I spent part of this year co-curating an exhibition titled “Blood at the Root: Unearthing Stories of State Violence Against Black Women & Girls.” The exhibition focuses our attention on the fact that all #BlackWomensLivesMatter and all #BlackGirlsLivesMatter. Relying on various artifacts, we narrate the experiences and resistance of Black women and girls (trans and non-trans) who have been brutalized, imprisoned and killed by the state and its agents.

Special thanks to my friend Gretchen Hasse for documenting Blood at the Root which closed at the end of October.

This week Root and Rebound launched a 3 minute video which highlights the struggles of currently and formerly incarcerated people navigating the reentry process. You can watch it below.

Letters From Inside from Margaret Katcher on Vimeo.

The video highlights a myriad of legal issues and discriminatory practices that people face upon release—including employment discrimination, denials of public benefits, exclusions from housing, and misapplied parole and probation rules. Root and Rebound has also launched a campaign called Reimagine Reentry: Disrupting Cycles of Poverty and Incarceration, to engage and educate the public, and expand its base of support.

I haven’t watched the videotaped execution of Laquan McDonald. I’m done with the televised spectacle of Black Death. This is my personal silent protest.

I don’t begrudge those in the streets in fact I am grateful to many of them for not going gently into the quiet night of apathy. My disgust and rage at the fact that the video was publicly released over the objections of Laquan’s family won’t let me engage in the ways that I regularly would.

As I’ve watched the many opportunists vie for facetime over the past few days, it’s become more urgent to narrate a history of continued protest and refusal regarding police violence in Chicago. There are people who have been consistently in the streets in this city for months now. This is a love letter to the incredible anti-police violence and anti-criminalization organizers/activists in Chicago.

For decades, Chicagoans have been organizing against the brutality and impunity of the Chicago Police Department. In the months since the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO, young people of color from across the city have consistently organized demonstrations, protests and actions to underscore the violence of the CPD. These protests are the visible outgrowths of grassroots campaigns that have sought and won reparations for police torture survivors, are calling for community control of the police, are insisting on an end to stop and frisk, are demanding a Federal investigation of the Homan Square police facility, are organizing for redirecting funds from police to other social goods, and are seeking individual justice for Damo, Roshad, Rekia, Ronnieman and more.

In other words, day in and day out in this city, we are resisting police violence. The press in Chicago largely ignores this ongoing grassroots organizing but they are quick to jump on moments like the release of the tape depicting Laquan McDonald’s execution to condescend to, moralize against, and incite Chicagoans who are working toward justice. We resist the local press’s continuing efforts to demonize and pathologize young people in this city (especially those who identify as Black and Brown). We are sick of it. We reject their depictions.

So my friend and comrade Tom Callahan and I collaborated on this visual love letter to Chicago organizers. We hope you appreciate it. If you, please share it with others who want to better understand Chicago’s resistance to criminalization and police violence.

I should express requisite shock but I haven’t the energy to perform. Another viral video shows a Black girl thrown across her classroom by a white cop who outweighs her by 150 pounds (at least).

I’m not shocked. Not in the least. I don’t wear this admission like a badge of honor. I’m not desensitized or blase. I just know that treating Black children carelessly and roughly is the norm. We all know this even those who want to pretend they don’t.

There are cops in schools. Everyone also knows this. The proponents of this policy say that it’s to ‘keep students safe.’ These words pour out without irony even as research suggests that having police in schools usually escalates minor discipline issues.

Last year, in Chicago, there were over 3000 youth arrests inside our public schools. The vast majority of these (77%) were Black students. Girls made up 32% of the school-based arrests. How many Black children were thrown across their classrooms with no video evidence?

The myth of officer friendly will not and cannot die. It doesn’t matter how many videos are produced showing Black children being brutalized. Too many people need and want cops to do their dirty work. The cop in that video is a stand-in for a society that hates Black children. Break the Black girl before she grows. Beat her down and then make sure she knows that anyone who comes to her defense will be punished too. Neutralize the threat. The message is clear as day: ‘You are insignificant, a nothing and we can crush you at will.’

The sad spectacle of impotent and complicit adults online and offline does nothing to inspire confidence in the young. Black children learn early that no one will save them from brutalization by the state and its agents. In fact, most adults like the teacher in the viral video will invite state brutalization in the name of ‘safety.’ At best safety as a concept is rendered a meaningless farce. At worst, safety becomes an additional means or tool of subjugation and oppression.

While Rome burns and you with it, you’ll hear some adults offer prescriptions for the problem that will make you despair. More ‘training’ for school resource officers, some will confidently assert. More cameras in schools, others will counter. Meanwhile, you and your friends will wonder who will simply remove the cops from your schools. Wouldn’t that be the first place to start, you’ll ask. You’ll likely be greeted with the sounds of crickets because so many adults have ceilings on their brains. The result of decades of oppression that has left them without imagination or even good sense.

So you’ll band together with your friends and organize to change the depressing reality. I know so many Black girls leading campaigns to end the school-to-prison pipeline.

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee

It’s you who give me hope. Black girl, I’ve seen you and continue to see you standing up in defense of your life and that of your sisters. #NiyaKenny, we speak your name.

A Long Walk Home March 4 Rekia, photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (10/17/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (8/14/15)

You do the same for your brothers even as too many of them refuse to stand up for you. I’ve shed tears with you about this as you’ve continued to show up time and again in defense of their lives.

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (1/15/15)

I’m blessed to witness your resistance. Perhaps it’s why I don’t despair for the future. How can I when I am privy to so much #BlackGirlMagic? There are few viral videos of your beautiful resistance and too many of your degradation. That isn’t your doing, it is ours and we have to do so much better by you.

In light of the story of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14 year old boy in Texas who was arrested for bringing a clock to school that administrators mistook for a bomb, I wanted to share this a post by my friend Pidgeon Pagonis written last year. It underscores the routine criminalization of young people of color in our public schools. Pidgeon is an intersex activist, lecturer & consultant. For more information about them, visit their site.

Last Wednesday I was in a Chicago Public High School (CPS) recruiting youth in the cafeteria for an after school program centered around teen dating violence prevention and social justice. Undergrads from a local University are paired with high school students for 2/3 of the school year and culminates with an end of the year community project where the youth share back what they’ve learned with their people. Throughout the year, we investigate oppression, racism, classism, sexism, ableism, masculinity, healthy relationships, sexuality and the list continues. You get it.

So, like I said, I was handing out flyers in the cafeteria of a high school on the city’s southwest side. The immediate neighborhood has houses that are all tidy and kept up and the school is all nice looking.

Anyways, I met with the school counselors, representatives from a local large “family services” org, the student advocate/dean (due to budgeting, he’s both) and some other folks that deal with student activities. I asked them about their sense of dating violence in the school and they said “There hasn’t been none of that in about 3 years…” They looked at each other and all sorta shook their heads in agreement. They told me that all the “bad kids” are gone and I wouldn’t have to worry bout that. “Where did they go?” I asked? “Dead, transferred out, or just gone,” was his response. “The problems we have now are kids being lazy or making out in the hallways. That’s what you can help them with. You can probably open this door right now and see some of that in the hallway.” They all “um-hmm’d” at the same time and it was a consensus. All the bad kids are gone, and the ones left make out too much.

This was my first day there so I didn’t say much. I was just there to ask questions, listen, and get our program’s foot in the door.

Fast forward to the following week (last Weds.). So, I was standing in a cafeteria of a strange new high school. All my insecurities and fears came back like it was my first day in that new school I had to go to in 5th grade. I haven’t been in a high school cafeteria since before I started getting gray hairs…

So like I said, I was recruiting. I was looking cute. Feeling brave. My undergraduate interns were scattered across the cafeteria handing out flyers and information about the after school program and some were stationed at our table. I walked over to a table of 2 students and handed them 2 flyers. I started talking about why our program is badass and necessary. Just as I started to say, “the program looks at violence in dating relationships and tries to empower young people to…”, I heard a student about 20 yards away from me that had just been thrown up into the cafeteria wall by a cop. The young person was almost a foot shorter than the cop and the cop was decked out in his uniform, vest, gun, night stick, tazer, etc. The cop repeatedly threw the kid in the wall and chest bumped him over and over again. The young person repeatedly tried to maintain his balance and defend himself, but the cop was winning this battle.

Before I knew it, my feet were carrying me over to the cop and the young person. I started yelling at the cop “STOP TREATING HIM LIKE THAT?! STOP TALKING TO HIM LIKE THAT!!” The cop at this point was yelling in the kids face, “YOU AIN’T SHIT. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU! YOU AIN’T SHIT” while spit flew from his mouth into the young person’s face. The young person responded back the best he could with his own round of “Fuck You’s”—but really it was a futile attempt to reclaim a bit of his dignity in a manufactured situation where his power had already been stripped from him the minute he walked through those metal detectors that morning. The cop looked as if he was about to break his arm over his head and eventually handcuffed him and pushed him out.

I immediately saw the people I had met the previous week. I looked at the “student advocate/dean” and pleaded with him and he just said, “that’s just the way it is.” I then looked at my contact from the “family services” program and he just shrugged as well. Everyone went back to eating and functioning as if what had just happened was normal. It was normal. It is normal for our kids everyday. I went back to the table that I had previously been recruiting at and asked if that was a normal occurrence. They said, “not really, but to the black kids—it is.” And they say young girls are falling behind in the sciences…that was some participant observation if I ever saw it.

I continued my recruiting until the last lunch bell rang. Then I headed out of the school with my team of interns and we debriefed on the train. We shared with each other how in just a little over an hour we had each heard some heavy stuff from the teens. One person told us that she was kicked out a year before and now lived with her boyfriend who she was engaged to. She also shared with us that she was selling cigarettes saying, “I gotta pay rent.” Another student told us she had a seizure after getting in fight the prior week with her boyfriend who I’ll call “Nick”. Screen printed on her shirt were the words, “Nick’s Keeper.” Multiple students told me that she was abusive towards “Nick” and one even told me “She’s the man in the relationship.” When I pushed back and asked her if she believes men beat their girlfriends, she just kinda smiled and said “I don’t know.” I told her to come to the after school program so we could talk about it. She asked if she would be able to see “college boys” if she joined, and I said “yes”— to which she started screaming and signed up right a way. Another student at that table that had signed up to come to the program had ‘Chi-Raq” tattoed across his neck. He spoke very softly and said he really wanted to come to the program. Another girl, who was pregnant, told us she would come if “this didn’t get in the way” and by this, she meant her soon to be born baby. We heard so much in so little time. It triggered me into remembering the school officials telling me the week before that dating violence hadn’t been an issue in the school in “over 3 years.”

As we begin the program this week I will start to ask the youth questions about what they think are the biggest injustices going on in their community. I will work with the interns to create an environment that taps into their own curiosity and observations about what’s going on in their school to hopefully inspire them to reach out to fellow students with surveys about violence. Then, I hope they can turn around and share their youth led research results with their administration. Maybe we can also work together to create digital storytelling pieces that allow their voices to come together as a unified story that can be shared with the world.

One of my interns who graduated from a nearby CPS high school. He said that when he saw what happened earlier in the day with the cop and the kid—he just brushed it off as normal. He was desensitized to it because it’s what he grew up seeing all the time in his own high school’s cafeteria. He said that he no longer feels like it’s okay for cops to treat kids like that. He said he feels his ideas changing now.

If you have any ideas about how to do this work with youth please share your thoughts. My views do not represent the views of the program, university or high school that I work with.

MLK said he had a dream that one day his children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. We ain’t there yet.

I wrote about Monica Jones’s case a year ago. The wonderfully talented Molly Crabapple has a new video for Fusion that addressing the charge of manifesting prostitution.

The video is introduced as follows:

In May 2013, Monica Jones, a student and LGBT activist at Arizona State University, was arrested for “manifesting prostitution.” Monica said she just accepted an undercover officer’s offer of a ride home from her favorite bar. Monica is among the tens of thousands of people arrested every year for prostitution-related offenses. According to the FBI, police arrested over 57,000 people on such charges in 2011. The vast majority were women.