In 1968, seven-year old Lonnie Bell rode a bike around his “urban renewed” gentrifying Chicago community. Riding down the street, he was having fun in the afternoon. Suddenly, a police car came upon him. Two police officers approached. They accused Lonnie of stealing the bicycle. He was promptly put in the backseat of their squad car and the bike in the trunk. One of the witnesses to Lonnie’s arrest was a 17 year old neighbor who had actually lent him her bike. She and other children intervened to prevent the arrest. She told the cops that the bike was hers and that she had lent it to Lonnie. Their attempts to secure the release of their friend failed. The police ignored them and drove away with Lonnie in the backseat. The 17-year old neighbor rushed over to Lonnie’s house to alert his parents of his capture.
Mr. Bell, Lonnie’s father, accompanied by two neighbors, Mrs. Myers and her husband Michael, made their way to the 18th police district. It was around 6:15 pm when they arrived. Mr. Myers, an attorney, asked the desk Sargeant if Lonnie was in custody. The cop said that the child was not at the station. So they waited for an hour with no news of Lonnie. At 7:30 pm, the desk Sargeant announced that Lonnie had been returned home.
What happened between 5:30 pm when Lonnie was picked up by police and 7:30 pm when he was purportedly returned home? Mr. Bell rushed to find out. The police told neighbors that as they were driving to the station, a report came over the radio saying that an armed man was on the loose. With 7 year old Lonnie in the car, the cops drove to where the armed man was spotted. They patrolled the area in their car. Finding no one, they locked Lonnie in the squad car and set off on foot to apprehend the armed man. They didn’t find him so they drove Lonnie to the rear of the station. Once there, they decided not to take him inside and drove him home instead. It’s unclear what prompted them to change their minds.
I read about this incident in a Chicago publication called “Second City Magazine.” The article contended that such incidents made it important for communities to police the police. As I read about Lonnie’s ordeal though, I could only focus on one thing: ‘fear.’ I imagined a terrified Black child falsely accused of being a thief at 7 years old. I could picture his scared face as he was locked in a squad car while the police searched for an armed suspect who could very well have harmed him while he waited alone. Then I thought of his father’s terror at not finding his son at the station. I put myself in his place waiting for over an hour for any news of my son’s whereabouts. And though she wasn’t mentioned in the article, I saw Lonnie’s mother frantically pacing at home praying for her son’s safe return.
I drew a straight line from Lonnie in 1968 to the racist backlash experienced by Black students at Mizzou yesterday. On Twitter last night, I felt fear produced by racist death threats and unsubstantiated reports of KKK presence on the University of Missouri (Columbia) campus. I worried for the safety of the Black students who might be targeted. I prayed that no harm would come to them.
I thought too that my fear, Lonnie’s fear, Black Mizzou students’ fear are illegible to most people who don’t consider us human. I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about being Black and afraid. Not afraid for myself but rather fearful for those who look like me. Who besides other Black people understand or care? Speaking the words gives more ammunition to our terrorizers and tormentors, no? But the fear is real and ever-present. I reject the cancerous tough love gospel which insists that Black people must ‘buck up’ and be preternaturally brave because to live Black is to live in and with unending danger and terror.
I don’t know if I am using the right words. I don’t know if fear adequately describes what I mean. What do you call a thing that robs you of peace and rest and time? Maybe there are no words. Maybe it’s only emotion. I don’t know. Whatever it is, I wish I could live free from and of it.
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.
On April 20th, I was getting on a plane headed back to Chicago from Nashville when my phone started ringing. Friends who were in the courtroom as the judge acquitted officer Dante Servin for killing Rekia Boyd were calling to share the news. Martinez Sutton, Rekia’s brother, was so gutted that he couldn’t contain his pain. He and others were temporarily detained by police. Rekia’s family, friends and community were devastated. Dante Servin was free. How long before he would again patrol the streets with his gun? How long before he might kill someone else? How long before the next Rekia? How long before Rekia’s mother could finally sleep soundly through the night?
I was not surprised that Dante Servin was acquitted. After all, it took months and years of community agitation and organizing to get him indicted in the first place. By all accounts, the prosecution’s heart was not in the case. More than that, as most now understand, police officers are rarely indicted and almost never convicted.
Rekia was still dead and Dante Servin still had his job and pension.
Martinez Sutton at a Vigil for Rekia at Depaul (5/12/15) – photo by Sarah Jane Rhee
A couple of days later, about 11 people representing several organizations including BYP 100, Project NIA, BLM Chicago, WAPB, FURIE, ISO, We Charge Genocide, and Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls & Young Women met on the Southside to brainstorm and discuss next steps in the struggle for justice for Rekia. Those in attendance identified as abolitionists, progressives, socialists and anarchists. Our goal was to develop a strategy to keep Rekia’s name alive and to continue to support her family.
It was unlikely that the country would come to know her by her first name: Rekia. She was young, Black and a woman. Of those identities, being a woman is a distinct disadvantage in the political economy of public memorialization. The names that we lift up (when we memorialize Black life at all) are usually attached to cisgendered heterosexual men: Sean, Mike, Eric, Rodney, Amadou… And yet, here we now are, also saying Rekia’s name alongside theirs. This didn’t happen by chance. Her family and local organizers have insisted that her life mattered. The meeting we held after the Servin verdict was a declaration that Rekia would not be forgotten and that her family would not be abandoned.
photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (8/14/15)
By the end of the meeting, we had agreed to collectively organize several events and actions through the spring and summer. Groups and individuals volunteered to bottom line several projects. Project NIA & the Taskforce took responsibility for organizing a legal teach-in about the case that would take place the next week. That event sent Depaul Law School and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) into a panic. On the heels of the Baltimore uprisings, they deployed dozens of police officers to surveil and monitor attendees. Project NIA also took responsibility for coordinating a month-long series of events under the banner of “Black August Chicago.” These events, actions and interventions would focus on state violence against Black women and girls (trans and non-trans) and contextualize these experiences historically. Most of the groups at the meeting committed to organize an event/action/intervention during Black August.
image by Caira Conner
BYP 100 committed to reach out to national groups to organize a National Day of Action for Black Women and Girls on May 21st. BLM Chicago, We Charge Genocide and WAPB decided to attend the next police board meeting to demand the firing of Dante Servin. Since that board meeting would be on May 21st, it worked out that the BYP 100 National Day of Action for Black Women and Girls local event would dovetail with the effort to #FireServin.
photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/21/15)
Since May, BYP 100 along with the other groups mentioned have consistently attended police board meetings to demand the firing of Rekia’s killer. The most recent action happened this past Thursday. The beautiful video below offers some highlights.
As a by-product of the community’s organizing, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) this week recommended the firing of Servin. CPD Superintendent McCarthy now has 90 days to offer his recommendation which would then go to the Police Board for a final vote. So there are more steps and work ahead. In the meantime, the relationships between individuals and groups organizing to #FireServin and against police violence more generally are deepening and the number of people joining the mobilizations is growing.
#FireServin (8/20/15) photo by Sarah Jane Rhee
There has been some criticism about the strategic value of a campaign focused on firing one police officer. Isn’t this simply individualizing harm? Shouldn’t we be taking a systemic/structural approach to addressing police violence? These are certainly valid questions. After all, Chicago is a city where Black people (in particular) are killed by police in the highest numbers and with impunity. We are a city where the parents of young Black people shot by police have to crowdfund to buy a headstone for their sons and daughters. We are a city where grief stricken family and community members are arrested for disrupting the courtroom after a judge dismisses the charges against a killer cop. We are a city where the press ignored allegations of police torture for decades and continue to do so into the present. We are a city where the county prosecutors don’t hold killer cops accountable.
None of the organizers leading the #FireServin actions believe that his dismissal from the force will end police violence. Servin is buttressed and backed by a culture of impunity and by a history of Black-deathmaking in this city. He is one brick in a reinforced wall. Just a brick. Organizers know this. So why focus on Servin at all? I’ll share some reasons below:
1. The demand to fire Servin is consistent with abolitionist goals in that it addresses the issue of accountability for harm caused.
2. The demand to fire Servin is in response to the desire of a devastated family and community to see a modicum of justice for their daughter, sister, friend and fellow human being.
3. The demand to fire Servin exists within a broader set of mobilizations and actions that are about MAKING all #BlackWomenAndGirlsLivesMatter.
4. The demand to fire Servin has an origin story rooted in collective brainstorming and organizing. It has provided a tangible way to build power through the mobilizations.
5. The demand to fire Servin has provided an opportunity for some individuals and groups to collaborate more closely and to get to know each other in ways that will only strengthen our broader local struggle. If we learn to fight together, we can win together.
6. The demand to fire Servin has not and does not preclude others from pursuing and taking on their own campaigns to end police violence. Moreover, campaign organizers themselves are involved in more than just efforts to fire Servin.
In Rekia’s name, organizers in Chicago have launched a sustained mobilization seeking justice for all Black women and girls (trans and non-trans). It’s remarkable, really. All of the #SayHerName & #JusticeForRekia actions and mobilizations that happened across the country on May 21st had their roots here in Chicago. It has been rare in U.S. history to effectively organize at the intersection of race and gender. And yet, in part because of our work seeking #JusticeForRekia, there is some energy behind a focus on state violence against all Black women and girls. And this matters a great deal. The recent attention paid to Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna and the ongoing killings of trans Black women is partly owed to this mobilization.
photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (9/17/15)
A focus on how women and girls experience violence by the state pushes us to consider more than lethal force as harmful. We have to consider sexual assaults by police (inside prisons and in the streets). We have to include how women who are victims of interpersonal violence are criminalized by the state for defending their lives. Our lens becomes wider. Hence, the #FireServin campaign has not simply been about holding one officer accountable. It’s also been about making visible the neglected forms of violence experienced by Black women and girls across this country and beyond. By calling for CPD to #FireServin, organizers in Chicago have centered the state violence experienced by all Black women and girls and shone a light on what my friend Andy Smith accurately describes as an “entire system of harassment and surveillance that keeps oppressive gender and racial hierarchies in place.”
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 wish that I had time to regularly post here. This year has been one of the busiest I’ve experienced in some time. I have been running my organization, supporting several others, organizing campaigns, teaching, and developing new programming. Regular blogging has become a casualty.
Currently, I am working with a wonderful group of friends to curate an exhibition about state violence against Black women. The exhibition titled Blood at the Root opens next Friday August 14. You can RSVP HERE for the reception. The exhibition will run through October.
Yesterday on Facebook, I read a series of posts by a young Black woman. She was lamenting the fact that Black men are too often silent and sometimes hostile about addressing violence against Black women. She was also dismayed at some of the women who insist that raising the issue of violence against Black women is ‘divisive.’ At one point, she wrote in exasperation: “You would think as a black woman you’d be on your own side.” Her words are profound and sad.
photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (7/28/15)
On Tuesday night in Chicago, many Black women were on our own side as we lifted up the name of our sister Sandra Bland. Last week, my friend Kelly who is a local indigenous organizer reached out to me to ask if my organization would co-sponsor a Light Action for Sandra Bland as part of a National call to action. I immediately agreed and Kelly did the heavy lifting to organize the event.
photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (7/28/15)
I listened on Tuesday night as Black women I know and care about spoke about our erasure and about the silence that too often greets our suffering. Together we declared ‘no more.’ There were tears and song. There was rage and love. There was an insistence that we would MAKE our own lives matter because we understand our value. It was so heartening that nearly 300 people braved the humidity and showed up despite the late hour. We needed darkness for the action to happen.
photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (7/28/15)
I was in Cleveland this weekend to participate in the Movement for Black Lives Convening. As we were leaving to meet the bus that would take us home to Chicago, we stumbled upon a group of people demanding that the police release a 14 year old who they had in handcuffs. The police escalated the confrontation by pepper spraying several people indiscriminately. The cops did not care who they were spraying. We were all Black and it didn’t matter if we were women, men, gender non conforming, trans, adult or child. We were Black and they sprayed us as my friend Page said “like we were bugs.” Dr. Brittany Cooper was there too and wrote about the incident:
“While protesters were securing the teenager’s release, I was among a group of attendees helping those who had been pepper-sprayed – filling emptied water bottles with milk to treat the spray, holding hands and rubbing the backs of those writhing in pain, reminding them to breathe while I did the same. I won’t soon be over the horror and helplessness of that moment. I won’t soon forget the sound of Black people screaming from the effects of pepper spray, because they had stood up to protect the safety of a Black child. I haven’t stopped wondering how those activists who have been on the front lines since last August manage to be subjected to such violent bodily violation regularly.”
I am coming down with something (a cough and sore throat) and I have no doubt that Sunday’s chaos has contributed to my illness. The incident in Cleveland should remind everyone that we are in this thing TOGETHER and that ALL Black people are targets. When some of my friends were sprayed, I ran to get milk. Other women were tending to those in pain. Trans people put their bodies on the line by blocking the path of police cars. Black women lawyers were the ones directly negotiating with cops who were threatening to have them arrested. Black men were there too; helping to keep people calm and putting their bodies on the line. My point is that all of us were needed to successfully de-arrest the 14 year boy. All of us had a role to play. We needed everyone. And as Black women, we are always there for everyone. I think that it’s important to prioritize being on our own side.
There is a lot to say about the Movement for Black Lives convening aside from the deplorable actions of the police on that last day. I continue to process my experience. One thing that stands out is how central love (in its various manifestations) was to the convening. Love: not the sentimental kind but the Agape kind in particular. My friend Dr.Tamara Nopper recently posted some words by Sonia Sanchez that resonate for me in this moment:
The great writer Zora Neal Hurston said,
Fear was the greatest emotion on the planet Earth
and I said, No my dear sista
Fear will make us move to save our lives
To save our own skins
But love
Will make us save other people’s skins and lives
So love is primary at this particular point in time.
Put on, what I like to call:
The sleeves of love
Put on the legs of love
Put on the feet of love
Put on the head of love
Put on the mouth of love
Put on the hands of love
And love love love love love love
Yourself
And others
Love love love love love
Because love is the greatest emotion on the planet Earth
Love.
-Sonia Sanchez
In the coming days here in Chicago, a number of us are organizing a series of events to center the experiences of and resistance to state violence against Black women as part of Black August. And yes, for me, this is a labor of love. It is a litany for survival. You can learn about the upcoming events, actions, and interventions HERE. If you are in Chicago, hope to see some of you.
“Alex Landau, an African American man, was raised by his adoptive white parents to believe that skin color didn’t matter. But when Alex was pulled over by Denver police officers one night in 2009, he lost his belief in a color-blind world—and nearly lost his life. Alex tells his mother, Patsy Hathaway, what happened that night and how it affects him to this day.”
In this short film, Landau and his mother, Patsy, remember that night and how it changed them both forever. “For me it was the point of awakening to how the rest of the world is going to look at you,” Landau says. “I was just another black face in the streets.”
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
It’s been another packed week for me. I am tired and I haven’t had time to blog. #DamoDay took place on Wednesday and I felt a mix of emotions. It was wonderful to hear the stories shared by Damo’s friends. Since I didn’t know him, they provided new insights into him as a person. I smiled and laughed several times as the stories were shared. I also felt sad at his loss. What a vibrant soul I wish I could have known!
About 30 minutes into the gathering, a young Black man was provoked by a homeless (seemingly mentally ill) white man who first rammed him with a bike and then used his body to push him. Instead of detaining the white man, the young Black man (a friend of Damo’s) was taken into custody. The rest of my afternoon was peppered with calls to a lawyer and anxiety. I can’t ever calm down while young people are in police custody. I feel like I am holding my breath waiting to exhale. After several hours, he was finally released but not before being charged with simple battery. At least five witnesses are prepared to testify that he was the one provoked. Yet, another young person was criminalized at a gathering where he came to mourn and celebrate a friend who was killed by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). It’s infuriating and draining.
Below is a short video summary of #DamoDay.
As part of #DamoDay, participants in the Radical Education Project (a collaboration between We Charge Genocide and Chicago Light Brigade) created an interactive public memorial. This proved to be the emotional anchor for the day. Chicago is replete with examples of artists who have and continue come together to support activist and organizing efforts. Below are some photos that depict Damo’s public memorial.
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