The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘One more cry for justice among the thousands and thousands’
This weekend you might see orange rocks and shells in various places around towns across Connecticut. Bend down and look closely — see a message written atop the orange. Pick up the rock or shell, hold it, and think for a moment about the message.
“Honor with action.” “Not one more.” “End gun violence.” “12-14-12,” below a broken heart. “Disarm hate.”
In front of the Molten Java coffee shop in downtown Bethel, on Friday Jenn Lawlor will gently place an orange-painted rock bearing the name “Emily Todd.” Emily is Jenn’s daughter who was 25 years old when she was brutally shot to death on a cold night in Bridgeport, Dec. 8, 2018.
One more life ended too soon, one more mother and family who will always grieve. One more cry for justice among the thousands and thousands in our country.
The rocks and shells represent a tangible way to observe Wear Orange day, June 5, after the pandemic disrupted plans for the usual rallies in Connecticut and most states. The observance continues through the weekend and this year reverberates with the multitudes of protests over the death of George Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day. That officer has since been fired and charged with second-degree murder.
Just as one needless death has become emblematic of police brutality, one needless death led to the Wear Orange movement. We must know the origins to understand the depth of meaning.
Hadiya Pendleton was 15 when she was shot to death in Chicago on Jan. 29, 2013. Little more than a week earlier, she performed in the inaugural parade for the second term of President Barack Obama. One can imagine the pride the young black girl, an honors student, must have felt as a majorette in her high school band marching in that parade.
All her potential was extinguished when, in a park with friends, she was caught in the crossfire of gang warfare. An innocent victim. Her killer was punished, finally last year, with an 84-year prison sentence.
After her death, Hadiya’s friends wore orange — a color to be seen.
Now Wear Orange day, National Gun Violence Awareness Day, is the first Friday in June, close to Hadiya’s June 2 birth date. It is promoted by Everytown for Gun Safety, a national nonprofit organization, and supported by similar groups such as Sandy Hook Promise in Newtown, Newtown Action Alliance and Newtown Junior Action Alliance, which is comprised mainly of high school students, and Moms Demand Action’s Connecticut chapter.
“Wear orange to raise awareness of our nation's gun violence crisis, which reflects and intensifies longstanding racial inequities in America,” the Wear Orange website states. “Black Americans are 10x more likely to die by homicide than white Americans.”
I remember reading seven years ago about Hadiya’s death. It pierced through the numbness we all felt over the shooting deaths of six educators and 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School the previous month. Surely some common sense legislation aimed at preventing — or at least reducing — gun violence would follow.
And it did in Connecticut and New York, but not at the federal level. Not then, not yet.
Police reform was supposed to happen after police shot and killed Michael Brown Jr., a black teen, in Ferguson, Mo., six years ago. There were protests, there were speeches. Training was increased and police started to wear body cameras (though to this day not all departments in Connecticut have them). And yet police brutality continues, not just in the middle of the country, but also here in Connecticut, disproportionately to people of color.
Divisions over the days and nights of protests lay bare the underlying centuries-old racism. Is it any wonder people are frustrated?
This isn’t a “they” problem — it’s “us” — and will require serious and sincere dialogue.
‘No justice, no peace’
The accused killer of Emily Todd is black. Emily was white. Her mother said his color is immaterial. It factored in her death as little as, say, his height.
“He was pathological,” Jenn told me in a phone conversation this week. “You have to be disturbed to do what he did.”
Unlike Hadiya, Emily knew the man accused of killing her. They dated a few times. She broke it off. He called her and threatened suicide; he had a gun, she told Bridgeport police when she called them, he lived in that area, and pleaded with them to intercede. She was on the phone for more than an hour, her mother said; police located him in a car but had to cut off a highspeed chase for safety reasons. The incident wasn’t picked up by the next shift.
Instead, a week later when Emily met him for a coffee in Bridgeport, one last time he begged, he shot her in the back of the head and stole her debit card and car, police said. The April court date for the judge to decide on a possible plea agreement was postponed twice because of the pandemic; now it’s scheduled for July 8.
Like so many survivors of violence, Jenn wants justice.
“Emily will be honored through other lives saved,” her mother prays.
She understands the anger and frustration seething in the protests of George Floyd’s death.
“‘No justice, no peace’ — nothing has changed,” she said. “A great part of America saw a man die at a police officer’s knee. It needs to be a tipping point.”
May that be so. It cannot be ignored or brushed aside.
Some get involved in movements when tragedy touches them. Jenn, a social worker, joined the northern Fairfield Country chapter of Moms Demand Action after Sandy Hook. The mission would become even more personal after Emily’s death. Now she is an advocate, called a fellow, with Everytown for Gun Safety, one of five in the state.
Friday afternoon, Jenn and family members will draw a large peace sign on the front lawn of Molten Java and will place the orange rocks within it. In Ridgefield, Everytown members who painted clam shells with messages will place them along Main Street.
On Sunday, people can take a rock from the peace sign and then place it anywhere, such as along a path, for others to find.
Orange, the color to be seen — and heard. Rock by rock, shell by shell, the seeds of understanding are scattered.