A Louisville, Kentucky, Grand Jury did not charge three police officers for shooting Breonna Taylor dead while she slept in her apartment a year ago.
A group of women here in Sacramento convened in West Sacramento’s River Walk Park last weekend to protests in Taylor’s memory.
Empact founder Leia Schenk and Village Advocates of Sacramento founder Allegra Taylor hosted the event called, “Breonna Taylor Day — Protect Black Women Rally and March.”
Taylor was shot six times by the police in her own Kentucky apartment just after midnight. The country didn’t learn about what happened to Taylor at the hands of Louisville officers until other arrests and police shootings of unarmed Black Americans protested.
Here in Sacramento, Taylor’s death was responded to entirely differently from the demonstrations exhibited after Minneapolis, Minn.’s George Floyd, and local Stephon Clark was killed by cops.
Yet, these women, all Black women, staged a walk through Tower Bridge, on the east side of West Sacramento into Sacramento with an array of colors who felt the injustice the 26-year-old woman received.
The speakers of the event were the founder of the Liberation Collective for Black Lives (Sonia Lewis), executive director of Earth Mama Healing RoLanda Allaha Wilkins, poet Patrice Hill, and Jamilia Land, the co-founder of ASAP (The Anti-Violence, Safety and Accountability Project).
In regards to Taylor’s fatal plight, these women conveyed a message that all Black women suffer in a society where they feel they are not fully accepted. But they never cease to stay in the trenches for their community.
“Our plates are always full. The stress that we don’t recognize and acknowledge is there,” Lewis said. “That’s what Breonna Taylor’s life evokes in my mind, my heart, and my spirit. We can’t say it enough. We can’t stop demanding that justice be served.”
By Antonio R. Harvey | OBSERVER Staff Writer