose and destroying property and burning down banks and post offices.

  “We were getting reports from neighbors that people were driving around in trucks with no license plates, starting fires behind people’s houses. Garages were on fire. Those are the kinds of reports that people were seeing.

  “And they were suggesting that these were not typical protesters. Many white neighbors [were] reporting that they [saw] white supremacists. Some had Confederate flags, lots of guys with tattoos. These were actually being confirmed by the law enforcement agencies that I was communicating with. Even though they were stating that these guys weren’t there to harm anything.

  “[But] they were reporting some of the same things that…happened in Kenosha [Wisconsin] later in the summer, that white supremacist militias were just in town to protect their stores and protect things. But it was downplayed quite a bit by state authorities. I guess they thought they weren’t a threat.