Last Thursday Sonya Massey’s father and uncle launched Justice for Sonya Massey, a GoFundMe page asking for the public’s help in raising $100,000. What other choice did they have? 

Death is a business and while its primary costs are brutally immeasurably–all those irreplaceable pieces that loved ones left to mourn find shattered before seeing them, tornado like, swept violently and forever away–there are real-world costs that are fixed, quantifiable and hard.

There’s the coffin, the burial clothes, the family travel, the funeral home and cemetery costs that add up without mercy or grace to the cost of lost wages from the unpaid time away from work. And none of those fees include what Sonya Massey’s family is asking for, the thing Black people so need but are rarely afforded: mental healthcare and basic household support because of lost wages.

Because when death comes as it did to 32-year-old mother, Sonya Massey, when it marches into your front door after a desperate call that is responded to by a killer cop shooting you in the head, all those costs– the ones to our spirits and the ones that are fixed, run ever more wild. 

The legal fees alone, soar since in  real-life how many Black people ever encounter the kind of honest, justice bound cops of SVU? In real life Black people are killed by cops at more than twice the of Latinos and three times the rate of white people. In real life–and as Sonya Massey’s father said during a news conference with attorney Benjamin Crump– “If it weren’t for that camera footage, they would have lied their way right out of this.”

Breaking: U.S. Army reveals today that killer cop Sean Grayson who slaughtered Sonya Massey was kicked out of the Army for at least one DUI, the AP is reporting.

Community Support is Critical Now But What’s The Long Game?

Every year cities across the United States build into their annual budget funds to respond legally and otherwise, to police-involved killings and police brutality. It almost feels like an incentive. Like don’t worry if you kill one of them. We got a whole legal team on call to protect and shut up money for any families that get too loud.

What if when a cop killing involves the murder of child—as in the case of Sonya’s four-year-old cousin Terrell Miller in March; or an unarmed woman and a mother of two calls for help and is instead viciously shot as she calls on God for protection–funds to support legal, household, funeral and other costs associated with the death, are made immediately available to loved ones for legal help, resulting lost wages, household support and needed medical interventions? And what if those funds were drawn down from police pension funds? It might make Black people at least as safe as white mass murders who gun down welcoming people who are in church praying. 

I mean, why not?

The rest of us have to immediately assume costs. Why not the person and institution that causes the problem in the first place?

Until then, it’s up to us to support families in need now. But it’s also up to all of us to demand true justice, health and safety for Black people across the U.S. and not stop until that bill has been paid.

SEE MORE:

Opinion: Police Kill Black People And Congress Couldn’t Care Less

Breonna Taylor’s Life Mattered Because She Deserved To Live Her Life To The Fullest

 

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