Thanks for your interest in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. We are beginners in all of this ourselves, so the following info is just a small portion of the info that is available out there. But maybe a few pointers help.
In the Video I read a bunch of names of people who died because of police actions. The twitter thread I simply copied the names from is here.
The german names come from a similar thread - We have a very low number of people killed by the police in germany in general but the skewing of those numbers towards Black People and People of Color is noticable.
I am aware that twitter threads are probably not the best source for something like that but I put the intro together in an extremely short amount of time and these were the sources I was able to trust at short notice.
The US thread was also updated after I copied out the names, so I may as well have read out some names the original author of the thread retracted for one reason or another. I hope I didn’t read out any fake names or names of people who are still alive but chances are that this list was not entirely correct.
On the other hand I want to point out that the names I read are just a small portion of people US police forces killed throughout the last few years. killedbypolice.net, an independent database of police victims lists over a thousand people killed by the police only in 2019.
It’s been pointed out a few times over the last days that conflating Black People and People of Color is not helpful in the context of the recent events and protests and I don’t disagree. The reason I mention People of Color separately a few times in this text (and in my intro) is that in germany, the picture of police brutality would be very incomplete without mentioning these cases as well - Also a few people on the list of german police victims were PoC.
I said I want to recommend a few books, but instead I’m just going to point you to an awesome blog post by Tatiana Mac which lists a bunch of books but also gives you a lot of other info on what you can do.
I do realize that point 4 on Tatianas List directly contradicts me speaking that intro. I told you we weren’t sure if this was the right thing to do. I am still not sure if it was. But maybe maybe, if only a few of you who saw our video now click on the link and read Tatianas post and then act accordingly, maybe we did something to help. I hope.
Also, I realize that you could interpret part of what I said that I think that solutions to police brutality are easy and only must be implemented. I didn’t mean it that way - I am absolutely certain that the solutions are simple and easy but only in theory and only in a society that looks radically different than the one we’re in and moving towards right now - Which is why we need action. I tried my best to summarize my understanding of the societal situation we’re in which is heavily informed by me following black twitter as best as I can but that picture may and will have blind spots. Again, I am learning. All mistakes and errors in my monologue are my own fault.
If you want to send donations and would like to support the cause for Black People and People of Color in germany, I’ll recommend the “Initiative Oury Jalloh” which still painstakingly tries to put together a fair trial against the police department where Oury Jalloh burnt to death in his prison cell. Needless to say the trials in this case have a lot more meaning than bringing justice to this particular case.
The other good place would be the Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung named after one of the first persons dying by the hands of nazis after the reunification of germany, that does a lot to work against racism in german society and politics.
If you want to send money to help the Black communities in the USA, the “Initiative Oury Jalloh” got some helpful info from #BLM activists in the states:
humbly,
Jan & Tim