#SayHerName Movement (information and videos)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents information about the #SayHerName movement.

Two videos of the #SayHerName movement are also included in this post.

The Addendum to this post showcases how the #sayhername" chant is changed and used for male victims of police brutality and/or other racist acts that result in the death of Black or Brown males.

The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

RIP all females who have lost their lives or have been injured as a result of racism and/or police brutality. Thanks to all those who created or are active in the #SayHerName movement.

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE #SAYHERNAME MOVEMENT
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SayHerName
"#SayHerName is a social movement that seeks to raise awareness for black female victims of police brutality and anti-black violence in the United States.[1] #SayHerName aims to change the public perception that victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence are predominantly male by highlighting the gender-specific ways in which black women are disproportionately affected by fatal acts of racial injustice.[2] In an effort to create a large social media presence alongside existing racial justice campaigns, such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlsMatter, the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) coined the hashtag #SayHerName in February 2015.[2]

[...]

Origins of the movement
Historical context
Black women have been common victims of police brutality for over a century, however, their stories are often left out of the mainstream narrative. The experiences of black women in regard to such brutality is unique to their male counterparts because their experiences often involve sexual assault. Women such as Hattie McCray and the girls of the Leesburg Stockade are mere examples of the police violence black women face. Although the "SayHerName campaign began in 2015, police brutality has been an issue for black women for much longer. [5]

Creation of the campaign
The #SayHerName movement is a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the mainstream media's tendency to sideline the experiences of black women in the context of police brutality and anti-Black violence.[6][7] In recent years, the killings of unarmed black men like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown have captured much more national attention and public outrage than the killings of black women such as Rekia Boyd and Shelly Frey.[8][9] According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founders of the AAPF, black women's continued exclusion from stories about police brutality, racism, and anti-Black violence contribute to an erroneous notion that black men are the chief victims of racism and state-sanctioned violence which underplay issues such as rape and sexual assault by police.[10] #SayHerName does not seek to replace Black Lives Matter or dilute its power, but aims to simply add perspectives and lived experiences to the conversation of racial injustice.

The movement actively considers how multiple social identities (including gender, sexual orientation, and class) influence an individual's experiences with police brutality and anti-Black violence, a concept known as intersectionality.[11]

Name of movement
The name of the movement seems to have two thrusts. It seems to advocate literally saying the names of black women, both among individuals and in the media, who the movement perceives to have been the victims of police violence. And the concept of saying the name is also a symbol or shorthand for learning and telling the stories of these women, again both between individuals and in media. Crenshaw has said, "If you say the name, you’re prompted to learn the story, and if you know the story, then you have a broader sense of all the ways Black bodies are made vulnerable to police violence.”[12]

[...]

#SayHerName as a movement is largely based on the concept of intersectionality in order to bring attention to all victims of systemic violence. Intersectionality is a term that Kimberlé Crenshaw was responsible for coining,[14] its earliest usage being dated to 1989. Since then it has become a key element of many modern feminist practices. Brittany Cooper explains how intersectionality provides an analytical frame originally designed to address the unique positions of women of color within rights movements. Its relevance to #SayHerName is highlighted by Crenshaw's founding position in both the concept of 'intersectionality' and the movement itself. The focus on the victimization of black women within the #SayHerName movement is dependent on the notion of intersectionality, which Kimberlé Crenshaw describes as "like a lazy Susan – you can subject race, sexuality, transgender identity or class to a feminist critique through intersectionality".[15]

Additional factors in an intersectional analysis within #SayHerName include cis or trans status, education, geographical location, and disability[15] – both on the parts of the victims being targeted and the officers responsible for the violence. Kimberlé Crenshaw especially highlights the role of both physical and mental disability as a factor that puts victims more at risk of being targeted as threatening or otherwise violent by police. This is exacerbated by stereotypes of aggressiveness and poor emotional control[15] attributed to black women and men in the United States of America.

Homa Kahleeli asserts that over seventy black women have died as a result of either police violence or police misconduct within the past three years.[15] In instances of police misconduct where firearms are discharged, both female and child victims of murder have been objectified with the label "collateral", which diminishes the violence of murder and erases responsibility of the officer.[15] #SayHerName highlights collateral treatment as a unique form of violence that these victims face in contrast with the black men addressed by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Andrea J. Ritchie argues that in addition to/included within this group of seventy black women is a larger category of people who have been targeted by police violence that #SayHerName addresses. This category includes the high rates of queer and transgender women of color who have been disproportionately targeted. These disparities emerge from gendered norms and stereotypes with roots in slavery and colonialism that have been further contextualized through the war on drugs and the legal debates surrounding LGBTQ rights.[13]

[...]

The [#SayHerName] hashtag is mostly active on Twitter. Of its many uses, the #SayHerName hashtag has principally served to highlight recent incidents of black women's fatal encounters with police and anti-Black violence as well as advertise upcoming events.[18] An analysis of Twitter activity found that a third of Tweets using the hashtag were in conjunction with the name of a black woman who was a victim of police violence.[19] Other content using the hashtag included links to blogs written by black women, such as The Huffington Post's Black Voices column, Blavity, and BlackGirlTragic.com. Second most frequent were academics, particularly black feminist scholars, though the largest number of retweets came from a white male entertainer.[19]”...

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SHOWCASE VIDEOS:
Video #1: #SayHerName at the Women's March on Washington (AAPF)



African American Policy Forum, Apr 7, 2017

On January 21, 2017, family members of Black women who have been killed by the police participated in the Women's March on Washington alongside AAPF, 1 Billion Rising and more. Listen to their stories and #SayHerName. "For so long we as women were not allowed to have anything to do with battle, protecting our communities, protecting our country - we didn't have a voice. I refuse. I refuse as a woman, I refuse as a Black woman, I refuse as a human to shut up any longer. I'm not just a soldier for India Beaty, I'm a solider for every one of our children who has been unjustifiably taken away from us." -Vicki McAdory, Auntie-Mama of India Beaty

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Video #2: Four Years of #SayHerName



African American Policy Forum, Dec 13, 2018

December 14th, 2018 marks the fourth anniversary of the #SayHerName campaign, a movement launched by AAPF to raise awareness of Black women, girls and femmes impacted by police violence. Over the past four years, it has grown into a global call to uplift the stories of Black women, girls and femmes who have been victimized by state violence, and to demand justice for them and their families.

The video highlights the campaign and some of the remarkable women who form the Say Her Name Mothers Network, a group of mothers who have lost their daughters to police violence. Since its first convening in 2015, the Say Her Name Mothers Network has joined together with AAPF on a number of occasions, marching together at the Women’s March in 2017, lobbying for police reform on Capitol Hill, and joining together in several focus groups and planning sessions to strategize around the initiative and to assess the needs of new family members who have lost their daughters to police violence.

On this anniversary, we reiterate the urgency of fighting for a gender-inclusive narrative in the movement for Black lives and broader social justice reform.

Learn more about the campaign by visiting our website (aapf.org) and social media pages (@aapolicyforum)
#SayHerName at the Women's March on Washington (AAPF)

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ADDENDUM -See scenes from Sacramento's Black Lives Matter protest over George Floyd police death



Sacramento Bee, May 30, 2020
-snip-
Notice in this video that "No Justice No Peace" is chanted in a call & response pattern-
a caller chants "No justice" and the other marchers respond "No peace." "No justice, No peace" has also been chanted in unison.

Notice also that "Say his name" is also chanted in a call & response pattern- a caller chants "say his name" (or "say her name") and the other marchers respond with the name of the latest victim who lost his or her life as a result of police brutality or racist actions. In this embedded video, the group chants the name "George Floyd".

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