“After Rolfe shot Brooks, he exclaimed, ‘I got him,’ kicked Brooks as he struggled for his life, and failed to give timely first aid.” Source: CNN

UNARMED was featured yesterday on ABC 7 Eyewitness News, NY and the day before that on News12 Brooklyn. Design blog Subtraction.com tells a visual story of the series. Bobbito Garcia interviewed me on Stretch and Bobbito Thursdays. Quick mention a couple weeks back in sports uniform authority Uni-Watch.

Over the weekend there was another police killing of a black man caught on video in Atlanta, GA, and increased scrutiny over several hangings of black men across the country. I’ve designed a jersey for Rayshard Brooks, but first we grieve.

The UNARMED project was started to protest racist killings by the police. But Unarmed stands against racist killings of all kinds. We cry for Oluwatoyin Salau, 19, too. Salau, a #BlackLivesMatter activist, was sexually assaulted and murdered by a black man in her own community.

Breonna Taylor, 26 • Ahmaud Arbery, 25 • Dominique Alexander, 27 • Malcolm Harsch, 38 • Robert Fuller, 24 • Rayshard Brooks, 27

The poet Thomas Gray said “Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” We see these flowers and rejoice in their bloom.

Louisville Police used a “no-knock” warrant to enter Breonna Taylor’s home in search of two people who, it turns out, were already in police custody. Officers fired more than 20 times at Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, including the 8 bullets that killed Taylor. No drugs were found in the apartment. She would have turned 27 on June 5th.

Live-streams of protest footage here every night.

Believe me, the last thing I’d rather be doing right now is designing another jersey and posting it on the internet. I started this project in 2013. That’s a lot of tears spilled over Adobe Illustrator. A lot of marches and grief. And so I let a few go by – Walter Scott, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor – sounds so callous, doesn’t it? But isn’t that what we all do?

Three of the jerseys appeared in my film 72 Hours: a Brooklyn Love Story? – isn’t that enough?

Last year around this time I interviewed Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, Terence Crutcher’s twin sister, for a documentary I was directing about a separate topic related to race. The Terence Crutcher jersey was the last one I designed in this series, four years ago, on my birthday. Dr. Crutcher spoke powerfully in our interview about how she didn’t want her life to be about her brother’s killing, but how we must find the strength to raise our voices in the midst of pain.

And so my fingers quiver once again as I select fonts and Google details – did George Floyd have a nickname? Where should it appear on the jersey? Bullets were easier to make into a design motif – stars – but how does one represent a knee and the crushing weight of racism? With a glyph? A line weight?

TO PROTECT WITH COURAGE
TO SERVE WITH COMPASSION

That is the motto of the Minneapolis Police Department. If you didn’t know that, know this. George Floyd – Big Floyd – was UNARMED.

#BlackLivesMatter

Video confirms that Terence Crutcher had his hands above his head at the time of his shooting.

Witnesses say that Sterling was armed, but that he was not holding or touching his gun during his interaction with police. Further, Louisiana is an open carry state. At the time of his shooting, his arm appeared to be restrained behind his back.

Laquan McDonald, though wielding a knife, was moving away from police officers when one of them fired 16 shots at him. Most of them after he was already on the ground.

Samuel Dubose was stopped by a University of Cincinnati police officer for a traffic violation. During the brief encounter he was shot in the head.

Sandra Bland was driving her vehicle to a new job in Prairie View, Texas when a routine traffic stop led to her being jailed. She subsequently died while in custody of what has been called a suicide.

Freddie Gray and Walter Scott were not forgotten. And I continue to learn the stories of others such as Antonio Zambrano-Moses. I had hoped to take a hiatus from the project. But the work must continue.

The Oscar Grant jersey is the first football jersey in the series. Silver and Black in honor of his hometown Oakland Raiders. The Trayvon Martin jersey was revised in the colorway of a local football team as well.

The killing of Mike Brown, though no footage exists, is one of the most painful to think about. The subsequent protests in Ferguson, Mo. and the #BlackLivesMatter campaign have been inspiring outcomes, but hurt undergirds all. “Big Mike” is pictured wearing a St. Louis Cardinals hats in one of the iconic photos of him, and so the jersey is done in those colors.

The first baseball-style design in this series, the jersey features six stars above his name on the back in response to the six bullets that entered his body. His nickname, “Big Mike,” is embroidered on the arm.

The Eric Garner jersey was the third in the series. The killings of Eric Garner followed by Mike Brown marked the moment this project becoming a series and not a one-off idea. One detail on this jersey is the “Courtesy Professionalism Respect” motto that is painted on every NYPD vehicle. The jersey number, 43, represents Garner’s age at the time of the incident, as does the number of each jersey in the project.

The Sean Bell jersey was next. Chronologically Sean Bell’s killing happened much earlier, but the jersey design happened next. The 50 stars on the side of the jersey represent the 50 bullets used to kill him.

Before this was a continuing project, it was an idea. I designed the Trayvon Martin jersey in the summer of 2013. The project seemed like a one-off then, but I’ve tweaked, refined, and homed in on the ideas since.

messing around with some design. New team jersey. pic.twitter.com/mgxQ1Dx5xf

— Raafi Rivero (@raafirivero) August 20, 2013