Beyoncé is lending her voice to an important cause. The “Sorry” singer put her thoughts into words in a powerful call to action titled “Freedom” on her website on Thursday, July 7.
“We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our communities,” she began the charged post, which was written in all caps. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us.’ We don’t need sympathy. We need everyone to respect our lives.”
The music icon’s thoughts were prompted by the back-to-back shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile on Tuesday, July 5, and Wednesday, July 6, respectively. On Tuesday, Sterling was tackled and shot dead while he was selling homemade CDs and DVDs outside a store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On Wednesday, a police officer was caught on tape shooting Castile point-blank after he, his girlfriend and their child were pulled over for a traffic stop.
The 34-year-old mother of daughter Blue Ivy, 4, added that the uprising and outrage that is welling up in the nation is empowering, and that despite the fact that “these robberies of lives make us feel helpless and hopeless … we have to believe that we are fighting for the rights of the next generation, for the next young men and women who believe in good.”
Beyoncé further called the need to protest the shooting deaths of Castile and Sterling “a human fight” that is not dependent upon “race, gender or sexual orientation.”
“This is a fight for anyone who feels marginalized, who is struggling for freedom and human rights,” she wrote.
Additionally, the Grammy-winning singer included contact information for fans to reach out to their congressperson, as well as to voice protest over the deaths of Sterling and Castile.
Beyonce just paused her Glasgow show for a moment of silence, displaying victims of police brutality #AltonSterling pic.twitter.com/REajdvlmUf
— Will (@TheAussieSide) July 7, 2016
“Fear is not an excuse. Hate will not win,” she concluded. “We all have the power to channel our anger and frustration into action. We must use our voices in our districts and demand social and judicial changes.”
At her concert in Glasgow on Thursday, Beyoncé took a moment to recognize the victims of police brutality in a powerful digital display of all the men and women who have been killed by law enforcement in the last year alone.
Other celebrities — such as John Legend, Zendaya, Porsha Williams, Ne-Yo and more — have also expressed their anger over the shooting death of Castile on Wednesday, July 6, and Sterling just one day earlier.
“I am grateful to be able to call America my second home. Last night when I saw the video of Alton Sterling being killed, it left me feeling disheartened, emotional and truly scared,” Drake wrote in a post to Instagram on Wednesday. “I woke up this morning with a strong need to say something. It’s impossible to ignore that the relationship between Black and brown communities and law enforcement remains as strained as it was decades ago. No one begins their life as a hashtag. Yet the trend of being reduced to one continues.”
