From the article: "
She led the group in a ritual: the reciting of names of those taken by state violence before their time—ancestors now being called back to animate their own justice:
"George Floyd. Asé. Philandro Castille. Asé. Andrew Joseph. Asé. Michael Brown. Asé. Erika Garner. Asé. Harriet Tubman. Asé. Malcom X. Asé. Martin Luther King. Asé."
As each name is recited, Dr. Abdullah poured libations on the ground as the group of over 100 chanted “Asé,” a Yoruba term often used by practitioners of Ifa, a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa, in return. This ritual, Dr. Abdullah explained, is a form of worship."
Also of note, Harriet Tubman was not taken by state violence before her time, she was died at 91 in a nursing home named in her honor. And MLK Jr. was not taken by state violence. For that matter, neither were Malcolm X and Andrew Joseph. Andrew Joseph was surely an avoidable tragedy; he was a straight-A student that got kicked out of the Florida state fair and made the very bad decision to try to cross I-4 on foot. But a victim of state violence he was not.