USA Africa Dialogue Series - Black women fighting for Black lives that matter- against state sanctioned murders

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29433-heeding-the-call-black-women-fighting-for-black-lives-that-matter


The year 2015 began much like 2014 ended. Since August, the United States has seen a resurgence of direct action and civil disobedience reminiscent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This latest wave has been a response to the extrajudicial murders of Black people by police - young Black males in particular - and the seeming inability of the justice system to hold their murderers accountable. And, it has been headed largely by Black women activists and organizers.

More militant and sustained than the Occupy protests of a few years ago, or the World Trade Organization protests at the latter part of the 20th century, this movement, which began in Ferguson, Missouri, and has traveled worldwide, has been as dedicated to affirming the value of Black life as it has been to condemning state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies.

While Black women are also victims of murder by police, the tally is not as high as for Black men. And, while many of their names are known and the circumstances of many of their deaths are similar to the murders of Black men, the level of outrage and protest has not been comparable. The reasons for this are varied.

"My generation has been waiting for a moment like this, where the whole word seems to wake up all at the same time."

Black women's motivations for intimate involvement in this movement, however, appear not to be as varied. Several activists and organizers in solidarity with Ferguson and behind Black Lives Matter protests recently expressed a similar set of motivations for their participation to Truthout. They said they became involved because they felt they "had to."

"As a mother, I was concerned for the future of my children and my community, so I felt compelled," said Melina Abdullah, a university professor of Pan African studies and an organizer with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles. "I didn't feel like it was a choice. It was a duty."

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a Chattanooga, Tennessee, organizer with Black Lives Matter, concurred. "I got involved in this movement because I felt required to fight for the lives of myself and my loved ones," she said.

According to Cat Brooks, who works with the BlackOut Collective in West Oakland, she sees her involvement as her life's work. "This is what I'm called to do," she said. "I don't know how to do anything else."

UCLA graduate student Shamell Bell said she had a "visceral reaction" to imagining her son victimized by the same state violence and anti-Black racism that killed Eric Garner and Michael Brown. "I simply could not theorize about systems of inequality as a student of African-American history and not put it to praxis," she said.

Jasmine Richards, a lobbyist in Pasadena, says she joined the movement to affirm the value of Black lives, but not solely because they were being victimized by police. "The reason why I felt compelled to do this work is because my friends keep dying. Black on Black violence, Brown on Black violence, they keep getting murdered, and I'm tired of putting their faces on T-shirts, or tattooing their name on me somewhere. I'm tired of it," Richards said.

From a "Moment" to a "Movement"

Many of the people Truthout spoke with also have in common a view that what is currently happening is a movement, not a flash-in-the-pan event or a fad, which has also fueled their involvement.

"My generation has been waiting for a moment like this, where the whole word seems to wake up all at the same time and pay attention to what we've been screaming for as long as we've had breath," said Cat Brooks.

"These state-sanctioned murders have taken place with limited impact on non-Black people, while at the same time, they are destroying Black communities."

Mary Hooks, an organizer with Southerners on New Ground (SONG) in Atlanta agreed. "I think August 9 [the day Michael Brown was killed] changed everybody," Hooks said. "The world was on fire; our consciousness was open; kind of like [what happened] during Trayvon Martin. People were on high alert and in the streets, people wanted to make changes; so as an organizer, I look for that moment where we can provide an opening, an entry point, for people to do the work and find their own liberation."

"I have always said I wished I was coming of age during the civil rights movement because I wanted to be a part of change," said Shamell Bell. Bell was a part of Justice for Trayvon Martin-Los Angeles, the predecessor to the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. "I knew it was my chance to do work in a movement as I have always imagined was my purpose and my vision."

"People keep narrowing it and it's so much more," said Jasmine Richards. "I see [Black Lives Matter] as a statement that gave life to a place that didn't have life. It's opening up a whole new world to a lot of us. It's making us love each other and it makes us speak to one another: ask 'how we're doing?' instead of 'mean-mugging' or 'mad dogging' one another," Richards said.

No More Business as Usual

Activists in Ferguson, Missouri, have been conducting the longest sustained protest against police violence in the history of the United States. Continuously demonstrating since August 10, 2014, their tactics have also been creative. In addition to "protest favorites," such as police stations, courts and City Hall, activists have also made operagoers and St. Louis Rams fans take note of the injustice in the Michael Brown case. The determination and creativity of Ferguson protesters have created the template for organizers elsewhere.

In Los Angeles, Black Lives Matter's predecessor, Justice for Trayvon Martin-Los Angeles, took their protests over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the summer of 2013 to Beverly Hills' glitzy and glamorous Rodeo Drive. Since the refusal of grand juries to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo for the murders of Brown and Garner, they've disrupted Christmas shoppers at The Grove on the city's Westside, shut down a portion of the busy Hollywood Freeway and occupied the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters for 18 days to bring attention to the killing of another unarmed Black man, Ezell Ford, around the same time as Brown was killed in Ferguson........................................................................................

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