BREONNA TAYLOR
(1993-2020)
https://www.cnn.com/…/amanpour-breonna-taylor-vanity-fair-r…
Amanpour On PBS: Guest interviewer
Vanity Fair's Editor-in-Chief Radhika Jones and guest editor Ta-Nehisi Coates discuss the September issue they've dedicated to the "beautiful life" of Breonna Taylor.
Source: CNN
CNN VIDEO NEWS:
Breonna Taylor is on the cover of Vanity Fair’s September 2020 issue
Breonna Taylor, who was shot dead by police in her home in the US, appears on the cover of the magazine’s latest issue.
Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones has released the magazine’s September 2020 issue, revealing it as a tribute to Breonna Taylor, who posthumously appears on the cover. Breonna Taylor, who would have been 27 now, was shot dead by Louisville police in the US on March 13, 2020, after they used a battering ram to break into her apartment. Taylor, a Black emergency room technician who was innocent, was shot at least eight times and died at the scene.
A painting of Taylor appears on the cover of Vanity Fair, created by Amy Sherald, the celebrated African-American artist who painted the portrait of Michelle Obama for the Washington D.C. National Portrait Gallery in 2018. Sherald made sure to draw on personal details from Taylor’s life to bring the portrait to life, including studying her hair, style and gaze, plus adding a gold cross on a chain necklace and an engagement ring Taylor would never get to wear (her boyfriend was planning to propose to her before her murder). “I made this portrait for her family,” says Sherald. “I mean, of course I made it for Vanity Fair, but the whole time I was thinking about her family.” You can read more about Sherald’s process, here.
“Five months have passed since police killed Breonna Taylor in her own home, a violent crime that our September issue guest editor Ta-Nehisi Coates ascribes to a belief in Black people as a disaster, as calamity,” said the caption on Vanity Fair’s Instagram account, revealing the poignant cover. For the issue, editor-in-chief Radhika Jones handed over the editorship to award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who set the theme for the issue as “The Great Fire.” Coates explained the theme: “I don’t know how else to comprehend the jackboots bashing in Breonna Taylor’s door and spraying her home with bullets, except the belief that they were fighting some Great Fire—demonic, unnatural, inhuman.”
The accompanying cover story, written by Coates, came to life via a series of interviews with Taylor’s mum, Tamika Palmer. In the moving interview, Palmer describes the night of her daughter’s death and how Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, phoned her with the news: “Kenny calls me in the middle of the night. He says, 'Somebody kicked in the door and shot Breonna.' I am dead asleep. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I jump up. I get ready, and I rush over to her house.” You can read the full interview here.
The Vanity Fair cover comes as the online campaign known as #SayHerName continues over the lack of accountability for Taylor’s death—her killers still haven’t been charged. Outrage over her death surfaced during the George Floyd protests as it came to light that the officers who murdered Taylor had only been placed on administrative reassignment.
Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protests over police brutality and systemic racism in the US have reignited overnight, after a Black man identified as Jacob Blake, 29, was shot multiple times in the back by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As per a report by CNN, Blake’s three children—aged three, five and eight—were in the car when two police officers shot him multiple times as he entered the driver's side door of an SUV. Reports say the officers from the Kenosha Police Department were responding to a domestic incident nearby at the time, which Blake, who was unarmed, was reportedly trying to de-escalate. According to a family friend, who spoke with CBS News, Blake is “expected to make it.” The officers are currently being investigated.
You can read more about Vanity Fair’s September 2020 issue, here.
by Kofi Natambu
(For Trayvon Martin, 1995-2012, Oscar Grant III, 1986-2009, Tamir Rice, 2002-2014, Sandra Bland, 1987-2015, Armaud Arbrey, 1994-2020, George Floyd, 1973-2020, Breonna Taylor 1993-2020 & all the rest of us)
Whether our relentless stalking enemies are armed or unarmed we remain trapped within their panopticon designed crosshairs no matter where we deign to go or not. We remain as always under deadly surveillance walking and breathing in the ever present carceral space(s) of department stores and supermarkets and shopping malls and subways and restaurants and libraries and elevators and sidewalks and movie theaters and bookstores and streetcorners and college campuses and on our own front steps waiting for the inevitable genocidal rewards reserved for the truly articulate black paranoid who actually is (as always) under attack especially whether he or she knows it or not (Always) unidentified human objects on the lazily metaphysical and strictly corporeal plane of our ever present terrorized existence (always) writhing like tiny hyperactive bugs in the enormous festering testtube that is (like always) the ruthlessly indifferent society that we live or rather far more accurately indeed die in
All,
The ongoing white supremacist deluge of vicious anti-black hatred and violence in this deadly pathological society continues as always unabated with absolutely no end in sight. The unrelenting assault on Breonna Taylor like so many others continues in death as it did in her life and the lives of so many others murdered and destroyed by this despicably racist country…
Kofi
https://www.nytimes.com/.../breonna-taylor-statue…
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on December 28, 2020):
Weeks-Old Statue of Breonna Taylor Is Battered in Oakland, California
The vandalism of the ceramic sculpture of Ms. Taylor near City Hall is under investigation, the police said.
by Neil Vigdor
December 28, 2020
New York Times
The clay took several months for a Bay Area sculptor to shape with his hands into a likeness of Breonna Taylor, which he finished with a dark brown satin glaze.
But less than two weeks after the statue memorializing Ms. Taylor was installed in a busy downtown plaza in Oakland, Calif., its creator, Leo Carson, said he held the broken pieces of the vandalized ceramic bust in those same hands.
The sculpture was smashed in several places late last week, drawing widespread condemnation in the community and prompting a police investigation. And when Mr. Carson passed by the statue again on Tuesday, he said, it was gone.
The vandalism was regarded as another indignity to those still grappling with the killing of Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and emergency room technician, by police officers in Louisville, Ky., during a botched drug raid in March. Ms. Taylor’s death, along with the killing of George Floyd in late May, stoked widespread protests over police brutality and racial injustice.
A plaque with Ms. Taylor’s name and the phrase “Say Her Name” was displayed on the front of the statue that was vandalized in Latham Square plaza, which is near Oakland City Hall.
Race/Related: A deep and provocative exploration of race, identity and society with New York Times journalists.
“I built it to support the Black Lives Matter movement,” Mr. Carson said in an interview, “but that also makes it a target for racist aggression.”
The bust was missing from its pedestal near Oakland City Hall on Tuesday.
The bust was missing from its pedestal near Oakland City Hall on Tuesday. Credit...Shelby Knowles for The New York Times
A spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department said in an email on Monday night that a police report had been filed in the matter and that the vandalism was under investigation. On Tuesday, the police did not immediately respond to questions about whether or when the sculpture had been removed.
Mr. Carson, 30, who is white, said he spent about $600 making the sculpture, which he placed in the plaza on Dec. 12. He chronicled the installation on Instagram, and one person warned at the time that it could face a backlash. “Pull that down,” the person wrote, “it’s a source of riots.”
Mr. Carson, who made trips to Home Depot and a ceramics studio while making the sculpture, said he had prepared for the possibility that the installation could be damaged.
“It was always in the back of my mind,” he said. “I just had a feeling like I had to do it anyway. It didn’t matter.”
Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland denounced the vandalism in a Twitter post on Monday.
“It’s a vicious attack against the light + justice sought in Breonna Taylor’s name,” Ms. Schaaf wrote. “We will keep moving forward; Oakland will not tolerate acts of hatred.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, also condemned the damage to the sculpture.
“This act of vandalism disrespects Breonna’s memory, what she represents and the work of this artist,” Mr. Greenblatt said Monday on Twitter.
Mr. Carson said that the outpouring of support from the community had been heartening. By Tuesday, he had raised more than $20,000 on a GoFundMe page toward building a new sculpture from bronze. He said he planned to donate the remaining funds to Ms. Taylor’s family.
The three officers implicated in Ms. Taylor’s death avoided homicide charges in September, setting off a new round of protests across the nation. A grand jury in Louisville indicted one officer, who was fired, on three counts of wanton endangerment.
Mr. Carson said that someone on Instagram told him about the vandalism over the weekend.
“In that sense it’s not surprising," he said, “but it doesn’t reflect Oakland.”
He added that the bronze sculpture he hopes to build will be sturdier.
“It gives her a sense of wholeness again,” he said.
Jacey Fortin contributed reporting.
Anatomy of a Killing
VIDEO: Here’s what to know about the killing of Ms. Taylor
How the Police Killed Breonna Taylor
Dec. 28, 2020
Breonna Taylor’s Life Was Changing. Then the Police Came to Her Door.
Aug. 30, 2020
Fired Officer Is Indicted in Breonna Taylor Case; Protesters Wanted Stronger Charges
Sept. 23, 2020
Correction: Dec. 29, 2020
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Oakland’s mayor. She is Libby Schaaf, not Libby Schaff.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Neil Vigdor is a breaking news reporter on the Express Desk. He previously covered Connecticut politics for the Hartford Courant. @gettinviggy • Facebook
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