This Morning, I had the honor of being a featured speaker at MOVA (Mass Office of Victim Assistance) For National Gun Violence Month. As it was not recorded or streamed, I'm posting my speech for my Mum Sara-Elisebeth Finley who is unable to attend zooms and webinars, due to profound hearing loss
Good Morning. My name is Lisa Robinson. I live in Mattapan, Massachusetts, having returned here in March of 2017; after living in Columbia, South Carolina for 9 years.
I am a mother, a grandmother, a longtime community activist and volunteer, a writer and a podcaster. Sadly, as of the morning of June 13, 2014.. I am also known as the mother of a murdered child.
My daughter Aja Dawn Robinson was born on February 9, 1991. For all of her younger years, she was just an itty bitty thing. I called her my bony macaroni. She was always very much on the verge of failure to thrive size wise, although you couldn’t tell by her appetite!
By the time she had turned 23, Aja was a beautiful, vivacious young woman. She was quite literally living her best life. She was working 2 jobs that she loved, she was surrounded by an abundance of friends who absolutely adored her, she had a small Goddaughter that she was in love with, she had just gotten her first car and she was happily shopping and preparing to move into her very first apartment. Life was wonderful in Aja’s world.
All of these dreams were shattered in the early morning hours of Friday, June 13, 2014, when she was followed as she left her boyfriend's house and was heading to work. When she pulled over to speak to the person from her past, she was shot and killed. He then died by suicide.
A few months after Aja’s death, I created Angels For Aja. I use this platform to share Aja’s story and to do my part to spread awareness about the distressing numbers of men, women and children who are killed and injured each year in acts of domestic violence. I’m speaking out because I do not want another loved one to ever have to feel this pain again. Our communities have lost too many already.
We need to pass common sense gun laws. Across the board. Across the US. No grey areas, no grey states or cities. It’s not too much to ask. Lets think about it this way. You would have to wait a lot less time to purchase and take home a gun legally, than it would take me to wait to go pick up and bring home my deceased child in her new Urn. Or to then have to stop and pick up her final possessions from the Police Department.
Thank You for Having Me here today.
