In the year leading up to Sandra Blands arrest, she uploaded a series of videos to YouTube, recorded on her cell phone, called Sandy Speaks. In the first of the series, made on Jan. 15, 2015, Bland expressed her wish to educate black youth about how to interact with law enforcement, believing that children were the key to a more peaceful, unprejudiced future.

With the police brutality, all the things that have been going on in the news, Bland says, curlers in her hair, a lot of people have been making noise and expressing their opinions about how they feel. Somewhere along the way weve forgotten about the kids. I want to get some dialogue started with them ... Why not educate them on interacting with the people who are really important to our survival?

Blands hopeful message is haunting in light of the atrocious conditions of her death . On July 10, 2015, Bland was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change in Waller County, Texas. Three days later, at only 28 years old, she was found hanged in her jail cell. Blands death was ruled a suicide, although her friends and family were incredulous as to why she would end her life.

In a voicemail Bland left for her friend while incarcerated, she asked, incredulous: How did switching lanes with no signal turn into all of this?

Blands exceptionally violent arrest was documented via dashboard camera and broadcast for millions around the country to watch and analyze. The use of body cameras and smartphone footage has brought incidents of police brutality and targeted racism into plain public view. Once Bland entered jail, however, surveillance was nonexistent, leaving those who knew and loved her to speculate about the final days of her life and the real circumstances of her death.

But what if Bland was able to communicate behind prison walls, sharing wisdom and advice with her community just as she had done for months prior? An artist who goes by the name American Artist created a chatbot called Sandy Speaks, which imagines an alternate reality in which Bland had been able to create her signature video testimonials from behind bars, using her experience to educate and enlighten those in her circle. How would she advise other people of color to cope, protest, and survive?