Tessa Thompson offered a moving meditation on the life and legacy of Breonna Taylor, who was murdered in his home by agents of the police in Louisville, KY, on March 13. Tessa was one of the many public figures to participate in the The progress of the Project virtual #SayHerName town hall on Tuesday.
The actress shared a love letter in praise of Breonna, I commend your cheerful spirit and “Black girl in the glory.” The letter also called on the spectators continually the place of Black women, trans women and men, and gender non-conforming people in the center of the fight against police brutality and racial injustice. The letter starts at 01:01:43 in the video above, and has also been transcribed in its entirety in advance. To demand justice for Breonna, sign the petition to ask the officials to be charged and visit the #BirthdayForBreonna campaign site additional action items.
“‘All that you can do each day is wake up, pray, and kill.’ I have read that that is Breonna the motto that what was living the Bre way. I want so badly to write a love letter to you, Breonna Taylor. His friends called Bre, the Head of the Lady, Breezy, Nonna. The nation, however, his name has become a cry — a cry for justice, but justice is not an afterthought. The true righteousness is life.
I set out to write a love letter, but I do not like that your name is now emblematic of a turning point in the history of the invisibility. I remind myself, sometimes, in my anger to smile, because your family said you always did. I set out to write a love letter for you, but an expression of love is the truth and here is one of the most urgent: Black women can’t be an afterthought in this fight. We are in the fight. Black trans women and men and those who are gender non-conforming should not be an afterthought in this fight. They are the fight. Those who live at the intersections of oppression should be our roadmap of how to get rid of it.
When I forget to smile, I look at a picture of you, Bre. I think that first one in particular: you are standing in front of the seal of the city, you’re holding flowers. There you are in all of their essential workers glory. But then I remember when it were a Black body in the bed with another Black body without his uniform, his Blackness made disposable in the eyes of those men with impunity, but not to us. I like to look at more in pictures than in his Black girl in the glory, with his sisters and his mother and his friends. Those that make me smile more. Black women are always the most essential thing of this nation. You always was and forever will be as essential, Bre.
So, every day we are now, girl, we woke up to you. We were woke up. We are committed to open the eyes of the nation and the world. We pray for you. Protest and the politics of becoming our new form of prayer, and we kill for you. We kill every day a system of oppression that was carried away, Breonna Taylor, and we’re never going to stop saying his name. We love you.”
