Listen to Jalane’s Story

Jalane Schmidt 

I'm Jalane Schmidt. I'm a scholar-activist here in Charlottesville, and I was an organizer with Black Lives Matter during the Summer of Hate. I think this what this photo shows is how the struggle is continuing, because this photo is taken in summer of 2020. So this is the George Floyd uprising that was going on nationwide. And here in Charlottesville, our very own BYAC, that's Black Youth Action Committee, these are young high school student organizers, were planning these multiple rallies, you know, that were taking place that were shutting down the streets in Charlottesville. And the cry was “defund the police.” Take those resources that are spent on policing and divert them toward affordable housing, toward health care, toward all the things that we need for community safety. And so what I see in this picture is it's a continuation of the the struggle that's actually been going on for a long time, but that really had a lot of energy in 2016 during the Blue Ribbon Commission process, in 2017, during the Summer of Hate. And what we learned, you know, in 2017, when we organized to confront the white supremacists, it wasn't just metal statues in our parks or Nazis in our streets, you know, carrying swastika flags. It was our zoning codes, it was school curricula, it was policing policies. It was the lack of health care that there were all these ways that white supremacy stalked us, you know, throughout our lives. And so what's great about that is the energy that was created in those struggles 2016, 2017 carried on. And so what I’m seeing in this photo here, you know, this was this was 2020. This wasn't the Summer of Hate. But it shows how the energy that was created in our community, how it continues to reverberate continues to fuel our our struggle for justice.

Music credit: Marten Moses / Unfriendly Users / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com