I'm so glad you raised this and that my anger and my frustration are coming through even though I'm not with you in person. My anger and my frustration, as I said, are borne out of my lived experience. On Mother's Day 2003, I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die in front of my three children. I talk about the negotiations, the promises I was making to the goddesses that if my life were saved, I would do everything I could to make it different. I have two daughters and a son, and I don't want the future they live to be a reflection of our past. The whole nonsense, the whole notion that we can make these changes piece by piece, is what is costing lives, and it is as dangerous as the violence of these violent men. The system is so lackadaisical and so complacent and it is playing with the lives of other people. The reality is that as lawmakers, police officers and individuals are sitting by and thinking that it won't impact them, we know that this violence will hit anybody, everybody. No woman is safe.
We have to understand Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality that whilst no woman is safe, some women are less safe than others. Black women, indigenous women, racialized women, trans women—these communities are suffering and are dying at a high rate whilst other people look on. When the murders happen, I am tired of the “What should we have done? What could we have done?“ There is so much that could be done. There is so much.