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Downtown vigil for Sandra Bland: ‘She’s with us every step of the way’

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A vigil marking the one-year anniversary of Sandra Bland’s death brought about 200 people, including more than a dozen of Bland’s relatives, to a candlelit gathering in the Loop on Wednesday night.

“To be here with folks who really just knew Sandy (from her death) a year ago, with so many people … it’s amazing,” said Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother.

Bland, who had lived in suburbs including Naperville and Aurora, died July 13 last year in a Texas jail. She was in custody there after a confrontational traffic stop, and her death, which authorities ruled a suicide, has since been a part of the conversation around police treatment of black citizens.

People gathered in Federal Plaza under the 53-foot Alexander Calder “Flamingo” sculpture and listened to speeches and songs from multiple participants. Some attendees held distributed signs with an illustrated portrait of Bland, with the words “#SandyStillSpeaks” and “Black Lives Matter.”

“We are here because we loved Sandra,” said Crista E. Noel, founder of Women’s All Points Bulletin, who organized the vigil. “There are people out here today whose humanity is much stronger than white, black, yellow or brown.”

Reed-Veal said she hoped her daughter would be remembered as a sincere activist.

“She was serious about this. She was an activist,” she said. “She was not trying to incite, she was trying to unite.”

She noted that people of many races participated in the vigil.

“This crowd here, we’ve got a mix of folks who wanted to be here,” she said. “And guess what? We all got along.”

Shavon Bland, Sandra Bland’s sister, addressed the crowd and said she could feel her sister’s presence.

“I know for sure my sister’s smiling right now,” said Shavon Bland, 30. “She’s not in the ground. She’s with us every step of the way.”

More than a dozen of Bland’s relatives attended the vigil, some of whom traveled from out of state, Shavon Bland said.

Ariel Atkins, 25, said she felt it necessary to attend the vigil in the wake of the recent shootings of Alton Sterling on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile on Wednesday in Minnesota. Sterling was shot as he wrestled with two white police officers, who say he was armed. A Minnesota officer fatally shot Castile while he was in a car with a woman and a child in a St. Paul suburb.

The shootings, which came nearly a year after Bland’s death, culminated “a rough year” for African-Americans, Atkins said. She wished the turnout for Wednesday’s vigil was as large as that of the demonstrations against police brutality earlier this week, as she believed the vigils had more profound effects on the community than marches.

“When you’re in one place saying, ‘We remember, we won’t forget,’ even though it’s late and even though it’s rainy and it’s dark, that’s a big statement that Chicago’s making,” she said.

Juanita Gartley, who lost her 21-year-old son in March 2015 to gun violence, said she felt it was important to attend the vigil so that she could be a voice against all shootings, not just those committed by police. She longed for the country to “reach a point of trust,” she said.

“We need to use (Bland’s memory) as a platform to say ‘Enough is enough,'” she said. “Whether that’s blue-on-black violence or black-on-black violence.”