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Breonna Taylor was supposed to turn 27 years old on Friday. But because of unchecked police violence, white supremacy, and a misguided and racist war on drugs that has gone on for decades, her life was cut short by killer cops at 26. As Mother Jones explained in an interview with the Taylor family’s attorney:

In mid-March, police officers barged into Breonna Taylor’s home in Louisville, Kentucky, in the middle of the night and discharged a spray of bullets that struck and killed the 26-year-old EMT. 

“They don’t do this in other neighborhoods,” Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Taylor’s family, said in a press call last week. Crump has also represented the families of other Black shooting victims around the country, including Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Ahmaud Arbery. “If this was another household in a more affluent community, lightning would strike and thunder would groan” if such a warrant were issued, Crump said.

In honor of Taylor on her birthday, and in protest against police brutality everywhere, hundreds of people gathered in Nubian Square in Roxbury yesterday for a vigil. It was one of dozens of similar actions and demonstrations in Greater Boston this past week, including a march with tens of thousands of people that started in Nubian Square last Sunday night. 

This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

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