Community vigil for Massey

Activists inspire citizens to take a stand, call out police violence and injustice

TOLEDO – As half a dozen people lingered around a table littered with protest buttons, event flyers and The Final Call newspapers, Brother Washington Muhammad took the opportunity to announce what was going to be discussed during a community vigil for Sonya Massey, a black woman shot in the face by a white police officer in her Illinois home last month.

“The things we are going to say today aren’t normally said. We get criticized for speaking about the police. We get criticized for speaking about the rights of the Palestinians and for talking about anything folks believe we should shut up about,” he told them.

“And we get criticized when we talk about our children that have been murdered. This is not the place where we’re going to minimize our words or our spirit, alright? If we wanted to do that, we would just watch CNN and be done with it. So, that’s the spirit we’re going with today, with love, and that’s why I pulled all of you here.”

While Muhammad, co-founder of the Community Solidarity Response Network of Toledo (CSRNT), held their attention, Khadijah Cunningham stood nearby and lit a single white candle to symbolize hope and healing.

When asked why she came to the event, Cunningham said she was “a black person in America who is not happy with my people being slaughtered.”

The community vigil not only memorialized Massey but was intended for citizens to take a stand, rise up and call out police violence and injustice within the community, explained Muhammad. Speakers represented the American Muslims for Palestine, the Northwest Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, the New Order Human Rights Organization, and the Media Decompression Collective (MDC).

Muhammad began the vigil with a collective chant: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

He went on to say that not only are they memorializing Massey, but there are also international aspects of the fight for freedom and revolutionaries, specifically of what’s happening in Gaza, which is a “thumbnail of what’s going to happen to us here, so if we’re silent on Gaza then they will expect us to be silent here.”

Wearing a shirt with the country of Africa imprinted on the front and a baseball hat supporting Palestine, speaker Amjad Doumani, founder of MDC, said he was honored and proud to stand amongst his brothers and sisters behind him and in front of him because all of their struggles, be they here in Toledo, throughout this country or throughout the world.

“There’s a common struggle, a class struggle, where people need to throw off the shackles of colonialism and imperialism and how it oppresses us everywhere,” he said to about 20 people who showed up to listen, support each other and vent.

“Israel is about to attack Palestinian areas and bomb them to death. They dropped leaflets telling the Palestinians ‘we’re concerned about you so we want you to move from this section to this section and over there.’ But what ends up happening is they bombed them where they moved to, so they lied to them just the way the police are lying to us here,” Kanaan said.

“Our struggles are interconnected, and we all live with the generational trauma of our ancestors, you know,” added Walaa Kanan, American Muslims for Palestine Toledo chapter board member.  

“There is not anything you don’t know enough about – we can continue to uplift one another by educating ourselves, becoming more articulate, learning those talking points, but we have to start somewhere.  We can’t start if we continue to gaslight ourselves because that is what they want you to feel – powerless,” she said.

The greatest way of giving up your power is just recognizing that you don’t have it,” Kanan continued. “So, while I find myself sitting in really deep grief at this time, I also find myself deeply optimistic because I think this is the generation that is going to make a difference because we have learned to stop listening to those in power.

“I urge you to wake up tomorrow and realize the power you have and connect with other community members and help us in this fight to make a difference.”

Another speaker who stepped up to the mic was Siti Dotson-Chambers, of the New Order National Human Rights org. She didn’t mince words.

“When you can have an officer calling a woman a fat wench, which is a derogatory term, and nothing really happens – a slap on the wrist. So, first I called you a fat wench; then I stopped you and give you a ticket for walking in the street; then I let my dog bite you. I shoot you with rubber bullets when you peacefully, peacefully decided to speak out, and then I kill you,” she said, making her point.

“When we call them for help, even though they have a CIT department, they still shoot and kill those with mental health, so today we stand in solidarity with each other because you don’t have to look like me to stand up. We need to come together in the city of Toledo, although it’s happening nationwide … but we don’t want it to happen here,” said Dotson-Chambers.

In a press release for the event posted on their Facebook page, Muhammad wrote that CSRN intends to search for answers and ask the difficult questions regarding local law enforcement.