I was in my car 10 blocks away when the Facebook live was being shared about 10 minutes after the shooting, and drove over to it because it seemed so unreal. I’ll never forget standing there and staring at the car, trying to comprehend how it happened.
We stayed until the car got towed away.
8 years ago today Philando Castile was murdered. The criminal legal system failed to convict the cop who shot him despite the recorded evidence. We had to watch that video live just 24 hours after we watched cops shoot Alton Sterling in the back.
(The video does not play at link)
At that time I was doing racial justice work full time, and had been in the streets protesting for years, but this was so different, because no one was there yet. It was so quiet, just the people from the apartment building across the street, yelling at the police and crying.
The only other organizer there was my friend Wintana, and I just remember deciding to go to the governors mansion because we didn’t know what else to do.
I rang the door bell and some one said hello. No one answered after that.
We stayed out there all night and got up the next day and organized some artist friends to paint this mural the next day.
This became a space for mourning and anger, we built an altar for people murdered by police, and held events there. It changed how I think about what protest can be.
They ended up bulldozing this building that summer.
My friends, many who worked on the mural, were together in Detroit when the officer who murdered Philando was found not guilty.
I’ll never forget my mentor falling to his knees when he heard.
We really thought this might be the time.
It’s hard to explain to people that the uprising after George Floyd’s murder happened because we’d already been out for Fong Lee and Jamar Clark and Philando Castile and countless others.
Hearts can only break so many times. Rage boils over.
