00:00First thing is really low hanging fruit. When we started Say Her Name, the simple demand was
00:05say her name. That was it. We were going to protest around Eric Garner and Mike Brown,
00:14the protest against anti-Black police violence. And we were marching with other people. This was
00:21back in 2014, right after Mike Brown was killed. And we had a poster with the names of Michelle
00:28Cousseau and other Black women who were killed by the police. And the simple demand was when we
00:32when we march for justice for our brothers, let's march for justice for all our siblings,
00:37because it's not just the men who are being killed. So we were saying Say Her Name. And the
00:44response from some people was we didn't even know that anyone other than Black men got killed by the
00:49police. Well, why don't you know this? Basically, because people don't tell those stories. People
00:52don't say their names. And the second part is that for some people, there was a sense that
00:57this is a Black men's issue. And you're being interlopers. You're interfering with the frame
01:04around what's happening to Black men. And for those, we wanted to say the only reason that's
01:09the frame is that we're not used to talking about the many ways that Black women have been victimized
01:15by state-sponsored violence. It includes being shot while Black. It includes having a mental disability
01:21while Black. It includes 9-1-1 being called because you're having a crisis and the police come
01:26and they see a Black woman out of control. And the only thing they feel that they can do with that
01:31Black woman is to shoot her through the heart, which is what happened to Michelle Cusseau.
01:35So the low-hanging fruit is just know this. Know this, people. Know this, people in our community.
01:43Because if you know the name, then you will begin to ask about the story. And if you ask about the story,
01:49you'll understand all the ways that our lives are at risk. It's not just the few stories that you think you
01:55know. That's when you can have a fuller agenda. That's when you can say things like the police
02:00shouldn't be called for 9-1-1 mental health calls. The police shouldn't be tasked to serve a warrant
02:06on a traffic violation, going to someone's house and busting in. The police shouldn't be able to come
02:11into your house in the dead of night on a no-knock warrant as though they were robbers in the night.
02:17So if we see all these ways that our sisters get killed, we'll have a fuller agenda. And with a fuller
02:24agenda, we'll have a more, we'll have a clearer sense of what the prize really is. It's a world
02:30in which none of our lives are subject to summary violence on behalf of the police.
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