San Diegans are joining the many other U.S. cities in taking the streets calling for change and accountability over the latest reports of deadly police shootings.
Dozens of demonstrators took the streets of downtown San Diego to make their voices heard Saturday. The march is one of the many taking place across the U.S. in response to the deaths of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago.
“I have 12-year-old twins with special needs. If the police stopped them would they know how to act? Would they fidget? Would they end up dead,” said Laila Aziz, Director of Operations of Pillars of the Community.
Aziz oversees pillars of the community, a social justice group in southeast San Diego. She says she’s fed up with the violence.
“Three people a day have been shot by police since March 29. That’s unacceptable,” she said.
That number comes from data compiled by the New York Times in recent days. Black and Latino’s represent more than half of the dead.
“It’s been like this since the 60s, the 30s and we just keep doing it over and over,” she said.
Across the country, an emotional and mental exhaustion is being lived and expressed.
“When you’re told that no one cares about what you, you have to say because you’re Black because you’re undocumented because you’re poor, because you’re young, they use their bodies to demand that someone listen,” Aziz said.
Here in San Diego, reports of demonstrations across the county have remained low over the past few months, but Aziz says she sees that changing.
“One thing I can say about people who have been brutalized by the police is that they don’t give up hope because they know that beyond that, generationally, their children will bear the burden if they sit down. So I do anticipate more rallies,” Aziz said.