TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Tampa Bay area pastor Savanna Hartman took to social media to express her emotions regarding the latest police shootings.
Hartman, who is the pastor of Banner Church in Ybor City, says she wrote an emotional poem after watching video of Alton Sterling being shot and killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
She said she never thought it’d reach millions of people. In her Facebook video that’s now gone viral, Hartman talked about a broken justice system, humanity and equal rights.
“There’s been a lot of tears in my morning,” an emotional Hartman says in the video.
She starts to read the poem she wrote. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be born with skin that’s black, not white,” she said.
“I don’t get watched when I go to the mall and if I get stopped for a ticket, it doesn’t end in a brawl. I don’t know what it’s like to go out for snacks and end up lying dead on my back,” she continues.
Hartman said watching a man die for the first time filled her with emotion and that’s what lead her to write.
“Yesterday was kind of a final straw for me because what happened with Alton Sterling and in Falcon Heights, I mean those were two very public, very brutal, very violent deaths,” she said. “I sat down at my computer cause I felt sick to my stomach and I just kind of didn’t know what to do. So I just felt like the Holy Spirit was saying he had something he wanted to say and so I just started to write and in 15 minutes. It was just flooded out on the page.”
The video lasted nearly 10 minutes.
“To black men, I weep because my heart breaks for you. The masses have been judged for the acts of a few. You’ve done the best with the hand you’ve been given. White people don’t leave, don’t exit out please just listen,” Hartman says in the video.
She said she didn’t post the video expecting internet fame. But now that she has it, she hopes it sparks a conversation.
“I can go by what I saw with my eyeballs and that it was senseless and um just and I just couldn’t be quiet about it anymore,” Hartman said.
Hartman said her video is not anti-police and she supports law enforcement.
She says she used a platform to get people thinking.
