00:00Hello, everyone. Welcome to my kitchen table, where I have the opportunity to speak to all
00:04these amazing, brilliant people. Today, I'm Dr. Joya Crea-Perry, and I'm honored to have with me
00:10Monica Simpson from Sister Song. We really are having a moment today around the impact of police
00:16violence on Black women, on reproductive justice, and on our communities as Black mothers. Today
00:22would have been Breonna Taylor's 27th birthday. I can say as a mother of a 27-year-old Black woman,
00:28it hurts my heart to know that she didn't get to see her 27th birthday, and how much more living
00:33I know that my daughter has to do, and really thinking about how George Floyd asked for his
00:38mother on this deathbed, and both of those are important moments for us to think about as a
00:43community and what that means, and I just want to bring in my friend Monica to talk a little bit
00:47about how she's feeling about those things. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, Dr. Joya. It's
00:52really, really good to see your face, and to be in this experience with you today, even virtually,
00:59and I'm with you on the sadness, feeling the sadness, and feeling the pain of losing Breonna Taylor
01:10in the way that we did, and on her 27th birthday, just really sitting with that, and sitting with
01:16what that means for me. Like, I remember being that 27-year-old Black girl, and I felt like I could
01:21take over the world. I felt like I could do anything, and our dear sister did not get that
01:26opportunity. Her life was taken to her, taken away from her far too soon to the hands of violence,
01:32police violence, and that is just not okay. It's not okay, and she deserves to be here, and so this,
01:41what we see happening in the world right now, the uprising, folks really putting themselves, their
01:46bodies on the line in this moment, is for people like Breonna and George Floyd, yes, and I think that
01:52it's also important for us to uplift, you know, across gender lines, right, across orientation,
02:00across identity. Like, we're losing so many people. We have lost trans folks. We lose Black women. We lose
02:06children, and yes, we lose Black men, right, to the hands of state-sanctioned violence, and I think that
02:12it is so important for us to not lose that in our conversations, and not to lift one higher than
02:19the other, or push one further than the other. Anyone that's losing their lives to the hands of
02:25police, to the hands of crazy vigilantes who want to just see us no longer existing on this planet
02:32needs to be uplifted. We have to say their name. We have to say her name today, in particular, Breonna Taylor,
02:37on her birthday. I call her name, and hold the sadness and the rage in my heart today
02:44of how we don't have this beautiful sister with us anymore.
02:51Well, thank you so much, Monica. You always know how to
02:55bring us back to center, and what really matters, and what really matters right now for us, although
03:01we're still dealing with COVID-19, and although it's important for us to still maintain physical
03:06distance as much as we can, and if you're protesting, make sure you have your masks, and if that's not
03:11your role anymore, you know, Monica and I were talking about we're at the stage now where maybe
03:15not being in the streets is not necessarily what our role is, but we do know we have a part, all a part
03:20to play in the liberation of Black people, and I'm fighting for justice for all of us, and so it's okay
03:24if we're not in the streets. If you are, be safe, and if you aren't, you know, make sure that we're fighting
03:30all together because we deserve to be free. All of us deserve to be free, so thank you so much for coming.
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