Erica Garner, daughter of Black Lives Matter symbol Eric Garner, dies

Erica Garner, who became an outspoken Black Lives Matter activist after her father Eric Garner’s chokehold killing by the NYPD, died Saturday of a heart attack. She was 27.

She had been in a coma since the Christmas Eve weekend, reportedly suffered irreversible brain damage, and died at Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Garner had an already enlarged heart when she suffered another cardiac episode in August, following the birth of a second child, whom she named after her father, according to published reports.

She began holding twice-a-week “die-ins” on the Staten Island sidewalk where her father was killed July 17, 2014, when an NYPD officer used a banned chokehold during the 43-year-old’s arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes.

A bystander’s cellphone video of the 350-pound man gasping 11 times, “I can’t breathe,” as a cop put his arm around Garner’s neck and pulled him to the ground, became a literal rallying cry and a seed for the nascent Black Lives Matter movement.

The failure of the then-Staten Island district attorney to secure an indictment of the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, coupled with news that his salary while on suspension had spiked, forever enraged her.

The New York City medical examiner ruled Eric Garner’s death a homicide caused by the chokehold, but no one involved in the case was charged except the man who recorded the arrest, on unrelated charges. The family split a $5.9 million settlement, paid by the city.

Within hours of Erica Garner’s death, her official Twitter account said: “Out of respect to Erica please do not request comment if the journalist is not Black.”

A firebrand, Erica Garner would take to lecterns, picket lines and Twitter to assail American policing and the Democratic Party mainstream, including Hillary Clinton, Bill de Blasio, Barack Obama and even foes of President Donald Trump.

“Will your resistance end when Trump leaves? Cause he will leave,” she tweeted in February. “Yall let Obama get awy with killing muslim kids that were citizen’s of US.”

Garner’s decision to endorse Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential race reflected a fissure on the left. Garner said Sanders had a better record of standing with and for black people than Clinton.

Garner regularly criticized de Blasio, elected in 2013 on a platform to address long-running complaints by black and Latino New Yorkers that the NYPD practices racist policing. She thought that de Blasio wasn’t moving fast enough to fix a culture and practice of policing that she believed killed her father.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.