Protesters: ‘Say her name’
Crowd recognizes Black women lost to violence
They came together on Independence Day with a message: “Until Black lives are free, none of us are free.”
And another, just as important: “Say her name.”
Hundreds of people gathered on the Fourth of July to recognize the Black and brown women who have been victims of police violence in Boston and beyond, and to continue the calls for justice and equality that have grown across the nation since the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
“We’re going to lift up the Black women who have been slain and killed by police violence,” activist Karlene Griffiths Sekou cried out to the crowd assembled in a park near the police station in Nubian Square. “We’re marching though to say your lives were not in vain. We’re saying you have dignity, you have worth, you have value, and you matter to us.”
The focus Saturday was on those women — Taylor, Sandra Bland, Atatiana Jefferson and countless others who activists say have so often gone unrecognized.
“Malcolm X said it: ‘The most disrespected person in America is a Black woman,’” said Samantha Dorcean of Medford. “We have to make sure we’re the ones with the voices to lift each other and up do what’s best for our community.”
Dorcean was among the marchers who set off from Nubian Square toward the Boston Common, a sea of people carrying signs emblazoned with the words “Black Lives Matter” and the names of the female victims they chanted through masks and bullhorns.
U.S. Sen. Edward Markey was among them, walking side by side with supporters and friends from Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church. Though his goal was to walk in silent solidarity, his presence still attracted media attention — and the gaggle of reporters drew some disdain from protesters.
“We know that when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence, he did not mean to include Black men and Black women in our country,”
Markey said before being interrupted. “And so today what we are saying by this march is we still have a long way to go to make sure that everyone is able to enjoy equal justice under the law.”
Rachel Domond of Roxbury, part of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said “we’ve seen huge gains by a mass movement that has stayed in the streets,” in the weeks since Taylor’s and Floyd’s deaths, adding that people need to keep coming out to “receive and demand the justice we need.”
That message will carry on in part through a Black Lives Matter mural local artists began painting onto a street near Nubian Square Saturday.
Kai Grant of Black Market Nubian said art projects and symbolic moves like this — especially with the city’s backing, as is the case with this mural — are meaningful.
“This is very important to giving us hope,” Grant said.
But she said if people genuinely want to support Black people and Nubian Square, they need to do a better job putting their money where their mouths are.
“Folks really need to really start investing inside of Black communities if they’re really going to insist that they’re pro-Black Lives Matter or that they care,” she said. “We need to see real investment in Nubian Square.”