Category: Featured
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Sandra Bland: Does The Law Protect The State Or Its Citizens?
For someone who grew up in a law office, I know surprisingly little about the law. Perhaps it is because I spent most of my days coloring or watching reruns of Hawaii 5-0 in the corner of the law office my father and grandfather shared, instead of listening to what was going on around me.…
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Sandra Bland: Love Is Not A Factor In The Bail Equation
On a Sunday afternoon at Waller County Jail, you see something you do not see much of during the rest of the week: children. On weekends, the focus of activity shifts from trying to get people out of Jail, to visiting those who are stuck inside. Energy shifts from negotiations with bail bondsmen to consolations between…
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Why Where Sandra Bland Died is as Important as How
For over 50 days, I have been receiving messages on social media telling me what a fool I am for standing in solidarity with the bold and vivacious activist, Sandra Bland. While the messages vary in their intensity, most of them have two things in common: 1) they know nothing about Sandra Bland and are…
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50 Days Later: Still Grieving, Called, Woke
On the 49th day of being in prayerful solidarity with Sandra Bland, I sat in the corner of a coffee shop at the close of one more day in front of the Waller County Jail. I fielded phone calls and messages about an angry video released by a white supremacist. Concern for our safety was not a…
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How Sandra Bland Changed My Life
On August 25, I stood in front of the Prairie View City Council and I said that I was there because Sandra Bland had changed my life. Despite the fact that I never met Sandra Bland, and sadly will never get to meet her, it was true. Assuredly, she had help: her friends and family…
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Sandy Still Speaks
“Mommy why are the police mad? The police pushed me…” the small African American girl said to her mother as she and a handful of other young girls were shuffled into the arms of a waiting grandmother. Looking down I saw a sight that seared itself into my memory: five pairs of eyes, in five…
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An Open Letter to My Unapologetic Black Sisters
“What did Sandra Bland do wrong?” the reporter from Memphis asked as we arrived at the Waller County jail on Day 11 of what is now 21 days. “She was black,” my friend Andrea Sawyer-Gray, Curator of (Her)story, replied without skipping a beat. In the undertone were the echoes of another truth: she was black…
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Sandra Bland: Fighting For Life, Both Hers & Yours
“Isn’t that what you are here for?!?” the white, female ABC reporter in front of us raged. She had watched from her SUV as those of us keeping vigil for Sandy Bland outside of Waller County Jail watched the video of Sandy’s arrest for the first time, huddled around one of our smart phones. It…
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What Happened to Sandra Bland?
From July 15 – Sitting Vigil for Sandra Bland – Arrested for failing to signal a lane change and found dead in her cell “Blow that out,” the voice came loud and stern over the loud speakers of the Waller County Sheriff’s Office and County Jail. Moments earlier, we had lit a votive candle on…
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Silence
Silence. That is what lay between my aunt and I for years after I answered the call to ministry. I knew that it was because the idea had been planted in her mind that I condemned her, because she was a lesbian and I was a pastor in the United Methodist Church. The distance hurt…
Hannah Adair Bonner 