Cops Kill, Anti-Blackness Infiltrates Our Language and Headlines, and Why We Need to Support Black Women and Femmes Directly
Image of Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, Detective Brett Hankinson, and Sergeant Myles Cosgrove
Today as uprisings and rebellions continue to bloom all over the country and globe to protest Black genocide and police murders, and advocate for police/prison abolition, Black women and femmes are being killed at devastating rates.
Oluwatoyin Salau, who friends and family called “Toyin,” was an activist who fought for and spoke out about Black Lives Matter. She went missing on June 6th the same day she was sexually assaulted. Her body was found last Saturday off of Monday Road in southeast Tallahassee, Florida. She was a victim of homicide along with another woman, 75-year-old former state worker and local politician, Victoria “Vicki” Sims.
It’s disturbing, yet no surprise, how quickly the Tallahassee Police Department responded to this case and how swiftly they found the murderer and put him in police custody, compared to the total inaction and lack of accountability that happens when it’s a cop that commits the crime.
When the murderers are Black men the police move fast. But when the murderers are one of their own, as in the case with the officers who killed Breonna Taylor, they report “no injuries” and make no arrests.
It’s been THREE MONTHS since the pigs, John Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, and Brett Hankison murdered Breonna Taylor in her own home while she was sleeping, and STILL they have not been arrested. Beyonce, the Queen she is, is using her platform to call for holding these pigs accountable.
It was 74 DAYS, OVER TWO MONTHS, that Travis McMichael and his father Gregory McMichael, hunted down and murdered Ahmaud Arbery while he was out for a jog, until they were arrested. The fucking Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) had to get involved. THIS SHIT IS NOT COMPLICATED, yet we want to debate about what constitutes a “hate crime.”
The fucking FBI was called in by the Georgia Attorney General on May 10.
And yet, when a Black man commits a crime the “law and order” of this country materializes in the blink of an eye.
The FBI killed Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. All of these levels of policing are corrupt and not to be trusted.
We need to be concerned about how we are conditioned to view police killings because the framing and our understanding of these events will impact how we move forward, the cultures we create in our lives, relationships, and workspaces, and how we commit to truly protecting the most targeted among us -- the Black women and femmes who fight for all of us without anything in return.
Yahdon Israel, a teacher at The City College of New York, a writer with Sackett Street Writers, as well as the founder of Literaryswag Book Club, published a series of “Teach-Ins” on Instagram TV in which he goes in-depth about how the media we consume shapes and frames our understanding and relationship with what’s happening in our world. Israel stresses that, “All parts of our language is political,” and breaks down the “value, power, and purpose of language.” He recalls Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture on December 7, 1993, in which she warned us that, “Oppressive language does more than represent violence; It is violence.”
Israel provides a lesson on the basics of sentence structure (subject, verb, object), and the sinister influence that the basic components of a sentence can have when used in passive voice.
Israel provides these sentences below to illustrate how the same words in a different order can instill a different meaning and takeaway message:
“Police officer kills Black man.” Israel explains that within this phrasing is “an active framing of power. We know who is accountable.” But when you see this sentence: “Black man killed by police officer.” The same words mean something different. In this passive phrasing, Israel reveals that people are guided to wonder what did the Black man do to deserve this? “It shifts accountability from the person who committed the action to the person who the action was done to,” Israel explains.
Israel makes a terrifying point that we often don’t know the names of the murderers. This makes it too easy for them to get off the hook. This reinforces something in our psyches that this pain and injustice is inevitable. It happened. Nothing we can do, but #saytheirnames.
While it is important to know their names -- George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Toyin Salau, among too many others -- it’s also crucial that we know the murderers names and we hold them accountable.
We need to be conscious and active in our intake of media, and how we respond and act in response to Black genocide. How we absorb information influences how we integrate that information, which determines our behavior and actions in our daily lives. We need to shift the focus towards the root cause of the problem: whiteness.
As Israel says, “People think they’re angry about a victim. But you don’t get victims without aggressors.”
In this headline, we see the pattern of the object (Black security guard) before the subject (the police), which has the impact of obscuring the focus -- the focus being that the police murdered the security guard. Ian Covey, the cop who killed Jemel Roberson for doing his job is not mentioned until a few paragraphs into the story. The headline should read: “Police officer, Ian Covey, Murders Black Security Guard for Doing His Job.”
Does it sound ridiculous? That’s because it is. It is ridiculous that police are murdering Black people for existing.
When you read headlines and articles about Black women and femmes being brutalized, assaultated, and killed where do your thoughts go? Are you wondering what Toyin Salau did to deserve being murdered? Are you wondering what Iyanna Dior did to deserve being attacked and beaten up? What about Dominique Rem’mie Fells & Riah Milton?
Do you notice the cop in your head? Do you hear the cop telling you it was their fault for being outside their house, or out too late, or not wearing enough clothes, or they chose to be in that situation so they should have chosen differently?
We need to support Black women and femmes directly.
Pay them directly to their Venmos and Cash apps. When they ask for support, give what you can. Twitter user @tayleighlamb shares this message: “When you a Black girl say, ‘I’m leaving an abusive home and need help with moving costs,’ or post a gofundme or anything, donate to it. If you don’t have the capacity, share it with others. Every single time.”
We are conditioned as a society to blame the victims. Whether it was a counterfeit bill or a history of smoking weed, the media finds a way to narrate the events so that the perpetrators are not held accountable. This keeps us passive as Israel describes:
“When you read the posts of all these big media companies who are having a ball just co-opting the language of resistance how many of these people are actually condemning the actors of violence? Or, how many of them are also passively aligning themselves passively with the victimhood? So, when you frame this language of protest and passivity you’re also framing that you are more or less okay with what’s happening and you’re not conscious of it.”
How are we framing our posts? Our conversations? Our relationships? Any container of physical or virtual energy? Your work meetings? Your events?
Much like how a land acknowledgment isn’t a passive activity that has a beginning and end, fighting for all Black lives to matter, especially Black trans women and femmes, doesn’t have a beginning and end.
It’s an active act where 24/7 we seek all the ways in which we can hold white supremacist patriarchy, and those who embody these oppressive structures — the actors of violence, the white aggressors, as Israel details — accountable.
We need a critical feminist and anti-racist, anti-oppressive framework to continuously examine every, single aspect of our lives all of the time, throughout our days. Interrogate the fuck out of yourself and the people/places/systems you’re in relationship with, and the ways in which you consume and absorb media. Notice and interrupt how anti-Blackness and misogynoir shows up in these ways.
Give your money DIRECTLY to Black women and femmes. This cannot be stressed enough.
Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, Detective Brett Hankinson, and Sergeant Myles Cosgrove, the cops who killed Breonna Taylor must be held accountable.
Mara Ramirez shared this information on their Instagram about what you can do:
Call Attorney General Daniel Cameron 1 (502) 696-5300 and demand that he charge the three officers with murder
Call Interim Police Chief Robert Schroeder 1 (502) 574-7660, then enter Myles Cosgrove’s extension 5025747925 -- demand that he complete the investigation immediately and turn it over to Breonna Taylor’s lawyers and the Attorney General
Send Louisville Greg Fischer a message demanding that he fire the officers who murdered Breonna Taylor: https://louisvilleky.gov/mayor-greg-fischer/contact-mayors-office
From Mara Ramirez’s Instagram post:
“PLEASE SHARE. the cops that killed breonna taylor have still NOT been fired and have NOT been arrested. we need to push harder!! i had a hard time finding who to contact to demand justice, so i compiled them here for distribution. petitions are great but i think contacting them directly in your own words holds a lot of weight. put these up on your daily call wall. call every day until we see justice. fight for black women just as hard as black men. black lives matter.
!!!!!!UPDATE: the two voicemails say they are full and are not accepting voicemails now....keep calling every day until u get thru! if you can’t leave a voicemail here are alt ways to contact i have seeked out.....
ATTORNEY GENERAL: https://ag.ky.gov/Contact-Us/Pages/default.aspx
POLICE CHIEF : http://www.louisville-police.org/FormCenter/About-Us-4/Email-the-Chief-43
REACH OUT USING THESE FORMS AND KEEP THE TABS OPEN TO DO THEM ONCE A DAY. READ COMMENTS FOR UPDATES ON VOICEMAIL STATUSES. LINK IN MY BIO FOR CLICKABLE LINKS FOR THIS. PLEASE WRITE YOUR OWN MESSAGE OR ELSE IT WILL BE MARKED AS SPAM!
UPDATE: after u call the police chief, enter Myles Cosgrove’s extension 5025747925.
CALL THESE NUMBERS EVERYDAY UNTIL WE SEE ACCOUNTABILITY.”
