Mourners Gather to Celebrate Sandra Bland, Her Life Does Matter
Mourners
for Sandra Bland will gather at alma mater Sunday evening to celebrate
“the life and legacy” of a woman who regularly spoke out on racism and
police brutality before her death in a Texas jail cell last week. The
idea is to make certain that Sandra Bland is remembered. Yes “Black lives matter.”
As far as Texas law enforcement officials are concerned, 28-year-old Sandra Bland died in a jail cell Monday after hanging herself with a plastic bag.
But her
family says the idea that Bland would kill herself is “unfathomable,”
prompting questions about the circumstances of her death. There are too
many questions that need to be addressed. There’s the conversation she
had with a friend while awaiting bail. There’s the question of
possible brain injury caused by the slamming of her head to the ground
by the police and question of exactly why was she arrested and not just
given a ticket and sent other way.
Authorities
have recored that she was arrested for assault on a police officer. What
was the assault? And exactly how and when did that occur?
To those who
believe her death is suspicious, Bland is the latest victim of racial
bias and police brutality. To drive home the point, social media users
are imagining themselves in her place and sharing directives for what to
do “if I die in police custody.”
Police say
they found the Ms. Bland dead Monday after she hanged herself with a
plastic bag inside the Waller County Jail, where she was incarcerated
after allegedly assaulting an officer during a July 10 traffic stop.
Interestingly,
there is no footage of her assaulting the officer but there is
footage capturing the officer assaulting her and her response. She
printed out to him that he slammed her head to the ground and that she
can’t hear as as result. There is no empathy or compassion expressed
verbally or shown by the officers. Only the instruction from the
officer to the bystanders to leave the scene and run along.
She was found
“in her cell not breathing from what appears to be self-inflicted
asphyxiation,” a sheriff’s office statement said. Bland received CPR,
and an ambulance was called, but she was pronounced dead a short time
later.
Bland lived 1,000 miles away from in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, but was in Texas because she was taking a job as a student ambassador to the alumni association at Prairie View A&M University. She graduated from the historically black school in 2009.
Disgusting!!!
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