Today’s Action: Elevate lives lost to police brutality on social media

Earlier this month, Atatiana Jefferson was playing video games in her own home with her 8-year-old nephew when she was shot to death by a Fort Worth, Texas police officer. The officer was called to the home by a neighbor concerned that the door was open, and did not identify himself as a cop before he opened fire on Jefferson through the window.

This tragedy occurred just two weeks after the conviction of an officer in nearby Dallas, who shot and killed her neighbor Botham Jean after entering his apartment by accident, thinking it was her own.

Both officers are white, and both Jefferson and Jean were Black…two more lives lost in our nation’s centuries-old systemic legacy of brutality, violence, and murder of the Black community.

Today’s action is to boost visibility of the violence our police forces perpetuate on people of color in our country. Follow Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’s More Than A Hashtag project on Instagram, or visit the website, and share one of the posts – a life lost to police violence – with your followers on social media, encouraging them to do the same.

There were only 23 days in 2018 in which police did not kill someone in our country, and Black people are three times as likely to be killed as white people. Of those killed, Black victims are more likely to be unarmed than white victims.

Statistic after statistic prove our policing has a chronic, deadly bias against Black people – and yet our politicians have done little to combat the daily threat Black communities face from those theoretically there to ‘protect and serve.’ Which means it’s up to us to make sure this isn’t an issue they can continue to ignore, or in some cases, welcome.

We’ll be coming to you with more steps to take in the coming weeks and months…but for now, let’s start with our own awareness, and that of our friends and families.

Follow Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’s More Than A Hashtag living alter for those killed by police violence, and share a post with your own followers. (Not on Instagram? Visit the website and share a post on your favorite social media platform!)