On Thursday, 22 April, 2021, 20-year-old father of one, Daunte Wright, was laid to rest.
Daunte was a doting father, loved to play basketball, had dreams of being an NBA player, a fashion designer, and a business owner, and his wit and charisma brought laughs and smiles to all who got to know him –– voted “class clown” as a freshman student.
Wright’s funeral was held at Shiloh Temple International Ministries in Minneapolis. Hundreds attended the funeral including Rev. Al Sharpton who gave a forceful eulogy which rebuked the nature of Wright’s untimely death and the “stench of police brutality”.
In a sickening reversal of roles, Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, spoke of the immense pain of burying one’s child and of the joy her son had in being a father to two-year-old Daunte Jr. Families of several other Black people killed by the police were in attendance, including the mothers of Philando Castile and Eric Garner, relatives of Oscar Grant III and Emmett Till, and the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor.
During a traffic stop on Sunday, April 11th 26-year police veteran Kimberly Potter shot and killed Daunte Wright. Potter claims that she was reaching for her Taser and instead mistook her gun for a Taser according to the then-Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who has since resigned. The former Brooklyn Center Police officer Kimberly Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, and is currently being held in Hennepin County Jail on $100,000 bail.
The killing of Wright sparked a number of protests around the United States with many of the vigils and protests being labeled as “riots” by local law enforcement. The killing of Wright also showed the close communal experiences of violence and death at the hands of the police. Wright was killed only 10 miles away from where the murderer of George Floyd, Derek Chauvin’s trial was taking place. Additionally, George Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, had a personal connection as she was the dean at Edison High School when Wright was a student. Ross knew Wright as “a silly boy, as goofy as can be,” and stated that she was “full of sorrow” upon hearing the news and further realising it was the killing of a former student.
The haunting connection between Floyd and Wright further shines a light on the fact that racialised communities are constantly overpoliced. The close geographical proximity of victims is not by chance and is through a concerted and conscious effort and design. The death of Wright has shortly been followed by the tragic killings of 13-year-old Adam Toledo and 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant at the hands of the police. This further affirms the fact that police in the United States continue to utilise excessive force when dealing with civilians, and moreover that there is a serious and concerning trend of widespread and systematic attacks that some are calling a dangerous precursor to genocide.
The sentiments echoed throughout the funeral service and in subsequent protests Wright’s killing has ignited has made one very important fact clear, Daunte Wright’s life mattered.
Tofunmi Odugbemi is a challenger and disrupter of spaces. She applies her developed sense of justice, ingenuity, and leadership in areas where academia intersects with the legal world. Womanism, Black feminism, anti-ableist, anti-racist, anti-establishment, abolitionist, anti-capitalist, and queer movements inform her work.