It’s been a struggle to write lately. Words feel at once constraining and overwhelming. Kalief Browder’s suicide has left me flattened. I’ve been moving through the world but in an emotional fog that won’t lift. I’ve been thinking of Jamal (not his real name) who I’ve written and talked about before.

Jamal was 15 when we met. He was brilliant and funny. I would regularly see him standing in front of the EL station on my way to work in the mornings and suggest that he should be in school. He would tell me that standing in front of the EL was much more educational than school. Shortly afterwards, I gave him a book. Over the next couple of years, we became reading buddies. Jamal would come over on some Sundays to pick up new books. We would talk about life. I treasure those days.

Then the trouble came. In 2007, I didn’t see or hear from Jamal for a month. That was unusual. I asked some of his friends in the neighborhood where he was and what happened to him. There was radio silence. Finally one evening in October, I got a phone call from Jamal. He was at Cook County Jail and he needed my help. “What can I do,” I asked. “Do you need a private lawyer, I have friends who could help? Money for items from the commissary…” I was going on and on and he finally stopped me when he could get a word in. “Ms. K he said, please tell them to send me to prison now…just get me out of here.” Cook County Jail was and is still hell.

By 2012, Jamal was dead by his own hand. I was and still am devastated. Jail and prison kill. This, I know for sure. I’ve never written about Jamal’s death. I’ve started to several times. The words won’t form. I haven’t recovered from his loss. I never will. It’s been 3 years but it might as well be 1 day. I remember his smile but it’s always so fleeting, so ephemeral. I knew that he was broken by prison. I didn’t know how to unbreak him. That’s my unending nightmare.

I’m starting to envision an exhibition that will use some of the racist, anti-black ephemera that I have collected over the past few years. I’ll write more about my intentions and hopes for the exhibition in the next few weeks.

Recently as I was antiquing, I came across the following ad from 1927 for The Fisk Tire Company. I knew nothing of this company before seeing the ad. I confess to failing to understand the connection between the image below and selling tires.

1927 Ad for Fisk Tires (from my collection)

From Narratively:

“William Koger lives in Washington, D.C., with his mother, Sandra, and three boys: Isaiah, 11, Demetri, 10, and Deshawn, 8. But it is the absence of their mother, Sherrie Harris — who is serving a long-term sentence at Hazelton Penitentiary, in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia — that looms over the household. William took on the unexpected role of primary caregiver to all three children, including one stepchild, but he has been in and out of jobs and in and out of prison himself. After being injured in a serious car accident, he is now unemployed and often in severe pain. The family is stretched financially and often unable to afford food or medicine. The children are emotionally scarred by their mother’s absence and sometimes withdraw into their shells or act out. Only when pressed do they express their intense yearning for their mother to come home, rejoin the family, and provide them with the maternal love they are missing. Sherrie Harris has been incarcerated since 2006 and is scheduled to be released in 2017.

This piece is part of a much larger multimedia project, titled Locked Apart, that includes multiple families in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. I believe it is appropriate to acknowledge that family members of offenders are among those who are victimized when a crime occurs. Like the voices of crime victims and their families, the voices of offenders’ family members should be heard.”

Watch this video.

Locked Apart from Narratively on Vimeo.

It’s the one year anniversary of We Charge Genocide (WCG) and there is so much to say about this year. We celebrated our accomplishments together on Saturday. It was a moving and beautiful afternoon/evening that was capped off by several of us flying kites.

L.A. based artist Amitis Motevalli was in Chicago this weekend as part of the Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival to fly 23 kites representing people killed by law enforcement within one year in the state of Illinois. Through collaboration with organizers, artists and journalists, Amitis documented people killed in Illinois by law enforcement over a one year span from May 2014 until this weekend. Their faces and names were stenciled on kites. On Saturday, those kites were flown at Homan Square Park overlooking Homan Square Police Buildings.

photo by Amitis Motevalli

Those who attended the performance at Homan Square park flew “one kite with a portrait of each person killed to reflect on the life beyond state violence and the life each of these people lived, rather than the way they were killed.” The performance, “Flying Moons” is from an ongoing series of Amitis titled “This is How the Moon Died,” taken from the last sentence of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Victim Number Forty Eight”, about the repercussions of the killing of a young Palestinian man by Israeli police.

Most of We Charge Genocide’s (WCG) work this year has focused on honoring and fighting for our dead. Yet, we’ve reminded ourselves of life too. We’ve stressed how our loved ones lived. This was a major part of last month’s #DamoDay celebration. I was struck yesterday by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s words about Kalief Browder’s suicide:

“Browder was not “the blacks.” He was his mother and father’s child—an individual. And yet for reasons as old as America, he was not treated like one.”

Indeed, we must guard against crunching the victims of state violence into mere numbers: statistics to be tallied. These are individuals. We have to preserve their humanity as we mourn their deaths. We invited Amitis to join us on the Southside after her event at Homan Square Park ended. She graciously accepted and at our WCG celebration, she shared her motivation for creating the kites and the performance.

Amitis sharing with us (photo by Sarah Jane Rhee, 6/6/15)

As we wrapped up our celebration, several of us went outside to fly kites. One of them depicted Dominique “Damo” Franklin Jr who is the reason that WCG formed in the first place. It felt as though we had come full circle. There was such beauty in seeing the kites in the air. We laughed raucously as we flew them. It was a cathartic experience. We were literally lifting up the names of our dead. We were remembering their lives together. It’s an experience that I will never forget.

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

photo by Kelly Hayes (6/6/15)

photo by Kelly Hayes (6/6/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

photo by Kelly Hayes (6/6/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

Names of those remembered through the kites:
3-21-12, Rekia Boyd, 22, Chicago
5-20-14, Dominique Franklin Jr., 23, Chicago
7-4-14, Pedro Rios, 14, Chicago
7-5-14, Warren Robinson, 16, Chicago
7-9-14, Steven Minch, 45, Granite City
7-28-14, Steven Isby, 53, Chicago
7-29-14, Josh Edwards, 25, Pana
8-18-14, Joshua Paul, 31, Carpentersville
8-19-14, Darius Cole Garrit, 21, Chicago
8-24-14, Desean Pittman, 17, Chicago
8-24-14, Roshad McIntosh, 19, Chicago
9-13-14, Fredi Morales, 20, Wheeling
10-20-14, Laquan McDonald, 17, Chicago
10-25-14, Craig Hall, 29, Maywood
11-3-14, Christopher Anderson, 27,Highland Park
12-7-14, “unknown”, in his 20s, Chicago
12-26-14, Terrence Gilbert, 25, Chicago
1-7-15, Joseph Caffarello, 31, Rosemont
1-11-15, Tommy Smith, 39, Arcola
3-2-15, Shaquille Barrow, 20, Joliet
4-2-15, Darrin Langford, 32, Rock Island
4-4-15, Justus Howell, 17, Zion
4-13-15, Isaac Jiminez, 27, Alton

My friend, organizer and artist Monica Trinidad, has a new website that includes some of her artwork. One of my favorite pieces is below.

by Monica Trinidad

Once again, the conversation about interpersonal violence in Chicago has turned into a debate about the moniker of “Chiraq.” Spike Lee is making a film called “Chiraq” and this has sparked editorials and endless commentary. I’ve received some calls from the press asking for my opinion. Since I’ve already discussed this issue ad nauseum, I’ve declined to offer more words.

Young people in Chicago have been commenting on the violence that they experience for years. They have been making art about that violence too. Recently, my friend Daphne, a Chicago Public School teacher, worked with her students on a series of audio and visual pieces about interpersonal violence. One video that was entirely shot, edited and produced by some of her students is below.

In a community-based program at the YMCA, one of my colleagues helped young people produce a series of audio stories about their experiences of violence. You can listen to all of them below:

One particular story about the trauma caused by interpersonal violence really stood out to me.