A planned direct action initiated by Until Freedom was organized today in Louisville, Kentucky, where local and national protestors occupied the front yard of Kentucky Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman that was killed in her home by the Louisville Metro Police Department. Taylor was shot eight times by the LMPD on March 13, 2020, and as of today, July 14, 2020, none of the three officers involved in her shooting have been charged with her death. The protestors gathered in front of and on the lawn on Daniel Cameron’s home to demand that the case move along swiftly and that justice is no longer denied for Taylor. Linda Sarsour, the co-founder of Until Freedom, stated, “We will not allow him to continue to delay this process in hopes that the protesters will go away, in hopes that the national attention on Breonna Taylor will go away. We believe that our action today will send a pressure point to the administration that they have to move quickly and that if they don’t move quickly, we will come with triple and quadruple the number of people we will have today.” At Cameron’s request, the protestors were arrested for trespassing on his property. In total, 87 people were arrested and charged with Intimidating a Participant in a Legal Process, Disorderly Conduct 2nd Degree, and Criminal Trespass 3rd Degree.

Daniel Cameron released the following response to the protest held at his house. “The stated goal of today’s protest at my home was to ‘escalate.’ That is not acceptable and only serves to further division and tension within our community,” he said. “Justice is not achieved by trespassing on private property, and it’s not achieved through escalation. It’s achieved by examining the facts in an impartial and unbiased manner. That is exactly what we are doing and will continue to do in this investigation.”

Excuse me? Justice is not achieved through escalation? 

Perhaps Daniel Cameron has forgotten. Black people have been making good trouble, or as Daniel likes to call it escalating situations throughout history to change this nation. 

It was escalation that allowed Daniel Cameron to have the education that he has today. 

It was escalation that allows Daniel Cameron to be the first Black Attorney General in Kentucky. 

It was escalation that allows Daniel Cameron to reside in the neighborhood that the protestors occupied. 

It was escalation that allows Daniel Cameron to be engaged to the White woman he will marry. 

It was escalation that has changed the very course of his life and the course of this nation. 

Only a man ignorant of his BLACK history would dare speak about justice not being achieved through escalation.  

This picture says a lot. Daniel Cameron with Donald Trump 

Without the escalation of protestors in Louisville and around this world, Breonna Taylor’s case would have never been heard. The LMPD attempted to bury Breonna Taylor’s murder, but the growing escalation of people screaming her name made the world pause and pay attention. That is what escalation can do. 

It is escalation that often tips the scales of justice.  

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated in the Letter From A Birmingham Jail, “My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

I would advise Daniel and this state to accept that your life will never be business as usual again. Until there is justice for Breonna Taylor we will continue our escalations until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.