Black Lives Matter Every Month: Reflecting on Marcellus Khaliifah Williams
Ileana Ortiz facilitating a Beloved Community Equity at Work cohort
By: Ileana Ortiz, Associate Director, Equity at Work, Beloved Community
Before each cohort or learning session, Beloved Community facilitators open the space with a statement and moment of reflection on our core value of Black Lives Matter. The dates of a recent cohort session aligned with the execution of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams by the state of Missouri, and that session’s reflection, shared by Associate Director of Equity at Work Ileana Ortiz, brought into sharp focus for the cohort the intertwined–and deadly–nature of issues of systemic oppression.
We begin every session with a moment of silence to honor and center Black lives. Today, and always, Beloved Community honors and centers our Black communities. What we talk about in our sessions is not just academic jargon or hot topics for our partners to think about and discuss. These topics of race, systems of oppression, and marginalization have real, life-and-death consequences for our Black community. We believe it is crucial that you continuously interrogate and address the ways that biases, racism, white supremacy, and intersectionality impact your decisions and the ways that your organizations operate.
Today, we stand in collective grief and outrage over the state-sanctioned murder of Marcellus Khaliifah Williams, which took place September 24, 2024 at 6:00 p.m. Khaliifah was a Black Muslim man, and his death is a stark reminder of why we say, unapologetically, that all Black Lives Matter. His identity as both a Black man and a Muslim made him a target in a country where white supremacy does not just hate Blackness but fears anything that challenges its narrow vision of who belongs & whose life is of value.
White supremacy is not just an idea. It is a system. It is embedded in our policies, institutions, and even how justice is denied. The same white supremacist ideology that allowed for the lynching of Khaliifah even though he was an innocent man is the same that allowed the state-sanctioned murder of a 14-year-old Black boy named George Stinney Jr. in 1944. George was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit, and after less than 10 minutes of deliberation, he was sentenced to death by an all-white jury. His own family and friends were not even allowed to enter the segregated courtroom. The governor at the time, Governor Olin Johnston, refused to grant him clemency. The state executed George Stinney Jr., and it wasn’t until 70 years later that his name was cleared. But what good is justice when it comes decades too late? What good is a system where, 70 years later, nothing has changed?
Environmental racism—the intentional placement of toxic industries and pollutants in predominantly Black, Indigenous, and marginalized neighborhoods—is a form of systemic violence inextricably tied to the violence our prison and law enforcement systems inflict on Black people. Communities of color, particularly Black communities, are disproportionately impacted by pollution, lead exposure, poor air quality, and climate change. We cannot separate the violence inflicted on Black bodies from the violence inflicted on Black communities.
This is why we must do more than just hold systems and individuals accountable—we must actively dismantle them. The systems that claim to serve justice and equity are, in fact, often perpetuating the very violence they should protect against. Policies and institutions that allow the innocent to be killed are not just broken—they are working exactly as they were designed to but in service of white supremacy, not justice.
It is our responsibility to build something different in their place. This work is hard, and it is necessary because we are all responsible for either upholding injustice or dismantling it. There is no third choice. We cannot stay neutral because neutrality does not exist. If we care about justice, if we care about Black lives, then we must commit ourselves to the work of building a future where these horrors are not repeated. Khaliifah should still be with us. George should have grown up. Their lives mattered, and they were stolen by systems built on hate. They were stolen because those with power made intentional choices not to intervene. Let us honor George and Khaliifah’s memory not just in words, but in action.
Beloved Community is a leading nonprofit racial and economic equity consulting firm that supports nonprofits, businesses and schools to develop and implement sustainable diversity, equity and inclusion policies and practices to create broader systemic change.