Beyoncé has lent her powerful voice to the call for justice in light of two police murders of black men in 24 hours. On Wednesday, 32-year-old Philando Castile was fatally shot during what should have been a routine traffic stop in Minnesota, making him the 136th black person killed by police in 2016. Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old father of five, was shot and killed by a cop in Louisiana just a day earlier. This afternoon Beyoncé posted an Instagram directing fans to her website, where she spoke passionately of the need to anger into action. “We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our communities,” she wrote. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us.'”
“We don’t need sympathy. We need everyone to respect our lives,” she continued. “We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or violent action by those who are sworn to protect us should consistently go unpunished. These robberies of lives make us feel helpless and hopeless but we have to believe that we are fighting for the rights of the next generation, for the next young men and women who believe in good.”
Calling on people of all races, genders, and sexual orientations to fight for the basic rights and freedoms of marginalized people, she urged, “This is not a plea to all police officers but toward any human being who fails to value life. The war on people of color and all minorities needs to be over.” Beyoncé then implores fans to contact politicians and legislators in Louisiana and Minnesota to demand social and judicial changes. “While we pray for the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, we will also pray for an end to this plague of injustice in our communities.”
This isn’t the first time Beyoncé has made a statement about America’s crippling police brutality problem. After racists accused “Formation” of being anti-police, she released the docu-style visual album Lemonade honoring shooting victims Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin — and invited Martin’s family backstage during her tour. Beyoncé’s latest letter follows a similarly impassioned note from Drake yesterday evening: “No one begins their life as a hashtag,” he wrote. “Yet the trend of being reduced to one continues.”
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Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Instagram