Final summer season, a bunch of individuals tried to disrupt a well-liked Levitt AMP live performance on the Y Block in downtown Springfield. They had been indignant concerning the current homicide of Sonya Massey, and the scene grew tense, with Springfield police transferring in.
Somebody referred to as Sunshine Clemons, copresident of Black Lives Matter SPI, who was leaving a close-by assembly. She got here instantly and approached the demonstrators, listened to them after which received on the stage, asking for calm. It labored. Clemons defined later the protesters had been from out of city and appeared glad that they “had somebody that needed to listen to what they needed to say, which I feel is admittedly vital.”
These guests ended any plans to be troublesome and began having fun with the live performance. Clemons feels it was vital to take heed to them as a result of she understood them. “All people was in ache,” she says. “All people was hurting. Individuals are going to indicate up with their ache and their rage and their anger,” and, being from out of city, they could not have understood the native context of the Levitt AMP live performance collection.
That is the form of quiet affect Clemons has been in a position to display in her position as BLM SPI copresident. She is empathetic sufficient to really feel others’ ache and humble sufficient to know that others will see issues in a different way and that she won’t all the time be proper. She and her good friend, Khoran Readus, began the native BLM SPI group as “an entire accident” in 2016. They had been grappling with their robust emotional responses to the deaths of Philando Castille in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by the hands of police a few days aside in July 2016.
“A few pals and I had been all battling it, so we figured others needed to be as nicely,” Clemons says. “So we determined to place collectively a rally to offer folks a wholesome outlet to course of that ache and are available collectively to vocalize how improper this was. It was simply going to be a one-time factor, all very spur of the second.”
However the suggestions from the turnout of 300 folks on the Lincoln statue in entrance of the Statehouse pressed them to arrange a BLM chapter. “It undoubtedly wasn’t intentional,” says Clemons, who was born in Carbondale and raised in East St. Louis till transferring to Springfield within the fifth grade. “I do not suppose I might have ever volunteered to guide something like this deliberately. I am a really introverted and behind-the-scenes-type individual. So it feels very out of the norm for me.”
She has nonetheless devoted the previous eight years to constructing relationships with regulation enforcement as a focus but in addition with organizations reminiscent of Heartland Housed, Juneteenth Inc., the Religion Coalition for the Widespread Good, One in a Million Inc. and The Outlet.
BLM SPI additionally deliberate a Youngsters’s E-book Week this yr, amassing and freely giving about 100 books to youngsters Feb. 23 at CAP 1908 on South Grand Avenue East. Clemons explains: “We now have a want checklist of books which can be written by people who have main characters in order that we will guarantee that we’re flooding our neighborhood with various books. I did not develop up seeing myself on pages so much.”
BLM SPI additionally grew to become a companion with College of Illinois Springfield for the State of Springfield convention final yr at UIS, with a comparatively new affiliate professor, sociologist Lesa Johnson, taking the main position. Clemons says that grew to become an vital alternative for folks to “speak amongst ourselves” about what’s working and never working nicely in Springfield and the way to work for enhancements.
“Sunshine could be very even-toned, not given to excessive outward feelings,” Johnson mentioned. “It does not imply that she would not really feel overwhelmed or indignant, however that she is all the time contemplating methods and is conscious of her environment always. She works towards options whereas contemplating the wants of others.”
A significant catalyst for BLM SPI occurred in 2020 after the homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protests erupted across the nation. It was within the early months of the COVID lockdown, and BLM SPI copresident Khoran Readus recommended a automobile procession as an alternative of an out of doors rally that would turn into a super-spreader occasion. An estimated 3,000 automobiles participated, overwhelming the Springfield neighborhood and quickly gridlocking some streets.
Requested what they had been calling consideration to with the demonstration, Clemons responded rapidly: “Systemic racism. Simply bluntly, that is what it’s. I do know lots of people say perhaps it is simply the ‘one dangerous apple’ [in policing]. If it had been only one, and I hate that phrase, but when it had been one dangerous apple, firing them would clear up the issue. Nevertheless it would not. The issue is inside the system and this community of methods that work collectively. … So we’re calling consideration to that as a foremost supply, but in addition the entire different injustices, microaggressions and makes an attempt to avoid methods to have true justice.”
Mayor Jim Langfelder participated in that 2020 rally, gave Clemons his enterprise card and requested her what they wanted. Her response: to fulfill with the police and have interaction in fruitful dialogue. She acknowledged that they had met with the Springfield police beforehand, however she believes the police initially had been too defensive. These conversations modified and improved after their 2020 rally, she mentioned.
4 summers later, Clemons described Sonya Massey’s killing by a Sangamon County deputy as “devastating. It hurts to know that that is the precise factor we’re making an attempt to struggle in opposition to, and but it is occurring right here. The neighborhood in addition to the neighborhood at massive is in ache.” She and different activists have participated in protests searching for justice for Sonya and her household and to maintain the accused assassin, former Deputy Sean Grayson, from being launched from jail earlier than his trial.
Clemons serves on the Massey Fee, which was created by Sangamon County to make suggestions that deal with “systemic racism and distrust in regulation enforcement and different serving to professions.” Requested if she is hopeful that the fee will likely be helpful, Clemons measured her phrases and mentioned perhaps – perhaps “at some point, at any time when that day arrives. I do not suppose it is now, however I do suppose it [the commission] might be a software. Perhaps when there’s new folks in several management positions. … I do know they proceed to say they will take heed to us however listening to us and performing on our suggestions are two various things. Whether or not they take any of it and do something with it’s all exterior of my circle of affect.”
Requested what progress or reform would possibly seem like, she mentioned she would view “modified conduct and coverage adjustments” as indicators of progress. For instance, she mentioned once they first began assembly with the sheriff’s workplace, the company didn’t contemplate unholstering a weapon as a present of power that wanted to be documented. Now they do, she mentioned, which is able to enhance use-of-force reporting. She acknowledges this will not be the form of change that individuals will discover, but it surely’s vital.
She is studying that effecting change is gradual, even after eight years of engaged on it, and he or she generally will get down on herself for such gradual progress. She mentioned they’re nonetheless asking for a similar issues that Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X fought for, “and individuals are nonetheless going to be combating for it approach after my time as a result of it is such gradual work and so many individuals are immune to it.”
She continues to teach herself with on-line college lessons and together with her connection to Lesa Johnson at UIS. Final yr, she went to Ghana for 10 days with Johnson, who’s exploring whether or not to take college students there. “I nonetheless can’t give it some thought to today with out crying,” Clemons says. “It was emotionally turbulent… exhausting and draining.” Clemons teared up as she described standing in a cell the place folks had been chained collectively “and the ground was like a two-inch layer of physique excrement the place all people was simply trapped.” She additionally stood within the Assin Manso Slave River, the final place the place folks may get a shower earlier than boarding slave ships for America.
She summarized her activism in remarkably easy, but profound, phrases:
“Once I depart right here, even when I did not get it proper, I would like folks to know that my intentions had been good and that I attempted. I will get stuff improper. I began this chapter [of BLM SPI] with my good friend. Neither one among us had expertise. We had been figuring stuff out alongside the best way. We’re simply making an attempt to make Springfield higher.”
Ed Wojcicki freelances from Springfield. He was an lively companion touring the state with NAACP leaders for eight years to develop and promote the “Ten Shared Rules” adopted collectively by the NAACP and the Illinois Affiliation of Chiefs of Police.
