On the first day of work for Missouri's first Black congresswoman, she said Republican colleagues mistakenly called her "Breonna" after she wore a face mask with Breonna Taylor's name on it.
"A few of my Republican colleagues have called me Breonna, assuming that’s my name," Democratic Rep.-elect Cori Bush wrote on Twitter. "It hurts. But I’m glad they’ll come to know her name & story because of my presence here. Breonna must be central to our work in Congress."
Taylor was an emergency worker who was killed in a botched police raid in Louisville, Kentucky back in March. Her death, along with that of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and more, sparked mass demonstrations nationwide this year.
According to Huffington Post, Bush told reporters that she is Breonna Taylor -- only in the sense that she “could be a Black woman murdered in [her] bed tonight."
“We have to stretch ourselves and pay attention to what’s happening in other parts of the country," Bush said. "People have protested in the streets with this name, and it just saddens me that people in leadership — people that want to be in leadership — don’t know the struggles that are happening to Black people in this country. And it was hurtful, absolutely hurtful. I didn’t hear it once. I didn’t hear it twice. I heard it several times.”
Bush, a St. Louis native and former nurse, defeated Republican Anthony Rogers on November 3. She plans on advocating for working class people and that they “need representatives who look like them and who have experienced their struggles.”
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