We lost a member of the EJUSA family last week. Bonnita Spikes was a force, a fierce and fearless organizer whose impact on communities across Maryland and beyond is immeasurable. Every time Bonnita told her story, people listened. Her strategic vision, her warmth, and her persistence helped to end the death penalty in Maryland and expand services for families of homicide victims. She shaped the way that we think about survivors and showed us that healing trauma needs to be central to our work.
Bonnita was also my friend. I loved her very much.
A shattering personal experience changed Bonnita’s path forever, eventually joining mine in the work of our lifetimes. In 1994, 19 years before Maryland finally ended the death penalty, Bonnita lost her husband of 23 years and father of their four boys when Michael Spikes was murdered during a conveninence store robbery.
As she recounted over and over again, she felt the rage and grief-driven urge for revenge when she saw her husband’s body. She soon realized that that drive was only prolonging her pain. Police never found the person who killed Michael, and even if they had, she wouldn’t have wanted to see them die, too.
As Bonnita and her family spiraled into economic hardship, and her 13-year-old son’s devastation drove him to attempt suicide, she found no answers or support from a system claiming to bring her justice. So she did what every true organizer does: she acted.
In the face of overwhelming loss and a state that consistently fails murder victims’ families, she protected her family, found the people and the resources she and her sons needed to heal, and began to build power with other survivors to ensure that nobody would have to go through what they’d experienced.
I met Bonnita nearly 20 years ago, just before she became the first organizer for Maryland Citizens Against State Executions (MDCASE), dedicated to supporting and uplifting the needs of families of homicide victims. We spent years side by side on the MDCASE core team dreaming and scheming ways to meet the needs of survivors cast aside by a system that calls itself justice. She was brilliant and relentless every legislative session. She was grounded and nurturing every time we lost, full of abundant kindness and creativity, and there for all of us, always ready to fight again, next time even smarter.
In March of 2013, nearly a decade after she started, and just moments before members of the Maryland state legislature finally voted to end the death penalty, several said on record that the reason they were voting for repeal was because of Bonnita Spikes.
Bonnita and I spent a lot of time together, attending events throughout the state, giving former Maryland Senate President Mike Miller a whole lot of headache in Annapolis, and generally causing trouble. One day we were trying to track down the powerful Senate President, our long time foe who always managed to be everywhere and nowhere. This day, we were walking across the frosty Annapolis quad and he was, at the other end of the quad, walking right towards us. We all locked eyes in a frozen moment, he twinkled a silent greeting, turned on his heels, and walked the other way. It was so fast we stopped in our tracks. She looked at me and said, “Mona, he knows who we are now. We’re either in trouble or we’re winning”. A few weeks later we would win in the Senate.
Through all of it, everything for Bonnita always came back to families. As she said in her testimony to the state senate in 2013 about the dozens of people who she had met who had lived through the murder of a family member, “I have found among us strong, wonderful people who have filled me with a sense of grace and gratitude. But I have found more murder victims’ family members who are struggling, alone, with few places to turn for help.” Bonnita made sure family members were connected with each other and to the work we were doing in the legislature. She fought to make sure they’d never feel alone again.
Bonnita’s commitment was to the people left behind by systems unconcerned with survivors, especially young, poor, Black, and other marginalized survivors. She was my partner when we went back to the Maryland legislature the year after we ended the death penalty to create an accessible, sustainable state fund to support families of homicide victims. She demanded that the state create a lifeline for the people who need it most. And we won again.
For so many of us, Bonnita was a lifeline herself. She brought charm, righteousness, and humility to every space. She was a powerful woman amongst powerful women, and she informed my thinking about power and organizing. She changed the way we organize, not to simply replace death-making systems with other death-making systems, but to transform the system altogether so that it might heal and nurture our communities. Bonnita wanted to make all of us safer.
I love you, Bonnita. I am so grateful to have had an opportunity to be in your presence as a fellow fighter and a goofy friend. Your devotion, ferocity, and love changed us forever. You will forever be in our hearts and our work.
