After Being Homeless, The Woman In The ‘Lose Yo Job’ Video Says BLM Support Has Turned Her Life Around

You might have noticed the viral hashtag #LoseYoJob last week on Twitter. At the time, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement used it to support Black people speaking out against the racists and harassers that negatively impacted their lives. At the time, many using the hashtag aimed to highlight reasons why certain people ought to be removed from their positions of power. Among the people who lost their jobs while the hashtag trended with their name was “Glee” actress Lea Michelle and television personality Stassi Schroeder.

The hashtag #LoseYoJob was sparked by the chant of Johnniqua Charles (27-years-old), a woman who was homeless at the time and demanded to know why a security guard was attempting to detaining her.

In the video that inspired the hashtag, Charles can be seeing protesting her arrests and ultimately turns it into an ad-libbed song and dance.

In the video, Charles questions a security guard as to why he is detaining her, and when he doesn’t give her a reason she begins to sing “Get this dance! You about to lose yo job, you about to lose yo job because you are detaining me for nothing. You about to lose yo job.

At the time, according to BuzzFeed News, Charles was homeless, battling an addiction, and estranged from her family. Thanks to the video going viral, her life-changing for the better.

“I’m just overwhelmed, and I’m such a humble person [that] to see that, it’s just amazing to me,” Charles told BuzzFeed News. “I’m just glad that it’s something so positive.”

Charles’s sister Andrea told BuzzFeed that she set up an Instagram for her sister, started selling T-shirts, and created a GoFundMe on her sister’s behalf. So far they’ve all obtained over $30,000.

“At first I didn’t think much of [the video], but then I got on Instagram and I saw even more people saying, ‘Who is this woman?’” said Andrea told Buzzfeed. “So I was like, OK, this is an opportunity for my sister to be known. If the world wants to know who she is, why not let the world know who she is? The only reason that the GoFundMe and those platforms were created were people were begging to donate to her,” Andrea said. “Once I made her Instagram, people were flooding in, saying, ‘How can I bless her? She just blessed my day so much. She just made my day.’ So the only reason it was created was so people could bless her life.”

Charles’s song has gone viral at a time when protests against police brutality have erupted in every US state.

While Charles’s tune has provided a bit of laughter during a time that’s so hard, many have used the song to sing and display on signs at protests.

The video of Charles was posted on Facebook by the guard, Julius Locklear, in February.

“Okay IM NOT POSTING THIS TO BE FUNNY TOWARDS THIS SUBJECT!!!!” Locklear wrote in a post to his Facebook page. “I’m posting it cause that rap was lit like I wish I could put a beat to it lol.”

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Locklear said he’d had a colleague film the incident because he didn’t have his body camera on. Locklear said that he detained Charles for trespassing after she tried to enter the club she had been detained outside of after hours. According to Locklear, Charles claimed she accidentally left her purse inside.

“I guess he thought I was going back in just to go back inside the club, but he wouldn’t allow me, and that’s how the argument between me and him started,” Charles told BuzzFeed. “I told him to suck my dick, and that is the moment he basically put the handcuffs on me and tussled with me a little bit.”

Locklear told Buzzfeed that he “just let her vent and exercise her freedom of speech. The situation had nothing to do with race or discrimination. You can see me handling it professionally and trying to keep a straight face, but I couldn’t.”

Locklear told Buzzfeed he called sheriff’s deputies to the scene, but Charles was ultimately not arrested.

“He didn’t have a reason. He didn’t have anything to charge me with,” she Charles said. “Because what would be the charge?”

Locklear has not lost his job over the incident.