Has it been over a decade already since Sandra Bland’s death by hanging fire with truth? Say her name, we said, in Black Lives Matter protests, because: so many other black lives lost to racism, unjustly- administered law enforcement. I will light you up! Brian Encinia said, after he dragged her out her car, taser-armed, angry after she refused his order to leave that safe vehicle (his 1,600 stops in one year for minor or made-up moving violations, so say his name, too) call him out, too, Encinia, quietly fired from his job rather than charged; while Sandra Bland never got to have her proud first day at Prairie View U., alma mater, going back to that somewhere she always called home. &, look, now another, white, cosplaying cop, caught up in war waged against citizens in the latest ICE-age, has killed another woman, this one white, nearly same age as Sandra would have been had she lived past false arrest, being lit up by a taser for one, allegedly, burnt-out tail-light, &, we’re told, ending her own life for it. This week, say another name, too, Renee Good, killed during yet another version of a nation-state’s oldest fake news about itself, something about justice, equality, shooting-death of another unarmed woman, murdered while being a good neighbor by a “federal agent” offered a 50,000 dollar bonus for the privilege of having complete & total immunity from laws he’s supposedly been hired to uphold. Now a white woman’s taught all the rest of us what black & brown people have known all along, that the law will not protect you, even if you’re white, but also, they say, derisively, lesbian & poet, a domestic terrorist, a fuckin’ bitch, Jonathan Ross says, just seconds after shooting her three times, say his name, fearing for his life, as she turned away from him, just one time, to avoid hurting him with her car, her one, relatively safe, place, left-wing lunatic, though we all heard her say, while smiling, I’m not mad at you. Now we all know the price of turning away is death, which some of us have always known, brothers & sisters, hearing in MLK’s voice the love that’s the only thing can save us, on this day, his birthday, a day all white supremacists hate, as he insisted, too, I’m not mad at you, all the while he led the resistance against hate. I say, maybe it’s not too late, even on 17th of January, 2026, even if white supremacy’s so hateful & well-armed. They’re vastly outnumbered, by all harmed people, we the people, say our names, come out to claim the law of love & defend thy neighbor no matter the cost, laying bodies down, if we must, & we must, for these two women’s sake, for, all of our own.
Rick Benjamin (he/him) lives on unceded Chumash land in Goleta, California, and walks each day on indigenous trails. He teaches courses at the University of California Santa Barbara, among them poetry and community, the wild literature of ecology, and literatures of both social and juvenile justice, while also working among elders, young people at a local Boys and Girls Club, in art museums and youth detention facilities. Among his other works are the books of poetry, Passing Love, Floating World, Endless Distances, and Some Bodies in the Grief Bed, and his next book of poetry. He served as the poet laureate of Rhode Island from 2012 – 2016.
