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Tina Knowles-Lawson and Sybrina Fulton want to ensure fair and safe elections this fall as they stress the importance of the Black vote as a driver of change.

The mother of music superstar Beyonc and the mother of Trayvon Martin spoke with Sheinelle Jones on the 3rd hour of TODAY Thursday about their call for the U.S. Senate to pass the HEROES Act, which includes a provision for $3.6 billion in grants to states for planning, preparation and security of elections.

"Voting, absolutely, though it is not the key to success for all the problems, certainly does make a difference, especially at the local level," Knowles-Lawson said. "Just connecting the dots is what we're trying to do because sometimes in the Black community just because we have gone unheard for so long, people have the feeling that their votes don't count, that their voices don't count.

"So voting is the best way, the first way, for us to make our voices heard and to show our power because we get to elect the officials that govern these situations."

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Knowles-Lawson has joined forces with Fulton and other mothers of those like Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor who have been lost to gun violence to write an open letter to Senate leaders to pass the bill. The Democrat-led House of Representatives voted to pass the bill last month, but it has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.

"We decided to come together to make our voice even stronger, to make our voice even more powerful," Fulton said. "It's very important to us that we stand together and we stand up for what's right."

Knowles-Lawson said her fear for the presidential election in the fall is a scene like the one this week in a primary election in Louisville, Kentucky, where voters were pounding on doors to get into the one polling place in a city of 600,000 people.

Voters in minority communities in Georgia had a similar issue earlier this month when they waited hours on line to vote due to fewer polling locations, lack of staffing and inoperable voting machines.

Knowles-Lawson also advocated for more absentee voting as a safer option during the coronavirus pandemic.

"You shouldn't have to decide between your health and going to vote," she said, adding, "Our prayer is that this lights a spark in that everyone will be outraged by the fact that this bill has not been passed and it's so badly needed."

Fulton continues to push for voting rights and racial justice eight years after her 17-year-old son was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, who was acquitted. Her son's name has been a rallying cry at protests around the world against racial injustice since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.

Fulton has also decided to run for political office, competing for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners in Florida.

She was asked about the indictments handed down Wednesday to the three suspects in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot and killed while jogging in a Georgia neighborhood in February.

"That's very hard," she said. "They will be setting a precedent that says that Black lives matter, and I think that it's time, it's time for people to see that you just can't go out and shoot and kill us and not be held accountable, so I'm hopeful that they will be not only indicted, but convicted as well."

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Tina Knowles-Lawson and Trayvon Martin's mom emphasize 'power' of the Black vote - Today.com

Celebrities such as Jada Pinkett Smith, Common and Muhammad Ali's cousin turn out for the Breonna Taylor rally in Frankfort Louisville Courier Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "PROTECT HER," hip-hop star Common's message was clear Thursday afternoon.

Stand up for Black women, he said. And stand up for Breonna Taylor.

"I will stand up for and with Black women 'til my last breath," Common said in a poem he wrote about Taylor. "The date Breonna took her last breath was the date I took my first. March 13 is my birthday. And I will always honor Breonna on that day."

He finished: "Better tomorrows begin with us lifting up the Black woman."

More than 500 people gathered on the front steps of Kentucky's Capitol in the hot midday sun for the #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor rally, over 100 days since Taylor, a 26-year-old ER technician, was fatally shot by police in her Louisville apartment.

Common, actress Jada Pinkett Smith and rapper Rapsody were among the celebrities that stood alongside Taylor's family and attorneys in Frankfort.

For nearly three hours, rallygoers demanded justice not only for Taylorbut for all of the countrys Black women. Speakers at times referenceda 1962 quote from Malcolm X, who called the Black woman the most neglected person in America.

Thursday's rally was organized by Until Freedom, a New York-based collective of activists, organizers and survivors of racial injustice.

Breonna Taylor is everywhere, said Tamika Mallory, a national activist with Until Freedom.

The issue of Black women being killed and our voices being too low is a problem, Mallory continued, urging those in the crowd to learn about Pamela Turner, a Black woman from Houston who was shot and killed by police in May 2019.

Mallory called on Kentuckians to continue calling for justice in the Taylor case. The nation will be watching, she said, before directing her statement to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, whose office is investigating Taylors death.

This aint no little thing where people aint paying attention, Mallory said.

Ben Crump, a Florida-based attorney for Taylor's family who has represented other families of Black Americans, said he believes Taylor is the face of a growing movement.

Taylor will be for Black women what Trayvon Martin has becomefor Black men, Crump said after the rally, referring to the 17-year-old unarmed teen who was fatally shot in Florida by a would-be vigilante named George Zimmerman.

On stage, Crump called on Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who made one of his first public appearances since prosecutors droppedcharges against him more than a month ago.

Walker was charged with attempted-murder and assault for firing a shot inside Taylor's apartment on March 13 while police were serving a search warrant, striking Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the femoral artery. Walker has said he did not know it was police behind the door, and that he acted in self-defense.

Three officers returned fire, killing Taylor, who was unarmed, in her hallway.

Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove remain on administrative reassignment for firing their weapons, and Brett Hankison, the third officer who fired his weapon that night, has been terminated from the police department, with the interim chief calling his actions "a shock to the conscience."

Hankison is appealing his termination.

We call a brother a hero who tries to defend his Black woman, Crump said. That is the definition of a hero.

Walker, who came to the podium amid chants of hero!kept his comments brief.

I know yall ain't heard a lot from me, if anything," he said. "But I just want to let yall know I appreciate all the love and support for me, and most definitely for Breonna. She would appreciate it, too.

"#Breewayy," he added, the family's hashtag and rallying cry for Breonna, before turning to embrace Crump.

Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, brought with her a "Justice for Breonna Taylor"yard sign as a "gift" for Gov. Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

Put it in the yard, right in the middle," she said. "They need to remember their job, everyday.

Mysonne Linen, or The N.Y. General, a rapper and activist from the Bronx, and co-founder of Until Freedom, called Walker to his side before leading the crowd in a pledge to protect Black women.

This is a hero, he said, pointing at Walker. No longer will we stand and watch our Black women be harmed. We have to sacrifice our lives, if need be, to protect our Black women.

So we are pledging today that, not on our watch, will you ever harm another Black woman.

Songs from Black hip-hop artists, including Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar and Jadakiss, blared from loudspeakers stationed atop the Capitol steps as people arrived at the rally late Thursday morning.

A legislative staffer who left her office to view the start of the rally said she had spent the past 24 hours reading about the Taylor case and watching documentaries about racial injustice in the U.S.

Theyre killing them, said the woman, who was middle-aged and white.

The police are killing them. And I didnt know it, she said, tears in her eyes.

Before speakers took to the podium around noon, organizers played the song Rise Up by Sandra Day an unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement. Hundreds in the crowd sang along, their fists held high in the air.

When the song concluded, one woman lowered her fist to her face, using it to wipe a tear from her cheek.

Throughout the day, people could be seen viewing the crowd below from a portico above the Capitol steps, from Black custodial workers to Sen. Gerald Neal, a Louisville Democrat and the longest serving African-American member of the Kentucky legislature.

Democratic state Rep. Attica Scott of Louisville, Kentucky's only Black woman in the legislature, said "every level of government has failed us."

"From Attorney General Daniel Cameron to Gov. Andy Beshear," Scott said. "We are here to send a strong and loud message to the attorney general: To move swiftly, or get out of the way. We are here to send a strong message to Gov. Beshear: You better not ever send the State Police and National Guard to Louisville, Kentucky, ever again."

She also thanked the protesters who have been occupying "Injustice Square Park" the protesters name for Jefferson Square Park andthose who've called on Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer to resign.

"Yougot to go," she said. "Resign, Fischer."

Rapper Common reads a poem he wrote for Breonna Taylor during a rally in her honor on the steps of the Capitol building in Frankfort. Louisville Courier Journal

Sean Ali Waddell, Muhammad Ali's cousin, drew a raucous response from the protesters during an impassioned speech in which he finished with a demand for Cameron to charge the officers responsible for Taylor's death.

"Don't you be on the wrong side of history," Waddell said. "Don't you stay on the wrong side of history."

With the temperature soaring near 90 degrees, some speeches were interrupted by urgent calls for medics. Rally organizers several times lugged coolers stocked with ice and bottled water to the base of the Capitol steps.

As some took the shade on the nearby lawn, 26-year-old Alexis Taylor of Louisville stood tall under the scorching sun. For hours, she hollered support at the rallys speakers.

The event left her feeling really empowered and really energized, she said.

Taylor, a Black woman, said she felt a special connection to Breonna: They shared the same last name. They were the same age. They both lived in Louisville.

It could have easily been me, she said.

Taylor said she has had white friends come to her in recent weeks and apologize for not taking time to better understand what she and Black people go through every day. Seeing people of different races at the rally and at protests in Louisville makes her emotional, Taylor said.

A lot of people are starting to wake up. And that's good. And that means that these protests are working.

This has to end, one way or another, she added. And were just going to keep going until it does.

Reach Tessa Duvall at tduvall@courier-journal.com and 502-582-4059. Twitter: @TessaDuvall. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: http://www.courier-journal.com/subscribe.

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Breonna Taylor rally: Common, Rapsody join 500-plus in vowing to stand up for Black women - Courier Journal

Weeks of protests across the U.S. following George Floyd's killing have put pressure on governments to scale back the use of force police officers can use on civilians and create new oversight for officer conduct.

Why it matters: Police reforms of this scale have not taken place in response to the Black Lives Matter movement since its inception in 2013, after George Zimmerman's acquittal for shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

What's new: Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kennedy announced on Thursday that the city's police commissioner has placed a moratorium on tear gas and "other non-lethal methods," in response to videos of corralled Black Lives Matter protesters being tear gassed on June 1.

Catch up quick: The Minnesota Legislature failed to reach a deal on police reform measures, as Republicans clashed with Democrats pushing for restoring voting rights to felons and entrusting the state's attorney general with prosecuting police killings, the New York Times reports.

The bottom line: Allowing lawsuits, transparency into disciplinary records and limiting use of force are core to police reform, experts and advocates say.

Go deeper: More black police officers, yet the killings persist

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The major police reforms that have been enacted since George Floyd's death - Axios

The movement wants equality for all, but incidents such as the plane banner over Man City-Burnley shows not everyone understands the BLM slogan

Burnley captain Ben Mee was a picture of seething disappointment after his side's 5-0 defeat against Manchester City, but it had nothing to do with the result.

The game itself felt irrelevant as he directed his ire at the people who decided it was a good idea to fly a banner with the words 'White Lives Matter Burnley' over the Etihad Stadium.

A visibly furious Mee told Sky Sports that he was "ashamed and embarrassed" by the stunt, stressing that the message portrayed by the banner was not at all representative of the club or the players.

"It is not what we are about.They have missed what we are trying to achieve," the centre-back said in his rebuke.

"These people need to come into the 21st century and educate themselves. They don't represent what we are about, the club is about, the players are about and the majority of fans are about."

The banner in question appeared shortly after the players had knelt in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as, indeed, other teams had done in previous games since the restart of English football.

Premier League stakeholders had also agreed to print the words 'Black Lives Matter' on the backs of jerseys and individual players have used their platforms toamplifythe voices of theBLM movement.

Mee was speaking on behalf of the Burnley team when he admonished those behind the banner, but his expression ofsharp disapproval was echoed by many within and outside the football community.

Man City star Raheem Sterling said it was "time for change" and former Manchester United captain Rio Ferdinand wrote on Twitter: "Well said Ben Mee... respect."

Former England star Gary Lineker lauded Mee's "leadership", while Labour MP David Lammy said that Mee had "given a lesson in how to call out offensive garbage".

Mee condemned the 'White Lives Matter' banner in the strongest possible terms, butthe most substantive part of his statement was that, as well as being offensive, itmisses the entire point of the BLM campaign.

'White Lives Matter' or 'All Lives Matter' reactions missthe point because the Black Lives Matter movement is not about denigratingthe worth of other ethnic groups; it is about highlighting a specific problem.

Black Lives Matter isagainstracism and systemic injustices against the Black community, andit works for equality for everyone.

The message of the slogan is not that Black lives matter more. It is not that thelives of Caucasian peopledon't matter. It is that Black lives matter just as much.

Reactionary cries that'White Lives Matter!' or even 'All Lives Matter!' demonstratea fundamentalmisunderstanding of what BLM is working for and fighting against.

Such cries also havethe effect of diminishing the plight of a community thathas sufferedviolentsubjugation in the pastand continues to feel the residual ill effects ofhistory, with overt and subtle racism still evident today.

The fact that 'White Lives Matter' has been used as a slogan for white supremacist groups is highly problematic and it creates an absurd false equivalence.

Robbie Earle noted that Mee had understood the issues"through the lens of a black man", telling NBC Sports in an emotional appraisal: "That is change, that is progression. That's people standing with you in the fight and if we can stand together in the fight we've got a chance."

So, when footballers take a knee and wear shirts emblazoned with the slogan, it is an act of solidarity, not of supremacy.It is an expression of a desire to rid the world of racism, in all its forms.

Black Lives Matter (or BLM) is asocial civil movement that arose in 2013 in response to police brutality against Black peoplein the United States.

George Zimmerman's acquittal in the case of the fatal shooting of Black teenager Trayvon Martin is considered the catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement. It began to spread on social media platforms before developing into organised street protests and activism.

Inspired bythe civil rights movement, the Black Power movement and Black feminist movement among others, Black Lives Matter is most prominent in the U.S.,but has spread across the world.

The BLM website says that the movement is committed "to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive".

The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 are driven primarilyby the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed at the end of May duringan arrest bya police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Video footage circulated online of a handcuffed Floyd lying on the ground with police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for approximately nine minutes. Floyd could be heard in the footage saying that he could notbreathe.

His death sparked outrage in the U.S. and prompted hundreds of street protests across the country despite public health concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Protests subsequently spread to Europe and across the world, with demonstrators clashing with police in many cases, such as the UK, but on asmaller scale.

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Explained: Why 'White Lives Matter' and 'All Lives Matter' misses the point of Black Lives Matter - Goal.com

Effie Caldarola

By Effie Caldarola Catholic News Service Posted June 5, 2020

The year was 2012, ancient history in our Twitter-universe. But to me, as recent as yesterdays headline.

Trayvon Martin was 17 years old, wearing a hoodie on a chilly night. Hed been to the convenience store for snacks and was walking to his dads apartment.

He was accosted by a self-appointed vigilante, a neighborhood watch captain, named George Zimmerman. To Zimmerman, a black kid in a hoodie was a suspicious character. Zimmerman called police and was told to stay in his vehicle and not follow Martin.

He disregarded that advice, with tragic results. Well never know the exact details, but a scuffle ensued. Zimmerman had a gun. Why? Why are there always guns? Martin paid with his life. Zimmerman, the predator, was found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

In 2012, I had a son a few years older than Trayvon. We jokingly called him, as a kid, the mayor of Oceanview, our neighborhood in Anchorage, Alaska. He was everywhere, a kid on his bike, sometimes in a hoodie.

Like Trayvon, Mike was neither a troublemaker nor a perfect kid. I felt he was safe, though, in our community, with our neighbors and our police. The talk with white kids was about sex; with black kids, it was about survival.

Our president in 2012, Barack Obama, empathetic in crises, said that if he had a son, he would look just like Trayvon Martin. My Irish-Italian son did not look like Trayvon, the handsome black child of black parents. And yet, to me they looked painfully similar. They were, as kids will say, brothers from another mother.

Because, honestly, if youve ever done genealogy, you know were all eventually cousins. We mothers feel every mothers pain, because every child is ours.

In the past several days, an egregious killing, less ambiguous, visually stunning, brought our country into national consensus. The deliberate, vicious killing of George Floyd shook us. We yearn to think that after all the years of deaths, of injustice, of assassinations, that maybe this time things will be different.

But will they?

This November, the ballot box in every state, every city and county, will be a sacred place. Those who peacefully protested and they number in the thousands and thousands must register and vote. We must fight for voting by mail and resist voter suppression. We must stand up, as mothers of every son and daughter.

For our church, this is a pivotal moment. I know a nun, very old now, who was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Her bishop, after seeing protesters beaten there, wanted a visible Catholic presence. Clergy came in their collars, nuns in their long serge habits.

We need desperately, now, to see and hear that Catholic presence. For the integrity of our American church, to ensure the churchs future with our youth, to be a church that witnesses Christ poor among us, we need presence.

Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, took a knee, very visibly, at a June 1 demonstration to pray for George Floyd. Two days later, Pope Francis called to thank him.

Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory protested that it was baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated after President Donald Trump used the St. John Paul II National Shrine for a photo op.

Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne said of another photo, The word of God is not a prop.

Pray God this is the vanguard of church leadership for justice. The times demand that this be our moment.

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This is the church's moment to show Black Lives Matter - CatholicPhilly.com