Andrea Ritchie's intro and forward to Invisible No More highlights the erasure of narratives concerning police brutality against Black women (and other women of color) from public commentary. While the names Rodney King, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Philando Castile became rallying cries against state violence (for good reason), the fates of similarly brutalized and murdered Black women remained unspoken of.
Before reading Ritchie's introduction, I was unaware that Black women faced comparable rates of police brutality to that of their male counterparts. I had assumed that they definitely faced more frequent instances than white men or women, but thought perhaps recurrent moral panic surrounding the myth of Black male violence would keep police brutality and incarceration rates still higher for Black men. Protests surrounding Sandra Bland's death were the first spark of public outrage I can remember witnessing on a national level regarding the murder of a Black woman by police, though this may also be because I lived in an isolated rural area rife with attitudes of white supremacy before moving to Chicago in 2013.
The specific ways in which state violence plays out against Black women are missing from public consciousness as well. Aside from gun violence and beatings, there are threats and offenses of a sexual nature that these women often endure from agents of the state. These offenses are mostly unfamiliar to white men and women who find themselves in the presence or custody of police, with the exceptions being queer people, transgender individuals, and sex workers. My own familiarity with state sexual violence only comes from my place in those three categories, and intersection of Blackness with any or all of them has proven to be a death sentence for too many, their names appearing on the Trans Day of Remembrance and Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers memorial lists with growing frequency every year.
Ritchie’s writing called to mind for me the murder of Rekia Boyd by Chicago police officer Dante Servin in March of 2012. Rekia, a 22-year-old Black woman from the Chicago suburbs was shot in the head in Douglas Park as Servin, off-duty at the time but allegedly responding to a noise complaint in the area, recklessly fired five rounds over his left shoulder from an unmarked car. She was taken to a hospital where she died less than 24 hours later. Boyd is one of countless women whose stories have been kept alive in public memory through the Say Her Name project and the many thankless women organizers of Black Lives Matter Chicago.
It was in November of 2015 that I first became familiar with Rekia Boyd’s story, becoming involved in the spate of protests headed by Black Lives Matter Chicago leading up to Dante Servin’s trial on December 3rd. Servin was unsurprisingly found not guilty. He has left the CPD and as of 2016 was seeking disability social security income due to post-traumatic stress disorder he claims to have developed following Rekia’s death. He has been living in La Villita under the protection of 12th Ward Alderman George Cardenas, a man notorious for selling out Chicago’s Latinx communities since 1983. Protests in the area of Cardenas’ and Servin’s homes have been met with brutality and wrongful arrests by Chicago police, their badge and car numbers covered with masking tape to avoid identification, but that’s a story for another time.
Something I would like to discuss in class is the potential effects of sex work decriminalization in the United States and how it could be implemented in ways that wouldn’t just benefit white, cisgender, indoor workers.
Before reading Ritchie's introduction, I was unaware that Black women faced comparable rates of police brutality to that of their male counterparts. I had assumed that they definitely faced more frequent instances than white men or women, but thought perhaps recurrent moral panic surrounding the myth of Black male violence would keep police brutality and incarceration rates still higher for Black men. Protests surrounding Sandra Bland's death were the first spark of public outrage I can remember witnessing on a national level regarding the murder of a Black woman by police, though this may also be because I lived in an isolated rural area rife with attitudes of white supremacy before moving to Chicago in 2013.
The specific ways in which state violence plays out against Black women are missing from public consciousness as well. Aside from gun violence and beatings, there are threats and offenses of a sexual nature that these women often endure from agents of the state. These offenses are mostly unfamiliar to white men and women who find themselves in the presence or custody of police, with the exceptions being queer people, transgender individuals, and sex workers. My own familiarity with state sexual violence only comes from my place in those three categories, and intersection of Blackness with any or all of them has proven to be a death sentence for too many, their names appearing on the Trans Day of Remembrance and Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers memorial lists with growing frequency every year.
Ritchie’s writing called to mind for me the murder of Rekia Boyd by Chicago police officer Dante Servin in March of 2012. Rekia, a 22-year-old Black woman from the Chicago suburbs was shot in the head in Douglas Park as Servin, off-duty at the time but allegedly responding to a noise complaint in the area, recklessly fired five rounds over his left shoulder from an unmarked car. She was taken to a hospital where she died less than 24 hours later. Boyd is one of countless women whose stories have been kept alive in public memory through the Say Her Name project and the many thankless women organizers of Black Lives Matter Chicago.
It was in November of 2015 that I first became familiar with Rekia Boyd’s story, becoming involved in the spate of protests headed by Black Lives Matter Chicago leading up to Dante Servin’s trial on December 3rd. Servin was unsurprisingly found not guilty. He has left the CPD and as of 2016 was seeking disability social security income due to post-traumatic stress disorder he claims to have developed following Rekia’s death. He has been living in La Villita under the protection of 12th Ward Alderman George Cardenas, a man notorious for selling out Chicago’s Latinx communities since 1983. Protests in the area of Cardenas’ and Servin’s homes have been met with brutality and wrongful arrests by Chicago police, their badge and car numbers covered with masking tape to avoid identification, but that’s a story for another time.
Something I would like to discuss in class is the potential effects of sex work decriminalization in the United States and how it could be implemented in ways that wouldn’t just benefit white, cisgender, indoor workers.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/28/rekia-boyd-mike-brown_n_6236974.html
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