Ahmaud Arbery, a reportedly unarmed 25-year-old Black former football player who was beloved by his family, was murdered by a White father-son duo on February 23. The video and case in question recently resurfaced causing outrage in the community of color.
The two men followed and shot down Arbery in their truck as he jogged in Satilla Shores, Georgia.
“The tragedy happened in February… and there still has not been an arrest,” Arbery’s mother reportedly said in late April. “I’m feeling very discouraged at this point.”
On the cusp of what would have been his 26th birthday, people around the world are crying for justice.
Everything—from the way the police report was written to the uncanny similarities to Trayvon Martin’s case—reeks of an all-too-familiar story we mustn’t grow unsensitized to.
There are not “isolated incidents,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a recent tweet, listing a mere fraction of the many well-known hate crimes that have taken place in the United States—including Arbery, Sandra Bland and Eric Garner. “It is systemic violence.”
Most of the Latinos who have spoken up about Arbery’s story thus far are Black and Brown. Some, like Victor Cruz and Dascha Polanco, reposted and amplified the messages of others.
Paloma Elesser shared images of herself sporting a “Strong, Black, Proud” tee, implicitly touching on recent injustices in her caption.
“I’m wrapping my arms around all of my fellow black and brown people hurting right now,” she wrote. Elsesser shared her friend Ladin’s much more pointed post on Stories.
“Y’all need to start getting tired and feeling terrible. Start using all your energy,” she wrote to White readers. “Your silence is LOUD.”
Those in Georgia can join the family’s protest efforts Friday, May 8 at 10 a.m. There is also a petition demanding justice—more specifically, the hope is that the two men in question, who will now face a grand jury, be arrested immediately—which you can sign here from wherever life finds you.