Police and State Violence Have Secondary Impacts: Complex and Lasting Trauma
Residents walk past police as they shadow demonstrators protesting police brutality marching toward downtown on August 15, 2020, in Chicago, Illinois.
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These last weeks, months, years and decades we keep on adding names to the list — Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright, Ma’Khia Bryant, Ronald Johnson, Pierre Loury, Rekia Boyd, Nickolas Lee, Laquan McDonald, Archie Lee Chambers, Maurice Granton, Anthony Alvarez.… The list of victims of police murder seems never-ending. Then there is the list of police torture survivors — Gerald Reed, Stanley Howard, Tony Anderson, Darrell Fair, Sean Tyler, Kilroy Watkins, and on and on and on. Many of us speak these names. We show up at the rallies and actions demanding justice. We work tirelessly to dismantle the long-serving systems and structures that brutalize and kill Black and Brown bodies. We feel the anger and the terror. But, we don’t often acknowledge that behind every name, every video, every individual locked up in the United States, every police stop, immense and complex trauma is left behind.