Reenvisioning safety at a Black Youth Project 100 rally
Who keeps us safe? the crowd cried out. We keep us safe!
After the police killed Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the local chapter of the Black Youth Project 100 organized a protest in Durham, North Carolina. Several thousand of us gathered in a plaza downtown to demonstrate our solidarity with the demand, heard from people in the streets across the country, to defund police departments.
“We do not have a criminal justice system,” BYP100 national director D’atra Jackson said through a megaphone. “We have a capitalist system that provides a process for deciding who gets punished.” Her voice echoed from the buildings. “We have a capitalist system that decides who gets health care and who does not.” Jackson’s words were like an electric current, flowing from neighbor to neighbor, charging us for the struggle for a new world.
“If you ain’t talking about socialism, then what you talking ’bout?” Jackson’s speech began to crescendo. “If you ain’t talking about abolition, then what you talking ’bout?” She turned our attention to the leaders of the movement. “If you ain’t talking about black women, what you talking ’bout?”
