Final summer time, 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 shifting in.
Somebody referred to as Sunshine Clemons, co-president 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 bought 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 necessary.”
These guests ended any plans to be troublesome and began having fun with the live performance. Clemons feels it was necessary to take heed to them as a result of she understood them. “All people was in ache,” she says. “All people was hurting. Persons are going to point out up with their ache and their rage and their anger,” and, being from out of city, they might not have understood the native context of the Levitt AMP live performance collection.
That is the form of quiet affect Clemons has been capable of display in her position as BLM SPI co-president. 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 at all times be proper. She and her pal, Khoran Readus, began the native BLM SPI group as “an entire accident” in 2016. They had been grappling with their sturdy emotional responses to the deaths of Philando Castile 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 mates and I had been all combating it, so we figured others needed to be as properly,” Clemons says. “So we determined to place collectively a rally to offer individuals a wholesome outlet to course of that ache and are available collectively to vocalize how fallacious 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 individuals on the Lincoln statue in entrance of the Statehouse pressed them to prepare a BLM chapter. “It undoubtedly wasn’t intentional,” says Clemons, who was born in Carbondale and raised in East St. Louis till shifting to Springfield within the fifth grade. “I do not assume I might have ever volunteered to steer 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 legislation enforcement as a focus but in addition with organizations resembling Heartland Housed, Juneteenth Inc., the Religion Coalition for the Widespread Good, One in a Million Inc. and
The Outlet.
BLM SPI additionally deliberate a Black Youngsters’s Ebook Week this 12 months, accumulating and gifting away about 100 books to youngsters Feb. 23 at CAP 1908 on South Grand Avenue East. Clemons explains: “We have now a want record of books which might be written by Black those who have Black main characters in order that we are able to guarantee that we’re flooding our neighborhood with numerous books. I did not develop up seeing myself on pages loads.”
BLM SPI additionally turned a accomplice with College of Illinois Springfield for the State of Black Springfield convention final 12 months at UIS, with a comparatively new affiliate professor, sociologist Lesa Johnson, taking the main position. Clemons says that turned an necessary alternative for Black individuals to “speak amongst ourselves” about what’s working and never working properly in Springfield and how you can work for enhancements.
“Sunshine may be very even-toned, not given to excessive outward feelings,” Johnson stated. “It doesn’t suggest that she would not really feel overwhelmed or indignant, however that she is at all times contemplating methods and is conscious of her environment always. She works towards options whereas contemplating the wants of others.”
A serious 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 co-president Readus steered a automotive procession as an alternative of an out of doors rally that might turn out to be a super-spreader occasion. An estimated 3,000 autos participated, overwhelming the Springfield neighborhood and briefly 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 resolve the issue. However it would not. The issue is throughout 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 bypass 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 they’d 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 stated.
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 attempting to struggle in opposition to, and but it is occurring right here. The Black neighborhood in addition to the neighborhood at massive is in ache.” She and different activists have participated in protests looking 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 handle “systemic racism and distrust in legislation enforcement and different serving to professions.” Requested if she is hopeful that the fee will likely be useful, Clemons measured her phrases and stated perhaps – perhaps “sooner or later, at any time when that day arrives. I do not assume it is now, however I do assume it [the commission] may very well be a instrument. Perhaps when there’s new individuals 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 outdoors of my circle of affect.”
Requested what progress or reform may appear like, she stated she would view “modified habits and coverage modifications” as indicators of progress. For instance, she stated after they first began assembly with the sheriff’s workplace, the company didn’t take into account unholstering a weapon as a present of power that wanted to be documented. Now they do, she stated, which is able to enhance use-of-force reporting. She acknowledges this might not be the form of change that folks will discover, but it surely’s necessary.
She is studying that effecting change is sluggish, even after eight years of engaged on it, and she or he generally will get down on herself for such gradual progress. She stated they’re nonetheless asking for a similar issues that Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X fought for, “and persons are nonetheless going to be combating for it approach after my time as a result of it is such sluggish work and so many individuals are proof against it.”
She continues to coach herself with on-line college lessons and along with her connection to Johnson at UIS. Final 12 months, she went to Ghana for 10 days with Johnson, who’s exploring whether or not to take college students there. “I nonetheless can not give it some thought to this present day with out crying,” Clemons says. “It was emotionally turbulent… exhausting and draining.” Clemons teared up as she described standing in a cell the place individuals had been chained collectively “and the ground was like a two-inch layer of physique excrement the place everyone was simply trapped.” She additionally stood within the Assin Manso Slave River, the final place the place individuals 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 need individuals to know that my intentions had been good and that I attempted. I’ll get stuff fallacious. I began this chapter [of BLM SPI] with my pal. Neither one among us had expertise. We had been figuring stuff out alongside the way in which. We’re simply attempting to make Springfield higher.”
Ed Wojcicki freelances from Springfield. He was an lively accomplice touring the state with NAACP leaders for eight years to develop and promote the “Ten Shared Ideas” adopted collectively by the NAACP and the Illinois Affiliation of Chiefs of Police.
