Moms: Honor our slain kids
PHILADELPHIA — A group of mothers of African-Americans killed by police or by gun violence somberly implored the Democratic convention audience Tuesday to remember their fallen children, insisting they did not die in vain.
Known as “Mothers of the Movement,” the sisterhood, including Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who was killed in a banned police chokehold on Staten Island, bravely took the stage amid a standing ovation and chants of “Black Lives Matter!”
Carr didn’t speak at the convention, but she was shown on a video meeting with Clinton last year.
“Eleven times, 11 times, he said he couldn’t breathe,” Carr was seen on the film saying about her son.
Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in
a Texas jail cell in July 2015 after she was arrested during an improper traffic stop, explained why she is supporting Hillary Clinton for President.
“She knows that when a young black life is cut short, it’s not just a loss, it’s a personal loss, it’s a national loss, it’s a loss that diminishes all of us,” she said, her voice strained with emotion.
Lucy McBath sadly admitted that she had always “lived in fear that my son would die like this.”
McBath’s 17-year-old son Jordan Davis was shot in 2012 in Jacksonville, Fla., after a man angry over loud music coming from Jordan’s SUV shot into the vehicle, killing him.
“Hillary Clinton isn’t afraid to say that black lives matter. She isn’t afraid to sit at a table with grieving mothers and bear the full force of our anguish. She doesn’t build walls around her heart,” she said, prompting more applause and tears in the audience.