Earlier today, Toronto award-winner Haviah Mighty hosted town hall-like meeting via her IG Live which she dubbed Breaking the Chains.
Co-hosted by DollfaceDredie and DJ Dem Ones and joined by various members of the community, Breaking the Chains focused on offering insight, resources, and access to real change in the fight against police brutality and systemic, institutionalized racism.
Haviah also took her time to double down on the commitment to the cause: “I am committed to making actionable change a life mandate, and I will continue to fight for what is right! More information to come. ✊🏾 I encourage my network to join me đź–¤ #breakingthechains”
Along with the IG Live session, Haviah has been calling on people to support a petition via Change.org to have police wear body cams. The petition is titled MINIMIZING POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST POC (AND OTHER) BY ADJUSTING BODY CAMERA POLICIES and can be supported here.
“I believe mandatory body cameras should be worn by all on-duty police officers in all jurisdictions of Canada (as well as the United States of America, but I am Canadian and we must start the groundwork where we live),” Haviah states in the petition.
“Body Cameras worn by police (and cell phone footage captured by the public) has continually shown us the unbiased side of any story. The truthful side. The public outcry regarding the recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd is largely due to their murders being captured on camera, and if not for that, I’m not confident any action would have been taken against the officers/civilians (albeit, we must also note reduced action taken!). Without video evidence, Breonna Taylor (a black woman) and Regis Korchinski-Paquet (a black and indigenous Canadian woman) are less likely to get justice; Breonna was shot to death by police – Regis was allegedly thrown from a building by police. In each of these cases, mandatory body cameras worn by all on-duty officers would only show us one thing – what actually happened. The public deserves this. We deserve this!”
There is a lot more info on Change.org. The petition is currently sitting at over 36K with a goal of 50K.
To give you a sense of how much traction the petition is getting, especially after the Breaking the Chains session, when Haviah posted about it yesterday it was almost at 25K. Haviah posed a video and this message:
“We’re almost at 25000 signatures since June 1. In this video, I focus on the arguments surrounding body cameras, and how to start/join the fight for actionable change. Please note, this doesn’t negate that other changes NEED to happen. The entire system needs to be restructured. But cameras, as a whole, tell the truthful side of any story – and that transparency is absolutely needed, more than ever, for the SAFETY OF THE PEOPLE.”
The conversation has been broken down into four parts and can be viewed below via IGTV.
You can follow @HaviahMighty, @dollfacedrediemua and @DJDem.Ones on Instagram.
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