This photo of Ieshia Evans, a 28-year-old nurse who traveled from New York to a protest in Baton Rouge, La., has become a symbol of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. (Photo: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)
A cop body-slammed 15-year-old Dajerria Becton to the ground at a graduation pool party. She lived to tell the tale — not so for countless others such as Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling and so on and so on.
“They’re killing our sons. They’re killing our daughters. They’re killing us.” That’s what so many people are saying.
What do you have to say? We want to hear your perspective as well as your thoughts on what needs to be done now and in the future.
How safe do you feel? Are you able to sleep when the young men and women in your life go out at night?
How are you negotiating your life? Are you doing anything differently?
Are we going backwards? What needs to be done?
Ieshia Evans became a symbol of the #BlackLivesMatter movement when she silently faced down a row of locked and loaded officers. Jonathan Bachman captured the standoff and her arrest for Reuters in an iconic photo that went viral.
“I’m human,” she told Gayle King in a CBS interview as she explained her thoughts before the arrest. “I’m a woman. I’m a mom. I’m a nurse. I could be your nurse. I could be taking care of you. Our children could be friends. We all matter. We don’t have to beg to matter. We do matter.”
Evans, a licensed practical nurse, reportedly had her 5-year-old son in mind when she traveled from Brooklyn to a protest in Baton Rouge, La., after Alton Sterling’s death.
What role are you playing? Please comment below, or send an email to info@fierceforblackwomen.com.
‘Silence Is not an Option’ for ‘Unfinished Revolution’
“We all know, deep down, that something more is required of us now,” says acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar Michelle Alexander. “This truth is difficult to face because it’s inconvenient and deeply unsettling. And yet silence isn’t an option.”
To read more from the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, read ‘Silence Is not an Option’ for ‘Unfinished Revolution.’
