In a statement on her website, she wrote: “We are sick and exhausted of the killings of young men and women in our communities”. So I’m just asking the question that because all is lost and there is nothing lose, being that they’re taking our lives away from us, when do we stand up for ourselves?
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This event was planned yesterday in response to the Alton Sterling shooting but morphed into a rally for Philando Castile as well after hearing about his death.
On Tuesday, July 5, Sterling was shot and killed by police in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, while selling CDs outside a convenience store, where he had built a relationship with the owner, Abdullah Muflahi.
Sterling’s death is now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Philando Castile was shot dead after the auto in which he was travelling was stopped by police near St Paul, Minnesota, late on Wednesday.
The other video was shot by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who sat in a vehicle with the dying victim. “And show them what our lives mean to us?”
“Fear is not an excuse. Hate will not win”. “We all have the power to channel our anger and frustration into action”.
She follows the statement with a call to action, urging readers to contact their local congressman or woman and providing links to voice protests to the deaths of Sterling and Castile. Beyonce has become very active recently regarding specific social issues.
Castile’s girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds, streamed a video on Facebook Live after her partner had been shot, capturing his blood-soaked body and the officer pointing a gun through the vehicle window and telling her to keep her hands where he could see them.
Later in the day, Beyonce asked for a moment of silence at a concert in Glasgow, Scotland to honor victims of police violence, hundreds of whose names were projected on a video screen behind her as she sang an a capella rendition of her song “Freedom”.
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The officer thought the man was reaching for his gun, and the officer shot him. “Those are two separate things”. See Beyoncé’s full statement and her in-show tributes here.
