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A Year After the Jacob Blake Shooting

October 1, 2021

A year has passed since the Jacob Blake shooting. That’s one year—365 days since Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times.

Blake is now paralyzed; Sheskey is still an officer with the Kenosha police department, and the state of Wisconsin, the federal government, and most local municipalities across the country have yet to enact meaningful police reform.

Make no mistake, while the four bills recently signed into law by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers are directionally correct (banning chokeholds, increasing transparency, and creating grants for community policing), they don’t go far enough. The sad reality is that even had these laws been in place, Sheskey still likely would have shot Blake that fateful day.

Racism is rampant in our society, and racism kills. There is no vaccine for this.

Moving Forward with Urgency

If we are to move forward and realize a more just nation, we must accept our flaws, fully confront their root causes, and commit to moving forward by listening to the solutions presented by the people most directly impacted by the problems. Unfortunately, these crucial voices are too often overlooked in the call for social justice, but they play an integral role in the quest for a more equitable future. The four new laws in Wisconsin are a step in the right direction, but the journey is long, and we must start running.

~60%

Black women account for roughly 60% of all new HIV infections among women in the US, even though Black women account for only 13% of the population.