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John, the image above is the open letter that we have written to Sonya Massey’s father.
Our hearts break with him, and as a part of our community, we know yours is breaking too. Besides just feeling sadness and heartbreak, we’re angry.
Too many families have been ripped apart by white supremacist state-sanctioned police violence. This is another daughter, mother, and friend gone too soon.
When will this end?
We are tired of having to fight for our basic human rights. We’re tired of having nowhere to feel safe — not even in our own homes.
Sonya deserved more. Black women deserve more. We deserve more.
We can’t have a future free from this anti-Black violence and destruction without building it from the ground up ourselves. We must reimagine what *actual* safety looks like, and challenge the current, abrupt and violent approach. True community safety is health-centered — where we have trained professionals and peaceful interventions. Community safety means relying on our trustworthy neighbors and familiar faces, rather than depending on those in uniforms.
Our promise to you in this moment, John, is that we won’t stop fighting until we achieve that future together. We deserve more than just to survive. We deserve more than to be taken from our families before our time with our last moments filled with fear and suffering.
If you’d like to add a personal message to Sonya Massey’s family, you can do so here.
With love and solidarity always,
Black Lives Matter
