Santa Barbara Commemorates Juneteenth
Voices from Our Vibrant Black Community
Published June 18, 2020
Over three thousand community members held space at the steps of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse on May 31, 2020. Community advocates Simone Ruskamp and Krystle Farmer Sieghart shared stories with the crowd of Blackness in Santa Barbara. They and other speakers shared on the atrocious murders of Black Americans like Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Meagan Hockaday, a Don who lost her life to an Oxnard Police Officer. “Elevate Black voices, lift up Black folks,” Ruskamp said. The list of countless names continued.
The Danzantes led us as we marched to the Santa Barbara Police Department. We laid our Black bodies in the intersection of Santa Barbara and Figueroa Streets for eight minutes and 46 seconds – the time a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck and ended his life. We asked non-Black people to kneel in solidarity. The silence overcame us, the sound of my siblings’ tears and heavy breath. There was a refusal by police and the Mayor to kneel in solidarity.
This is the story I remember; this is the story I will tell.
