Pathways to Police Reform Community Mobilization
Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sam DuBose, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, . . . . The litany of Black people who have lost their lives at the hands of the police or in police custody seems endless. People are killed and brutalized, but the legal system gives us no relief. Police officer after police officer is either not charged or acquitted. Police who kill are given paid vacation instead of being held accountable.
"We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. … They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.
—Justice Sonia Sotamayor
