Justice For Jessie

By David Duffield

It’s a mild Thursday night, days before a big snow. The new moon passes, a time someone will later note, for the “letting go” of things. As a gay, white male I cannot speak to the experience of a queer, Latina youth. I speak a little Spanish, but I feel like an outsider.

The space is just outside the Antioch Church on 26th Ave. A tree adorned with pictures and artwork about Jessie Hernandez, now 20 days dead, stands center. Presente.org, Colorado Anti-Violence Program, youth, family, and friends of Jessie gather. They begin a ceremony honoring the cardinal points: spirits of the father, mother, sisters, brothers, Mother Earth.

“I call out the names of the trans women of color who have been killed this year,” says a very tall, powerful young man. He calls out five. “Call out the names of people lost,” he says.

“Don’t forget we are all connected,” says a young ceremony guide. “We have deep roots.” She goes on to ask us to walk around the block with candles to the place where Jessie died. “Every footstep you honor is prayer for a fallen one.” Someone from CAVP speaks, and she points out that there have been no indictments of DPD officers in all deaths at police hands for a generation. “We don’t trust the DPD,” she says. “We call for a federal investigation into their actions and the death of Jessie Hernandez. Leave-with-pay is not punishment enough.” I get a candle, following behind a march.

Around the block, down the alley, silently, families watch shadowed in their homes. The sun sets. We pause at a hidden place in the middle of an alley, where Jessie was killed. Her silhouetted picture and smile frames the flowers, candles, and crucifixes. Is it a place of murder, an accident? It is a place of mourning. A 17-year- old has died.

People speak, I commune with my thoughts. Spanish prose comes and goes in my mind. Lágrimas por las flores, tears for flowers.

“Justicia solamente (only justice), is what we want,” a woman says in Spanish. In the early morning, she says she saw the police and the dead girl, as did her three children. “Only God has the right to take life.” Jessie’s young friend speaks, her cousin, and chokes on her words, only saying: “Justice. What happened wasn’t fair.” Another friend speaks, noting Jessie’s smile. “What the police are doing to us is wrong,” it’s echoed. “They are destroying us.”

We have a moment of silence before the speakers. “Imagine,” says a young ceremony guide. “Imagine ancestors and people here speaking through you.” I imagine the last moments of Jessie’s life. I feel an odd, dark abyss, like a trapped soul lost, terrified, alone, afraid, and wandering. Is this how Jessie felt? After the speakers, I still feel outside … ignorant but angry and no longer uncertain. I want to write out the murderous indignation in my fingers, to avenge, to right an injustice. My inner voice returns. My way is not the path to justice it says. Tell only a story of experiences. I leave, having spoken not a word.

I’ve heard a lot about Jessie since her death. I’ve heard she was a criminal and car thief. Was it an accident, or police brutality? I’ve spoken with people who think she’s not transgender, but a lesbian, who call the actions around her name politicization, money, and fame-making. I’ve heard of activists spilling red paint upon police memorials, and of police showing restraint and walking a fine line. I have found myself marginalizing Jessie and her story in these thoughts. I now embrace it.

Is this a story about a queer/transgender person of color being killed, police brutality, scapegoating, or community action? Is it police policy to draw a gun upon a stolen car and a scared teenager trying to get away? Is it a car hitting and breaking the leg of an officer in an escape attempt, and police firing multiple bullets to kill the driver? We can marginalize a person in the story by playing upon criminality, and perhaps skew reality by overplaying messages.

Justice for Jessie means keeping her in focus, not just the last moments of her life. Lágrimas por las flores means that seeds of compassion must grow from the tears of her death. Let go of that which does not serve you, for our ignorance of Jessie damns us all. Indeed, if we participate in the criminalization of Jessie Hernandez, or we ignore cries for justice, our community is culpable in a lie to kill her twice. If we rehumanize her instead, our vigilance is not simply tested but justified.