By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Breonna Taylor. Philando Castile. Tamir Rice. And now George Floyd. With all of the names of black people killed by police – and others – Sunshine Clemons hopes the death of George Floyd is the one which puts this phenomenon to rest once and for all.

“I don’t know that I could continue to do the work that I do if I didn’t have some hope that this is going to be what we need,” said Sunshine Clemons, founder of the Springfield chapter of Black Lives Matter. “If I thought (police killing blacks) would be a constant thing, that every six months we are going to be doing this, that would be very daunting. I’m cautiously hopeful that this is different from situations we’ve had in the past, because this is a repeat of history. But this does feel a little different because we have people out there with us that we wouldn’t necessarily have had before.”

Clemons and some of her teenage volunteers – who organized Springfield rallies – participted in a roundtable with Gov. JB Pritzker this week.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]