Working Women Demand an End to Police Brutality and Gun Violence

ATLANTA — As former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was standing trial for killing George Floyd, Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer just 10 miles away. Days later, Chicago police released body camera footage of an officer shooting and killing 13-year-old Adam Toledo, who at the time had his empty hands raised in the air. A day later, eight people were killed in a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, which was committed by a former employee who was able to legally purchase the two semi-automatic rifles used in the attack, despite law enforcement having recently seized his previous firearm due to concerns about his mental health. 

By the end of this past weekend, at least nine more people had died and at least 10 were wounded from gun violence in back-to-back shootings across the country. According to CNN, there have been at least 50 mass shootings reported across in the little more than a month since shootings that targeted Asian women at three Atlanta-area spas.

Leng Leng Chancey, the executive director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, issued the following statement:

“Let’s be clear: what happened to Daunte Wright, George Floyd, Adam Toledo and countless other Black and Brown men, women and children killed by police officers day-after-day, week-after-week and year-after-year is no accident. It is the criminal legal system is working exactly as intended. Built on state-sanctioned violence and with its roots dating back to slavery, policing and the criminal legal system are meant to reinforce and support white supremacy.

“Working women — especially women of color — and our allies will never stop fighting to disrupt and dismantle white supremacy, state violence, inequality and injustice in all forms. We stand with communities of color in calling for an end to police violence, mass incarceration, and the endless cycle of gun violence. We demand that federal, state, and local governments stop ever-increasing funding of police and the criminal legal system and, instead, invest in the communities that have been and continue to be persecuted and devastated by racist police violence and mass incarceration. 

“We demand that lawmakers immediately take legislative action to protect our families, communities, and workplaces from the scourge of senseless violence and death that have become so commonplace in our country — with those who are already most marginalized or facing multiple forms of oppression always among those most impacted. We say no more to watching our nation and its gun policy be held hostage by the murderous gun lobby. We refuse to sit back and allow the terms to continue to be dictated by the inexcusably despicable greed, cowardice, and callous indifference of the gun lobby’s political beneficiaries. Working women say enough is enough! We must fight just as fiercely to stand up for our families, communities, workplaces, and ourselves to once and for all put a stop to the horrific, senseless, unending cycle of human suffering and death at the hands of unchecked gun violence.”  

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