STAND FOR CHIKESIA CLEMONS: If you called for #BoycottStarbucks over the arrest of the two brothers in Philadelphia, then you must call for #BoycottWaffleHouse and replace it as well after what happened to our sister Chikesia Clemons. This is far WORSE. That video is ANGERING. This was domestic terrorism and a public sexual assault at the hands of the Saraland Police Department in Alabama. Black bodies and Black dollars do not matter to these racist White-owned companies so we must #RedistributeThePain by withdrawing any and all support from them. Stop being naive to think that racial bias training will reform a racist Satanic mind. Wake up. There is no way any Black person should ever step a foot back into any Waffle House after this.
In a column for The Cut, Brittany Packnett writes:
While watching the video of 25-year-old Chikesia Clemons at a Waffle House in Saraland, Alabama, I realized Chikesia could have easily been me, my friends, or my cousins.
The clip, which circulated on social media yesterday, shows Chikesia sitting in a chair clutching her purse, while three white male police officers surround her, yelling and leaning over her before she’s wrestled to the ground with her breasts exposed. Throughout the incident, she repeatedly asks what she did wrong. “You’re not going to grab on me like that, no,” Chikesia says to one officer. “What are you doing?” Chikesia asks another. “I’ll break your arm, that’s what I’m about to do,” one responds. The other patrons of the Waffle House, mostly white, continue to quietly eat their food.
According to Chikesia’s mother, who spoke with Alabama Local, her daughter and her friend Canita Adams — who filmed the incident — had requested plastic flatware for their to-go meals. They were reportedly told it would cost them an additional 50 cents, and requested the number for their corporate offices to complain. Then, the police were called….
Chikesia may be alive, but she has yet to see justice. The public outcry after last week’s Starbucks incident was swift and loud, resulting in national news stories, boycotts of the ubiquitous chain, and an announcement from Starbucks that it will shutter all of its national storefronts on May 29 for racial bias training. But so far, the public response on Chikesia’s behalf has been far more quiet. There’s been less media coverage, and Waffle House has released just a single statement essentially telling us all to “wait and see,” as though the video didn’t show plenty. Will America allow the suffering of Black women to go unchecked, when we are leading the fight for so many others? Want to thank Black women for defeating Roy Moore? For voting against Donald Trump? Protect us. Support us. Demand justice for Chikesia.
