Antonio Ray Harvey |
California Black Media
Last week, several California social and
criminal justice organizations, as well
as community-based groups, gathered for a rally at the
state Capitol titled “Stop Killing Us.” Oakland-based All of Us or
None (AOUON) organized the event — with the help of other partners across
the state — to condemn police violence against African
Americans.
AOUON is a project of
Legal Service for Prisoners With Children (LSPC), a
nonprofit civil rights organization that advocates for the rights of formerly
and currently incarcerated people and their families.
Their demonstration
was peaceful — done with official permission — and less spontaneous than
recent explosive protests and riots triggered by the brutal murder of George
Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minnesota, at the hands of police
officers.
But it
was charged with strong convictions and a solemn
sense of grief, much like those protests.
“You mess with our
children, I’ll come running,” said Yolanda Banks, the mother
of Sahleem Tindle, who a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer
killed on Jan. 3, 2018. He was 28.
“I have to march,”
Banks continued. “We fight together.”
Banks frequently joins
other grieving African American families from around California who
have lost loved ones to police violence for rallies and vigils like
the one AOUON held in Sacramento.
Participants arrived from
Riverside, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Vallejo, Richmond,
Oakland, San Francisco, and other places in the state. Most of the people in
attendance were people who have been impacted by police
violence.
On the front steps of
the State Capitol, large black-and-white photos of people of
color who have been victims of police deadly force were on
display. According to AOUON, police violence has claimed the
lives of 600 people in California over the last five
years
Asale-Haquekyah Chandler
(pronounced “Ah-SAH-lah”) made the trip east to Sacramento from San
Francisco to support Banks and the other families involved with “Stop
Killing Us.” Chandler is hosting the “One Life Walk: A Silent Walk Parade
Protest” in downtown San Francisco July 28.
Chandler, who
ran unsuccessfully for the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors District 10 seat in 2018, has also been affected by
violence, but not at the hands of law enforcement. Her 19-year-old
son Yalani Chinyamurindi, while on a lunch break in San Francisco,
was shot and killed, along with three individuals he knew.
The young men 20, 21, and 22
years of age were giving her son a ride back to his job when four
gunmen surrounded the car they were in and opened fire.
Locally, around the Bay Area,
the crime, which took place on Jan. 9, 2015, has
been dubbed the “San Francisco 4.” Chandler said she and
Banks (the two women knew each other well before their
sons died) attended the event because see themselves
as “fighters of justice and equality for all of our lives,” she
said.
“We were fighting way before
these children were murdered,” Chandler said. “So, the uniqueness we’re
bringing to the table was meant to be. Though I hate to say it — because
we lost (our children). My child was killed by the community and her child was
killed by the police. We didn’t want to be in this club (mothers of children
violently killed). But we are the right ones to be in this club.”
Banks, who lives on a rural
farm in Calaveras County, told California Black Media (CBM) that the events
that AOUON stage are “painful but therapeutic.”
The pain and passion expressed
by Banks, Chandler, and other participants (who each read aloud the names of
the departed) was evident. Several lawmakers emerged from
the State Capitol to support the event and stand with the families. They
included African American legislators: Sen. Holly J. Mitchell
(D-Los Angeles), Sen. Steven Bradford (D- Los Angeles), and Assemblyman Kevin
McCarty (D-Sacramento).
McCarty authored a
constitutional amendment, ACA 6, which will be on
the general election ballot in November. Known as the “Free the
Vote Act,” ACA 6 will seek voters’ approval to restore voting rights to
former inmates on parole.
AOUON and LSPC’s policy
director Ken Oliver said the prison inmate-support organizations side with ACA
6.
“Yes, we support ACA 6,” Oliver
told the large crowd at the rally. “We have 40 thousand people out here who
can’t vote. So, understand when we talk policy. I have 80 thousand
sitting behind the wall right now, I have eight million in California that have
felony convictions, I have neighborhoods that are suffering.
People can’t get jobs, and I have people out here getting killed by
the police. That’s going to change.”
