🌈Ranibow Sprimkle🌈

Someone put red paint on the "Serve and Protect" sculpture at the Salt Lake City police building and it is such a powerful statement.

"Good art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." -C.A.C.

Today my heart aches at having the knowledge of another black life that was taken away by the police. Tony McDade, a black transgender man, was murdered on the morning of May 27th, 2020 by Tallahassee police in broad daylight. The details are still developing as there is very little media coverage of his death and unfortunately some of the coverage he is receiving is being done by folks misgendering him and invalidating his gender. What is clear though, is that this is another case of police violence against black people (specifically black trans people) that will be purposefully misrepresented and tried to be swept under the rug. We cannot let this happen.

When we say Black Lives Matter, we also need to recognize that EVERY TYPE of Black life matters. This means that Black Trans Lives Matter. We have value and are worthy of living. SAY HIS NAME. REMEMBER HIM. HONOR HIM AND BRING HIM JUSTICE.

Please sign and share this petition to raise awareness and to help bring justice to Tony. 

(I am aware there is a video of a bystander’s account of what took place, but I’m not going to link the video because 1. The interviewer did not blur out the face of the man talking about what happened (if you don’t know why people who speak out against police need to have their identities protected, look to all the Ferguson activists who have been targeted over the years) and 2. Both the interviewer and bystander misgender Tony multiple times.)

Just a quick update for anyone who wants to do some further reading, the National Black Justice Coalition released a statement on what happened. You can read it here.

Hey, y’all the Human Rights Campaign also put out a statement if you’d like to read it, click here. As the HRC statement says, on June 3rd there will be a livestream by Equality Florida on both facebook and youtube addressing Tony’s death and steps that we can take to honor him and bring him justice.