Black Voices on Justice + Resources and Things You Can Do
Table of Contents:
Quotes
Places to Donate
Resources
Intro
After the murders of Nina Pop, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Sean Reed, and more, racial justice warriors all over the world are once again protesting the violent system of American Law Enforcement. Qwear has collected our favorite quotes from Black voices on Black experiences around the current condition of racism in the US and what we need for justice. It is vital that we center addressing these issues on the voices of those most affected by them.
These murders are not isolated incidents, but patterns in a system of violence that was enacted since the first white settlers came to North America, slaughtered Indigenous nations, and kidnapped Black people for enslavement. To end the pattern, we must end the system, and to end the system we must learn how the system was created and how it continues to be upheld. At the end of this article, see a list of resources and places to donate, as well as our favorite educational books and movies. It is important that we all educate ourselves, especially those who don’t experience racial violence first-hand, so that we can build a better world together.
Quotes
“What is the Priority? Properties or Black people’s lives that are being taken away like they never existed? Don’t Shoot with our hands up is daily bread. When will we know Peace in a Free Country? Riots are our hope that someone can hear the deep need of Freedom we cry for in our souls.”
— Tatenda Ngwaru (2020)
“Black people have every right to burn down a country they built for free”
— Solomon Georgio on twitter (2020)
"Protest is not the end of progress, it is the beginning. I wonder what would happen if all the big companies and celebrities who have showed support on social media came out and used their platform to let activists and protesters speak and be seen?... Cities are burning, are you watching? I stand with Minneapolis. I believe in us. Change is gonna come."
– Lizzo (2020)
“I wish I could be younger like my little 1 1/2 year old cousin because I’d be safer from the police. I know I’m safe walking with two white parents right now. But, in two years, I will be by myself...The police will see me. I want to be a police officer when I’m older because then I’ll be safe.”
— 7-year-old child (2020)
"Whether they present themselves as social activists, academicians, or journalists, white liberals tend to lend ambiguity to the efforts of Blacks and to diffuse the energy of Black movements. Their presence too often means that Blacks must deal with or through them — rather than directly with whites in power who hold solutions to problems. Or, posing as advocates of ‘radical’ political and economic change, liberals attempt to enlist Black support in a broad spectrum of issues which speak peripherally to long range Black concerns and not at all to immediate needs of the Black community."
— The Dilemma of Black Politics, A Report on Harassment of Black Elected Officials (p.213-14) (Published 1979)
“Every day, when I leave my home, I must make a decision. Do I carry a weapon with me (I have my CCW) to protect myself from civilians or will I be killed by a police officer if I am pulled over and I have my legally owned and registered firearm on my person? It’s a roll of the dice, always.”
— Alexis Anderson (2020)
“The police hugging/holding hands with/marching with protestors is STRATEGY not solidarity. Do not trust them. Protect yourselves out there.”
— Marsha P. Johnson Institute on their facebook page (June 1 2020)
“Racism is not getting worse. It’s getting filmed.”
— Will Smith (2020)
“The belief among many white Americans that they have the right to stop, question and police any and all black Americans goes back to the slave patrols and slave laws, which deputized ALL white people to maintain the economic and racial hierarchy of the American caste system.”
— Ida Bae Wells on Twitter (May 27, 2020)
"If you want to play piano, but you’re bad at playing piano, you practice and you get better. Don’t be the kind of white person who doesn’t post out of fear of f***ing up. If you want to support Black people, but you’re bad at supporting Black people, practice and get better."
— Akilah Hughes
"Racism will disappear when [it's] no longer profitable and no longer psychologically useful. When that happens, it'll be gone."
— Toni Morrison (2008)
“When I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in all those assumptions underlining our lives.”
— Audrey Lorde, The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose - Third Edition (2016)
“History and my spirit tell me that the police who stand with us today will not sacrifice anything to end police violence tomorrow. Will any of them agree to firing police officers en masse? Will they march to cut their multimillion- and multibillion-dollar budgets and urge city councils to invest in Black communities? Will those officers conduct sit-ins to build more schools than cop academies and jails? Will they call on their police unions to retract their endorsements of President Trump? Will they refuse to enforce laws that criminalize poverty, Blackness, and sexual orientation? And will these officers demand that their departments release disciplinary records and disclose complaints against them and their colleagues? No to all of the above.”
— Derecka Purnell, Don’t Let Cops Join Our Protests (June 2, 2020)
"Remember when your textbooks said that George Washington promised freedom to the people he enslaved. He bought and sold people. He earned his wealth, his legacy on the back of children—and said upon his death they would be set free.
“They of course were not.
“Washington spent the better half of his life searching for and trying to hunt down a woman who had escaped North.
“Who searched for those who escaped? Who but the police force.
“The history books remark Washington's death bed emancipation as heroic. We learn about him and the cherry tree. His home (plantation) is a historical site. He did not free them, he cleared his own conscience in fear of the God he served.
“I am sure there are cops who want to clear their conscience, of course being associated in the brutal system of policing weighs on them — they want history to write them kindly.
“So they kneel. Because they want children to see them in photos fifty years from now and say, they freed them.
“When you celebrate the murderer for not killing us, you are saying we ain't shit. History never wrote down the names of the enslaved. History will not write down the names of the murdered.
“Just as every founding father dipped his pen in blood, every cop upholds the state that kills."
— Lennox Orion Orionlennox@gmail.com, They/them/theirs pronouns
Places to Donate
The Okra Project: A collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People.
The Bail Project: Provides free bail assistance to low-income individuals who are legally presumed innocent, and whom a judge has deemed eligible for release before trial contingent on paying bail.
Black Trans Femmes in the Arts: Connecting the community of Black trans women and non-binary femmes in the arts & building power among ourselves. Cash App: $btfacollective.
Marsha P. Johnson Institute: The Marsha P. Johnson Institute protects and defends the human rights of Black transgender people. They do this by organizing, advocating, creating an intentional community to heal, developing transformative leadership, and promoting their collective power.
Black Visions Collective: Black Visions Collective (BLVC) believes in a future where all Black people have autonomy, safety is community-led, and we are in the right relationship within our ecosystems.
Black Lives Matter: A global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
Black Mental Health Alliance: Developing, promoting, and sponsoring trusted culturally-relevant educational forums, trainings, and referral services that support the health and well-being of Black people and other vulnerable communities.
Philadelphia's Black Trans COVID Supplies & Donation Fund: Fundraising for Black trans people in the Philadelphia area
Restoring Justice: Offering loving and holistic criminal defense legal services for the oppressed, the forgotten, and the poor.
The Movement for Black Lives: Providing for one another by developing mutual aid networks, organizing, and creating virtual spaces for connection and joy.
All organizations mentioned in the following section are also great places to donate.
Resources
Mental Health Support for the Black LGBTQIA+ Community:
Melanin & Mental Health: Connecting clients to therapists who understand Black & Latinx experiences
BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health): Offers free virtual events and workshops focused on healing the Black community
Ourselves Black: A mental health resource magazine for the Black Community
The Nap Ministry: Examining the liberating power of rest, underlining sleep deprivation as a racial and social issue.
HealHaus: Offering healing workshops, as well as donation-based yoga, meditation, and healing sessions.
Rest for Resistance: A grassroots, trans-led organization uplifting LGBTQIA+ individuals, namely trans and queer people of color. As a platform, it fosters a safe online space that promotes meditation as an act of resistance, and features art, writing, and a directory of intersectional mental-health resources.
Free Black Tarot Reading by TK Morton: A queer and trans positive healing space for Black folks to have a 1-3 card reading for grounding in these tough times. Non Black Folks are invited to support TK (Venmo: Tristan-Morton, Cash App: $TPOC)
Books:
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Second Edition By Eric A. Stanley (Editor); Nat Smith (Editor); CeCeMcDonald (Foreword)
An assemblage of writings—analyses, manifestos, stories, interviews—that traverse the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment, and the production of gender normativity.
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
By Andrea J. Ritchie; Angela Y. Davis (Foreword), Mariame Kaba (Foreword), Charlene Carruthers (Afterword)
A timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness By Michelle Alexander
An account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.
Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom (Author), Waldo E. Martin Jr. (Author)
The first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against Black communities.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis.
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers
A 21st-century activist's guide to upending mainstream ideas about race, class, and gender, carving out a path to collective liberation.
Articles:
Alternatives to the Police by Evan Dent, Molly Korab, and Farid Rener
What to do instead of Calling the Police by Aaron Rose
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice by Corinne Shutack
Don’t Let Cops Join Our Protests by Derecka Purnell
Educational Movies and TV Shows
(That Don’t Glorify Black Pain)
Just Mercy (Available to Rent for Free Throughout June in Honor of George Floyd) by Destin Daniel Cretton
Michael B. Jordan stars as Bryan Stevenson, a defense attorney appealing the wrongful murder conviction of an African-American man.
Queen & Slim by Melina Matsoukas (director) Lena Waithe (screenplay by), James Frey (story by)
A couple's first date takes an unexpected turn when a police officer pulls them over.
The Wire by David Simon
Set and produced in Baltimore, Maryland, The Wire introduces a different institution of the city and its relationship to law enforcement in each season.
Malcolm X by Spike Lee
Illuminating the life of Black Nationalist Malcom X, following him from his early days to his conversion to Islam
The Roots (1977) Series Produced by ABC based on Alex Haley’s book, “Roots: The Saga of an American Family”
A saga of African-American life, based on Alex Haley's family history. Throughout the series, the family observes notable events in U.S. history, such as the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, slave uprisings, and emancipation.
Pose created by Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk, Ryan Murphy
Series about New York City's African-American and Latinx LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming ballroom culture scene in the 1980s and early 1990s.
