Official Protest Thread...
- Thread starter Camille
- Start date
In just a few months, Bresha Meadows will finally be out of prison. However, it won’t be due to her case being dismissed, or being granted bail. Moreover, she will not be directly returning home. Instead, due to accepting a plea deal, a 15-year old Bresha will have her time served commuted and sent to a juvenile mental health facility — all for having the audacity to defend her family at a time when no one else would.
Thousands, if not millions, of words have been written about the tragic situation that has befallen the Meadows family. You can read plenty at the official site for Free Bresha here. There are also a bevy of activists, scholars, and influencers who have spent the last year emphasizing the grave miscarriage of justice that Bresha Meadows has undergone, such as PrisonCulture.
It is hard to watch these events play out and not be reminded of the simple fact that Black girls are robbed of their childhood at such a young age. Before they have the chance to make the choice to embrace their womanhood, they are asked to step up time and time again and make sacrifices at great cost to their livelihood and their humanity. For the brave action of protecting her family at the hands of near-constant abuse by almost all accounts, Bresha nearly paid the cost of the rest of her life in prison — and is now expected to be thankful at the so-called liberation a plea deal is supposed to afford her. A plea deal that is contingent upon her admitting that she, a young girl who was doing her best in a toxic and life-threatening situation, somehow committed a crime.
It is an injustice that a settlement like this can even remotely be considered a victory, and that the prosecution has declined to withdraw charges in light of all the circumstances coming to light and the groundswell of support. It is unfathomable that a justice system that claims to pride itself on due process can rest on its laurels at the cost of a Black girl’s childhood, and simultaneously scoff at the notion that the right to a fair trial seems to be one that does not apply to Black people. It is difficult to come to peace with the fact that Bresha’s eventual freedom comes with an eternal scarlet letter on her chest; a guilty conviction that will follow her forever. And even if the records are eventually expunged and sealed, the articles and documents marking her guilty plea will continue to persist. Also, the law in Ohio will continue to remain that any child over the age of 14 is capable of being tried as an adult for a felony.
Bresha’s story (and the several others like hers) is a continual reminder that the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are civil liberties afforded to the (white) men and women with the means to demand and expect it, while the rest of us are expected to lie in wait for the tiny trickles of generosity that manage to slip their way down and continue to accept the status quo. Bresha was unjustly robbed of an entire year. A whole year of enjoying freedom from the terror at home. A whole year of potentially deciding that she could apply to college, or take the SATs. A whole year of movies with her friends, or preparing to slay in Twitter Prom pictures. The hypotheses are neverending, but the conclusion remains: America owes Bresha a debt that will never be paid, and the Meadows family will never be the same as a result.
Stop asking black folks for anything. At all. But particularly, don’t ask black people to re-focus their liberation “powers” and history of organizing on your community when it's under attack.
After the 2016 election, loads of white people called for Michelle Obama to run for President in 2020. Run to save them from the disaster that they had created. And while Michelle is undoubtedly brilliant and wildly capable, the projection of the responsibility of saving the republic seems so bizarre when it’s not her problem, as a black woman, to fix. Why? Because black people do not and have never possessed authority over any type of power structure in this country, and thusly have had little control over what led up to the election results.
Despite the fact that Trump’s win symbolized a victory of the white supremacist patriarchal ideologies that fueled the foundation of America and continues to guide the structures of our society and the experiences of all of us under those standards, white people refused to look inwardly at the roles they and their loved ones played in enabling (and/or benefiting from) a white-centric society to elect an open racist in 2017.
By Erin White*, AFROPUNK contributor
When you ask black people to do your work for you, you’re demonstrating perceived entitlement to black labor and a belief that black people can be called in (at your convenience) to fix the messes other people.
Expecting black folks to stop centering blackness signifies a belief that black oppression can take a back seat or is less important than other issues. Which, you know, is racist and also completely counter-productive to the liberation of other groups.
Many issues experienced by non-black POC all around the world are connected to anti-black oppression. Black liberators like Angela Davis don’t emphasize the mention of Ferguson in connection with Palestine for no reason. Black Lives Matter didn’t have delegates standing in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux because it’s a trendy issue of the day. And black and brown activists aren’t working to do whatever they have to in order to protect latinx immigrants from the deportation and imprisonment because they’re bored. Genocide, human rights, access to clean water are all black issues because black people are part of these cultures and because their oppression only further justifies violence towards blacks. Like the violence against blacks justifies violence against others.
It’s not that black folks don’t want to help other people. The problem is that most, if not all, non-black POC communities play their own role in re-enforcing anti-blackness. This ends up creating exceptions in the treatments of certain types of people, even their own communities. Colorism plays a large role in certain Latinx, Southeast Asia, Middle Eastern cultures that value lighter, whiter appearances that end up further marginalizing the black and brown skinned people. Nevermind the historical links these cultures have with the African diaspora. And by creating a superficial class of people for whom the mistreat of is acceptable, communities invalidate themselves as a whole.
When we look at Korea's K-pop culture, for example, we see a POC community that regularly exploits and degrades black people while wearing our identities like an accessory. When we look at Mexican culture, comedians like Geroge Lopez make and defend anti-black ideology and biases against black people and dark skin as a valid cultural perspective.
We, too, see this in the black community when people (inside and outside of it) say that an unarmed black person deserved to be killed because he had a criminal history. Or that it’s understandable to kill a trans person for any reasons whatsoever. If certain blacks don’t have value, how can any of us?
All of this to say that fighting white supremacy, in all of its forms, is inherently and demonstrably a concern of black activism. And the ability to fundamentally consider our interconnectedness with other people in the struggle is precisely why the black liberation movement has achieved so much in the way of rights, access, and representation in less than 200 years after abolition. And this continued fight has cost us countless lives, sweat, and blood in this time, and what has been accomplished should be respected and used in a way that builds our solidarity, not exploit black labor for convenience.
http://www.afropunk.com/profiles/bl...asking-where-is-black-lives-matter-every-time