I had initially thought to collect letters from black women to Marissa Alexander to post in October for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I asked several amazing black women to contribute before the project eventually shifted focus to became #31forMARISSA, a campaign to engage men in addressing domestic violence and supporting Marissa.

In the meantime, the wonderful T.F. Charlton aka Grace was kind enough to write a letter to Marissa. I am really happy to share it with you today. It feels like the perfect kick off. You can read Grace’s work here among other places on the interwebs and in print.

Dear Marissa,

I read that you’ll be getting a new trial. That a court ruled that the jury that convicted you in 13 minutes received the wrong instructions. I was, like many, cautiously optimistic to hear this news. I can’t help but worry about the next jury, about whether they will really see you. About how they will weigh the letter of laws designed to erase you against your humanity.

I keep thinking about how perverse it is that the law that required you to be sentenced to two decades in prison was the doing of a white man who calls himself pro-life. How could a law that declares “use a gun and you’re done” – put away for 10 years, 20 years, the rest of a lifetime – be “pro-life?” Pro whose lives? Where were such defenders of life when your husband attacked you when you were five months pregnant? Where were they when you feared for your life days after giving birth?

The woman who prosecuted you and failed to successfully prosecute Trayvon’s murderer called the outcry about your incarceration a sign that “social media is going to be the destruction of the country.” As though your working to preserve your life – and the affirmation of so many people around the country that your life is worth preserving, you were worth defending – is destruction.

Far as I see it the only one who was pro-life for you, Marissa, for your children, was you. That you were incarcerated for defending your and your children’s right to life is heartbreaking, obscene evidence of the reality that mere survival as a Black woman and mother in this world is a radical act.

I am glad you are alive. You are worth defending. You are worth protecting. You deserve a whole and safe life. I fervently hope the jury sees this, sees you, and that you will be holding your babies again before too long.

In love and solidarity,
Grace