ELIMIN A T E HATE As Black Lives Matter Oklahoma City enters its fifth year as an official chapter, there is still much work to be done. While the groundwork was laid in 2015, the Oklahoma City chapter became recognized officially the following year. Executive director Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson said she was approached by one of the founders, Patrisse KhanCullors, about forming the chapter due to her past activism and advocacy. “Oklahoma is very high on the list, sometimes number one, on the list of officer-involved fatalities,” Dickerson said, “so surely there needs to be a chapter that is giving voice and amplifying the voices of Black lives and challenging the system of police brutality, white supremacy, racism, all the other –isms.” Most recently, the group has rallied around the cases of Isaiah Lewis, who was shot and killed by Edmond police in April 2019; Derrick Scott Sr., who died in Oklahoma City police custody in May 2019; and Anthony Meely, who died in Ada police custody in October 2019. Demand for body-worn camera footage of Scott’s death resulted in its release last month. But for BLM OKC, Black lives aren’t the only ones that matter in their campaign for justice. A section of the mission statement on BLM OKC’s website further details its scope of activism: “We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front. We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, men, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movement. We are intersectional. People do not live one-dimensional lives, and our struggle crosses multiple dimensions. We ally with other oppressed people and find common cause with their struggles.” “We had Magdiel Sanchez, which was one of our Latinx brothers, who was deaf. They didn’t understand why he wasn’t responding. He didn’t understand what they were saying, and their response was to kill him,” Dickerson said. Sanchez was shot and killed by
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BLM OKC continues fighting racism after the June protests. By Matt Dinger
Oklahoma City police on his porch in southwest OKC. BLM OKC has also rallied around Luis Rodriguez, who died in police custody outside the Warren movie theater in Moore in 2014.
Support and inclusion
Another incident that preceded its formation was the arrest of Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who was convicted of raping numerous Black women in northeast Oklahoma City. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear his appeal, so he will serve the entirety of his 263-year sentence.
Every elected official and every person within a position of power that can use their privilege as leverage should be supporting and uplifting the movement for Black lives. T. Sheri Dickerson “I was there as a support to the OKC Artists for Justice group. Several of us that ended up forming the BLM OKC chapter were also part of that,” Dickerson said. “One of the reasons why we didn’t, because we were getting ready to when all of that happened, is we don’t co-opt the work. We don’t appropriate the work. Those are Black women, and we’re Black women that have founded this, and so that’s not what we do to our sisters. And there’s so much work that needs to be done. It’s not about title or affiliation. It was about protecting and fighting for justice, and so that’s still the goal.” Aside from initially advocating for victims of police violence and demanding racial equality in policing policies, BLM OKC has widened its scope of action. “That’s a small fraction of what BLM OKC has evolved into. … We started our youth league; young people’s voices deserve to be amplified. They’re part of the demographic to where they said, Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, executive director of Black Lives Matter OKC, said the group has canceled or moved its planned events online since COVID-19 cases have begun to rise. | Photo Gazette / file
‘We’re getting killed too,’” Dickerson said. “We also have an interfaith league, or arm of BLM OKC. Myself being clergy, Reverend Jesse Jackson being part of the organization being clergy, very clued up with clergy, and so we understand how voices of faith should be. It’s obligatory for us to speak out against injustice. But we’re all black, and our lives matter as well. And then we have the arm of the LGBTQIA because often, Black trans persons basically are trained to, are further marginalized or even erased, and their lives are being, just they’re being slaughtered at unfortunately alarming rates. And we need to stand for them because we say all Black lives matter.” That the so-called “Stonewall riots” erupted in New York City in 1969 after a Black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson, was attacked by police is of
historical note here. “I’m a queer person, and so especially in this month, history is important, but this is what we still see today,” Dickerson said. “There still seems to sometimes be very intentional and deliberate attempts to mute or dilute the effectiveness of Black women who have been the foundation and core of so many movements, and still there’s that patriarchal pull that really starts to pull at the hearts of Black women who are literally all about doing the work, protecting the community, uplifting the community, educating. Many of us now, we just want to survive and for our children to survive.” The women-led core of the leadership is unique to the BLM OKC chapter, she said. “We have now expanded so that we have some diversity and introspection.
