Garner: “These laws, these policies, we can change that.”
Activist and now author Emerald Garner is no stranger to tragedy.
As the youngest daughter of the late Eric Garner, she watched the murder of her father 10 years ago at the hands of police play out on television over and over again after it was caught on video. His last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a national rally cry for social justice.
The police officer involved, Daniel Pantaleo, was fired from his job in 2019 after a department trial found he used an unauthorized chokehold to restrain Garner, a 43-year-old Black man who was arrested in a dispute over selling loose cigarettes. Pantaleo unsuccessfully sued to get his job back.
Three years after her father’s death, her older sister Erica — who had spent every Tuesday and Thursday since her father was killed protesting in front of the police station where the officer involved worked — died from a massive heart attack. She was 27 and left behind two young children whom Emerald stepped in to raise along with her own daughter.
Today, after sequestering herself and her family for about six months, Garner has returned to speaking about her experience and the path to recovery she found in writing her book and discovering her role in the movement.
“That was the purpose of writing the book,” Garner said. She fought her publishers and the other writers for the title, “Finding My Voice,” because it was that discovery that has helped her along the road to healing, a journey she says is ongoing.
Garner, 32, was on hand Thursday at Indiana University Northwest to share her story in the decade since her father was killed by police as part of a series of events honoring the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
“My message is to figure out who you are,” Garner said. Writing the book was cathartic, she said. It created the opportunity to share the details of what happened — something of which she does not like to speak — and move on.
“I wrote the book. That’s that chapter. The chapter’s closed now,” she said. “There’s just so much more to me. I’m more than just a victim of police brutality.”
Garner said she needs to talk about her journey and connect with people as opposed to spending her time protesting. Unlike her sister, Erica, Garner said she was happy behind the scenes. She could not handle the pressure and stress of the constant protesting, but she saw the merits and effective ways it could be used to call attention to the cause.
“Protesting was a little too much for me. That’s when I started speaking at churches,” Garner said. “I had to find my voice in the movement.”
If she stuck to just protesting as her sister did, Garner said she may have suffered the same fate.
“She lost her life to the movement,” Garner said.
In the years since her father’s death, Garner said she feels like there has been some progress within the movement but there is much more to be done.
“When people think of social justice, they think of only protesting,” Garner said. “Social justice is Black history.”
She said people need to understand the Black Lives Matter movement is just another name for the Civil Rights movement.
Garner said she has worked hard to help get the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Bill passed in her home state of New York where her father was killed and efforts are underway to eliminate the practice nationwide. The bill would prevent police officers who violate the law from being placed on administrative duty or from finding work as a police officer in another jurisdiction.
“These laws, these policies, we can change that,” Garner said.
She said there are many roles for people within the social justice movement and encouraged people to find where they fit in. Today, she is considering law school. Garner said if she would not have experienced the murder of her father or the activism that it spawned, she would never have known law would be something in which she was interested.
“If people would focus on things we need — thinking of more than just protesting — we’d get a lot farther,” she said.
