The San Francisco Human Rights Commission (SF-HRC) and Dream Keeper Initiative (DKI) issued the following statement regarding the tragic & racially motivated terrorist shooting attack that took place on Saturday, May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York:
“Last weekend, America experienced multiple incidents of violent mass shootings, including a massacre on the Black community in Buffalo, NY. The Dream Keeper Initiative draws specific attention to the targeted attack on African Americans that took place Saturday, May 14, 2022. White supremacist ideology and anti-Black racism spurred an 18-year-old white man to enter a grocery store, armed with a rifle branded with racial epithets, to murder 10 people and injure three others. 11 victims were Black, including a retired police officer working as a store security guard who bravely engaged with the shooter and was reported to have saved lives. What many -- a grandmother, a father, and other community members -- anticipated would be an ordinary Saturday trip to the grocery store ended in a brazen act of racial terrorism against Black people.
Today, some social and traditional media outlets are serving as echo chambers for white supremacists who are illogically convinced of an ahistorical “great replacement” conspiracy theory, and use it as a justification to enact violence on Black people and communities of color at large. For this reason, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the Dream Keeper Initiative are unwavering in our commitment to dismantle racist systems and structures that result in perpetual harm upon the Black community. The HRC and DKI have and will continue to prioritize efforts such as community healing, peace promotion, safe spaces for Black people, and the Campaign for Solidarity. We are grateful to the community healers who have dedicated decades to ensuring our collective healing leads to our collective liberation.
We hold the lives taken in Buffalo in our hearts; may we always remember and say their names: Celestine Chaney, Roberta A. Drury, Andre Mackneil, Katherine Massey, Margus D. Morrison, Heyward Patterson, Aaron Salter Jr., Geraldine Talley, Ruth Whitfield, and Pearl Young. We think also of those wounded in the attack: Christopher Braden, Zaire Goodman, and Jennifer Warrington”