Sayhername Archives | Stop Street Harassment

Trigger Warning – Sexual Assault

Justice (thankfully) has been served for the women sexually assaulted by 29-year-old police officer Daniel Holtzclaw who targeted black women while he was on patrol.

Jurors last month convicted him on “four first-degree rape counts and 14 other charges, and recommended he spend 263 years in prison. The judge agreed.”

An article on NBC.com reports that:

“Black women from across the nation are traveling to Oklahoma City this week to stand in solidarity with the 13 black women who former police officer Daniel Holtzclaw was charged with sexually assaulting…

Activists representing the Brooklyn-based Black Women’s Blueprint, the African American Policy Forum and Black Lives Matter New York City will be in Oklahoma City to bring national attention to this case and to the police violence that black women face across the country…

In an era of national focus on police brutality committed against black men, they want the police violence that women face to gain attention and justice…

Those traveling to Oklahoma City also said law enforcement, civil rights and women’s rights organizations must also take a role in combating the victimization of black women by police.”

YES. This is so important. Thank you to all of the activists bringing these women’s stories and this issue forward. And my thoughts go out to the women Holtzclaw assaulted; may they one day find peace and healing.

‪#‎SayHerName‬, ‪#‎BlackWomenMatter‬, ‪#‎Visible4Justice‬, ‪#‎StandWithHer‬, ‪#‎OKC13‬.

Yesterday was the National Day of Action for Black Women and Girls. The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) release the report: “‪#‎SayHerName‬: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women” to help shed light on the extent of the issue.

From the AAPF website:

“Although Black women are routinely killed, raped and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality,” said Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Director of the African American Policy Forum and co-author of the brief. “Yet, inclusion of Black women’s experiences in social movements, media narratives and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities of color.”

#SayHerName gathers stories of Black women who have been killed by police and who have experienced gender-specific forms of police violence, provides some analytical frames for understanding their experiences, and broadens dominant conceptions of who experiences state violence and what it looks like…

In 2015 alone, several Black women’s lives have already been lost to police violence. For instance, just before Freddie Gray’s case grabbed national attention, police killed Mya Hall–a Black trans woman, on the outskirts of Baltimore. No action has been taken to date with respect to the officers responsible for her death. Most recently, police fatally shot Alexia Christian in the back of a police cruiser while she was handcuffed. And in Ventura, CA, Police officers fatally shot Meagan Hockaday–a young mother of three–within 20 seconds of entering her home in response to a domestic disturbance.

#SayHerName responds to increasing calls for attention to police violence against Black women by offering a resource to help ensure that Black women’s stories are integrated into demands for justice, policy responses to police violence, and media representations of victims and survivors of police brutality.”

There was a rally in New York City. Here is footage: