“He basically got on top of her … it’s basically a UFC ground-and-pound move … full force, punching her in the head … in the head,” Diaz said.

I saw the video and wondered who she was. Who was the woman whose head was being pounded, pummeled by a man wearing a uniform that made him THE LAW? She was black, that much I could tell. But WHO was she? Someone’s grandmother, sister, daughter, friend? And where is she? Is she in the hospital? Just what has happened to this woman?

The woman on the ground using her forearms to block the blows is so familiar to me. I know that she is invisible to others but I ‘recognize’ her. I wonder if she will speak and tell of her torment. I hope so. I hope that she will in Audre’s words “forgo the vanities of silence” and speak her pain. Because in the end, as black women, our voices are too often all we have. We are punished for speaking and yet we must.

The Law keeps punching her in the face and head. Eleven times at least in the video. He doesn’t want her to speak. So many people want us to die silently and to be buried in unmarked graves. I feel this acutely and so I raise my voice in public even though I’m actually a private & quiet person. Those who know me best recognize this description, those who don’t cannot, will not. I’ve learned to raise my voice as an act of resistance against the constant attacks and the acts of intentional obliteration. Muriel Rukeseyer asked that question: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” The answer: “The world would split open.” But what of black women? What would happen if all of us told the truth about our lives? Maybe we would save the world.

The currently anonymous no name black woman whose head was pounded and pummeled by The Law is of course not the first to be so victimized. Assata Shakur has told her story of police torture in her autobiography and in interviews. Below she recounts her brutal treatment at the hand of The Law in 1973:

On the night of May 2, I was shot twice by the New Jersey State Police. I was kept on the floor, kicked, pulled, dragged along by my hair. Finally, I was put into an ambulance, but the police would not let the ambulance leave. They kept asking the ambulance attendant: “Is she dead yet? Is she dead yet?” Finally, when it was clear that I wasn’t going to die in the next five or ten minutes, they took me to the hospital. The police were jumping on me, beating me, choking me, doing everything that they could possibly do as soon as the doctors or the nurses would go outside. I was half dead – hospital authorities had brought in a priest to give me the last rites – but the police would not stop torturing me. That went on until the next morning, when I was taken to the intensive care unit. They had to calm down a little while I was there. Then they moved me to another room, which was the Johnson Suite, and they closed off the exit from the hallway. So they could virtually control all traffic in and out. It was just open season on me for about three or four days. They’d turned up the air conditioning so that I was freezing to death. My lungs were threatening to collapse. They were doing everything so that I would get pneumonia.

It isn’t hard to imagine The Law thinking “Is she dead yet?” as his fists landed consecutive blows across the head and face of the currently anonymous no name black woman lying on the side of the 10 Freeway.

In 1979, Eula Love, a black woman trying to support her 3 daughters on social security payments, let her $22 gas bill lapse. The Southern California Gas Company sent out a meter man to shut off the gas in the dead of January. Eula threw him out of her house. The Gas Company called the LAPD which dispatched two officers to Ms. Love’s home. She had a knife in her hand when they arrived. They clubbed her to the ground and emptied their .38 caliber revolvers into her as she lay on the floor. I’m glad there was no video of that clubbing. What if Ms. Love had been able to tell the truth about her life? Instead The Law killed her dead.

And so it is against this backdrop of constant, consistent, fear-inducing, paralyzing, galvanizing, obliterating violence that we stand our ground. Always exhausted yet unwilling to be destroyed, resisting, we speak our pain and refuse to be silent. We stay for the dead and we fight for the living. We raise our forearms to protect against the blows (even from those who sometimes claim to love us) preparing for the moment when we can strike a collective blow for our freedom and self-determination.

In the meantime, we call the names of our sisters Assata, Eula, Ersula, Rekia, and the currently anonymous no name black woman who was pummeled by The Law on the side of the 10 Freeway… We call your names and make you visible.

We tell our truth to save the world.

Update: An LA Times article published Saturday evening offers more information on the anonymous woman pummeled by the cop in LA. She is a great-grandmother!!

Update #2 (12/3/15) – No criminal charges