SayHerName

#SayHerName is a social movement that seeks to raise awareness for Black women victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence in the United States. The movement's name was created by the African American Policy Forum. #SayHerName aims to highlight the gender-specific ways in which Black women are disproportionately affected by fatal acts of racial injustice. In an effort to create a large social media presence alongside existing racial justice campaigns, such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BlackGirlsMatter, the AAPF coined the hashtag #SayHerName in December 2014.
In May 2015, the AAPF released a report entitled "Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women", which outlined the goals and objectives of the #SayHerName movement. In July 2015, Sandra Bland, a woman who had been taken into police custody after a traffic violation, was found hanged three days later in her jail cell. Following Bland's death, the AAPF, the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School, and Andrea Ritchie issued an updated version of the original report.
Drawing from the AAPF report, the #SayHerName movement strives to address what it believes is the marginalization of Black women within both mainstream media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Of the movement's many agendas, one includes commemorating the women who have died due to police brutality and anti-Black violence.

Origins of the movement

Name of movement

#SayHerName stems from the idea that having individuals and the media say the names of Black women who have been victims of police violence will make people ask necessary questions about the causes and circumstances of that violence. And the concept of saying the name is also a symbol or shorthand for learning and telling the stories of these women, again both between individuals and in the media. Crenshaw has said, "If you say the name, you're prompted to learn the story, and if you know the story, then you have a broader sense of all the ways Black bodies are made vulnerable to police violence."

Creation of the campaign

The #SayHerName movement is a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the mainstream media's tendency to sideline the experiences of Black women in the context of police brutality and anti-Black violence. The campaign for this movement began in December 2014 by the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. The reasoning behind the campaign is to bring awareness to the most often invisible names and stories of Black women and girls who have been victimized by racist police. Statistics have shown that Black women and girls as young as 7 and old as 93 have been victims of police brutality. In recent years, the killings of unarmed Black youth like Trayvon Martin and men like Michael Brown have captured much more national attention and public outrage than the killings of Black women such as Rekia Boyd and Shelly Frey. According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founders of the AAPF, Black women's continued exclusion from stories about police brutality, racism, and anti-Black violence contribute to an erroneous notion that Black men are the chief victims of racism and state-sanctioned violence which underplay issues such as rape and sexual assault by police. #SayHerName does not seek to replace Black Lives Matter or dilute its power but aims to simply add perspectives and lived experiences to the conversation of racial injustice. Over the past five years, the #SayHerName campaigned has expanded and overall increased its focus on direct advocacy. The movement actively considers how multiple social identities influence an individual's experiences with police brutality and anti-Black violence, a concept known as intersectionality.

Intersectionality

#SayHerName builds on texts and movements like Anannya Bhatacharjee's 2001 report Whose Safety? Women and the Violence of Law Enforcement in order to expand on systemic violence in a way that is committed to being intersectional. Works that have been published as results of intersectional approaches to victimization through violence include Beth Richie's Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation as well as a list from INCITE! Including The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color and Trans People of Color: A Critical Intersection of Gender and State Violence, and Queer : The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.
#SayHerName as a movement is largely based on the concept of intersectionality in order to bring attention to all victims of systemic violence. Intersectionality is a term that Kimberlé Crenshaw, a well-regarded scholar and activist, was responsible for coining in 1989. Since then, it has become a key element of many modern feminist practices. Brittany Cooper explains how intersectionality provides an analytical frame originally designed to address the unique positions of women of color within rights movements. Its relevance to #SayHerName is highlighted by Crenshaw's founding position in both the concept of intersectionality and the movement itself. The focus on the victimization of Black women within the #SayHerName movement is dependent on the notion of intersectionality, which Crenshaw describes as "like a lazy Susan – you can subject race, sexuality, transgender identity or class to a feminist critique through intersectionality".
Additional factors in an intersectional analysis within #SayHerName include cis or trans status, education, geographical location, and disability – both on the parts of the victims being targeted and the officers responsible for the violence. Crenshaw especially highlights the role of both physical and mental disability as a factor that puts victims more at risk of being targeted as threatening or otherwise violent by police. This is exacerbated by stereotypes of aggressiveness and poor emotional control attributed to Black women and men in the United States.
Homa Kahleeli asserts that over seventy Black women have died as a result of either police violence or police misconduct within the past three years. In instances of police misconduct where firearms are discharged, both female and child victims have been described as "collateral damage", which advocates say erases responsibility of the officer.

Canadian impact

The #SayHerName campaign started in the United States to draw attention to police brutality against Black women, but its intersectional theme has caught on all around the world. Its principles have been modified by activists in Canada to combat gendered racial violence against racialized and Indigenous women. Community-led gatherings use #SayHerName to talk about police brutality, anti-Blackness, and the underrepresentation of women of color in Canadian discussions.
This relationship is demonstrated by two Canadian cases:

Regis Korchinski-Paquet, an Afro-Indigenous woman, died during a police mental health call in Toronto in May 2020, sparking national outcry
D’Andre Campbell, a Black man with mental health issues, was fatally shot by police in Brampton in April 2020 after calling 911 for help

These incidents show how the intersectional perspective of #SayHerName extends to racialized and immigrant communities in Canada, calling for more justice and accountability.

Social media

The #SayHerName movement is one of many contemporary social justice campaigns that engage in hashtag activism and digital activism. Created by AAPF and CISPS in December 2014, the #SayHerName hashtag provides an online community for activists, scholars, news reporters, and other social media users to participate in the conversation on racial justice along with other social movements such as Black Lives Matter.
The hashtag is mostly active on Twitter. Of its many uses, the #SayHerName hashtag has principally served to highlight recent incidents of Black women's fatal encounters with police and anti-Black violence as well as advertise upcoming events. An analysis of Twitter activity found that a third of Tweets using the hashtag were in conjunction with the name of a Black woman who was a victim of police violence. Other content using the hashtag included links to blogs written by Black women, such as The Huffington Posts Black Voices column, Blavity, and BlackGirlTragic.com. Second most frequent were academics, particularly Black feminist scholars, though the largest number of retweets came from a white male entertainer.
By addressing recent incidents of police-instigated violence, the #SayHerName hashtag strives to advance one of the chief goals of the movement: to re-integrate Black women's lived experiences into mainstream racial justice narratives about police brutality and state-sanctioned violence. Through its engagement with hashtag activism, #SayHerName situates itself within a recent social historical development in which the media's tendency to disregard or heavily misrepresent events pertaining to racial justice incites activists to commit themselves to digital activism. In addition, with its increasing social media presence, #SayHerName provides an opportunity for a diversity of voices invested in racial justice to contribute to an ever-expanding discourse on Black women's susceptibility to police brutality and anti-Black violence.

Supporters

Some of the strongest original supporters of the #SayHerName movement include people who were directly impacted by the killings. Friends, family members, and individuals who shared similar social identities with the victims were and remain likely to participate in mobilization efforts. Mothers especially appear to have a strong emotional connection to the cause and are willing to speak out against police brutality and anti-Black violence.
The movement has received support from several celebrities, which is integral to the spread of the movement and its social media reach. Through the use of the #SayHerName hashtag, influential figures can increase public awareness and shed light on instances of racial injustice, which can sometimes go unnoticed. Such high-profile support was seen immediately following the death of Sandra Bland; musical artist Janelle Monáe tweeted the #SayHerName hashtag, as did actress Taraji P. Henson. Nicki Minaj, Jessie J, and Zendaya Coleman all recognized Bland's death on Instagram. For example, to refer to Nicki Minaj's tweet on twitter, she stated: "If you haven't looked into this story yet, please do. It's the most disturbing thing going on right now. #SandraBland." Later within the same day, Nicki posted a disturbing video that included footage from the police officers' dash camera during the arrest that consisted of Sandra Bland repeatedly begging the officer to stop hurting her. The video was captioned with "Rest in Peace #SandraBland" and gained over millions of views.
The American Civil Liberties Union has supported the movement, using the hashtag to promote activism particularly regarding violence against transgender women of color. The Human Rights Campaign likewise uses the hashtag in this manner. The 2017 Women's March also used the hashtag on Twitter, recognizing transgender women of color killed in 2017.