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I want you to understand how unprecedented an image like this is. And I want you to understand how it happened.
The “justice system” in America was not built to give Black people justice. It was built to oppress Black people. It was built as a tool of white power.
And so, when 3 white supremacists murdered Ahmaud Arbery, the local justice system, which was built to protect and serve those 3 white men, had no intention on providing any type of justice for Ahmaud’s family. NONE.
She told me that she was literally forced to see these men all over town. They were at the grocery store shopping. Like they did nothing wrong.
When it comes to injustice, I have an obsessive personality. My mind is like a lion that gets a hold of its prey. I won’t let go. I talk about this in my book. I become so focused that it’s unhealthy. It’s all I see.
It’s rooted in trauma from my own childhood of being beaten and harassed for years by bigoted white boys and men where I grew up. It changed me. For good and bad.
And so when Ahmaud’s mother got on the phone and told me what happened to her baby boy, I saw red.
The next day I told Ahmaud’s story to the world across social media.
In 48 hours my staff @GrassrootsLaw built a website for us to use to get justice for Ahmaud’s family.
In 72 hours we set up a hotline.
By that time, Ahmaud’s name and the story were the #1 news story in America.
We made that happen.
It didn’t just happen. We made it happen.
We built it. We spent half a million dollars to staff and promote this.
And for the next 2 months, we worked around the clock, literally hardly ever sleeping, until we made sure these 3 men were arrested.
I can’t even say out loud all we had to do to make sure it happened. We had to have backroom meetings with Republicans from the White House to the Governor of Georgia, to the Attorney General of Georgia, and more.
Every single person we needed to do right by Ahmaud was a Republican. So it required us to approach the whole case differently.
One day I’ll write the whole story.
Just know that when we organize, we win.
Those men are there because of us.