Sasha Johnson and the black lives that don’t matter
‘There’s been a wall of silence’, said one local campaigner I spoke to at a vigil dedicated to 28-year-old anti-racism campaigner Sasha Johnson. A year ago, on 23 May 2021, Johnson was brutally shot in the head. The vigil was held earlier this week in London’s Denmark Hill, a short walk from the hospital where Johnson continues to lie in a critical condition, with what have been described as ‘catastrophic and permanent’ injuries to the head. She has two children under the age of 13.
The vigil was small, attended by about 30 people, mainly old-school black-power and black-nationalist groups, such as the Nation of Islam. One group was notably absent: Black Lives Matter.
