Echoing Ida Collection, The - Softcover

Alabi, Kemi; Greenlee, Cynthia R.; Zinzi, Janna A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558612831 ISBN 13: 9781558612839

Publisher: The Feminist Press, 2021

Synopsis

The Black women and nonbinary members of the writing collective Echoing Ida harness the power of media for social justice. With over five hundred articles published, their work amplifies the struggles and successes of contemporary freedom movements in America. Aiming to move the needle on the most pressing issues of our time, Echoing Ida nurtures a community of Black writers who -- like their foremother Ida B. Wells-Barnett -- believe the 'way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.' In this anthology, the best of Echoing Ida's writing is collected for the first time; topics include state violence, reproductive justice, media and culture, trans visibility, and more. Featuring a foreword by Michelle Duster, activist and great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the essays imagine a gender-expansive and liberated future.

About this title

About the Author

Cynthia R. Greenlee is a writer, editor, and historian of the African-American experience. She is a former senior editor at Rewire.News. 

Kemi Alabi is a poet, teaching artist, and cultural strategy director of Forward Together.

Janna A. Zinzi is a communications strategist, writer and performer. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction to Section One: The Structures and the Struggle

Kemi Alabi

The structure: the house white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy and capitalism built. A violent political, economic and cultural system created to hoard power and resources, specifically among white, able-bodied, straight, Christian, cisgender men.

The struggle: attempting life within the structure as people never meant to survive it.

(Did we lose anybody? Cool, moving on.)

We hold these truths to be self-evident: the structure and the struggle are real. To understand the shape the structure takes, just look at the imprints it leaves on our bodies. To understand its breadth and depth, just follow our attempts to live life free from harm. 

We know more about this structure and its keepers than it could ever know about us—the humans it warps into mules and machines, goblins and ghosts. So we compare notes, passing along the knowledge we need not only to survive the struggle, but to dismantle the structure brick by brick. 

There’s a growing backlash against “identity politics.” This backlash critiques groups who find solidarity and build power based on our shared experiences of systemic harm. But this backlash avoids critiquing those who organize and maintain the violent structure in the first place. And its primary ask is our silence. How curious.

We note the concerns, but our lived experiences? Quality intel. Our struggles? Very real. And when we shout our truths together? The whole damn structure starts to shake.

The Right to (Black) Life

Renee Bracey Sherman

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., by a police officer. Every August, our nation grieves with his mother, Lesley McSpadden, as she mourns the murder of her son.

Ms. McSpadden and other mothers of black people slain by police have become emblems of the movement against racialized police violence. But they represent something bigger: the heartbreaking dilemmas black women face at every point in the motherhood journey.

Many American women live under a fog of critique about our choices when it comes to our reproductive health and motherhood. But this is especially true for black women.

If we choose to have an abortion, we are cast as villains by anti-abortion campaigns that tap into the trauma of our country’s racial history. Outside of clinics, I often hear protesters shout racial slurs and say things like “unborn black lives matter” when black people walk past them.

This isn’t new. Anti-abortion activists have long said that the most dangerous place for a black child is in the womb. They believe that abortion, not police brutality, is the civil rights issue of our time.

But we are stereotyped and called welfare queens if we choose to continue a pregnancy we cannot afford. In addition, black women are ostracized for having children “too young” and for having kids that society deems “illegitimate.”

Then, regardless of the life we provide for our children, if they are killed by police officers, our parenting decisions will inevitably be criticized.

From conception until death, damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

With access to women’s reproductive health care under attack and low-income families and women of color disproportionately affected, many advocates have rightly been concerned that black women are particularly vulnerable.

Yes, it’s essential that black women have the choice about whether to conceive and give birth. But this choice, without the ability to protect a child from violence, rings hollow. That’s why it’s important to understand that the fight for reproductive justice and the fight to end police brutality go hand in hand.

State violence and control, whether through racist policing, the criminal justice system or the welfare system, are all issues at the core of reproductive justice. They are fundamentally about whether you, or the state, has control over your own body and destiny.

The movement for reproductive justice, a human rights framework created by women of color in 1994, is not only about the ability to decide if, when and how to become a parent. It’s also about the ability to survive, and perhaps even thrive, in your own body. It’s about the right to abortion care, of course, and to healthy pregnancies free of shame. And reproductive justice is about the ability to raise children to become adults.

But we can’t make these choices if we ourselves aren’t safe. Not only do black women have to worry about police brutalizing their children, but we also have to fear this violence ourselves.

Charleena Lyles was pregnant when she was shot and killed by the police in her Seattle home, in front of her children, after she called them for help after a robbery. Korryn Gaines, fearing for her and her children’s lives, was shot and killed after she armed herself when Baltimore County police officers came to her home to serve her with an arrest warrant. Over a dozen black women were raped and terrorized by the Oklahoma City officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on them because he thought no one would care about black women.

The impact of this discrimination and inequality begins early. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists writes that “racial bias is an issue that affects our patients, either directly by subjecting them or their families to inequitable treatment, or indirectly by creating a stressful and unhealthy environment.”

Instead of working to create solutions to end police violence, anti-abortion politicians and the countless people who have criticized bereaved black mothers argue over whether the deceased — someone’s child — was an “angel” or not. They ask whether his father was involved enough and whether his mother taught him right from wrong.

They scrutinize every parenting decision and ignore the structural issues that force those decisions. They don’t engage with the challenges we face in a racist society that limits our ability to survive.

It’s heartbreaking to make the life-changing decision to carry a pregnancy to term only to bury your baby because police officers killed him while he was playing in a park or while she was sleeping on a couch.

Far too often, compassion for black lives doesn’t extend beyond the womb or to the black women carrying that womb. Too few tears are shed for the people killed by police violence. Reproductive justice is about the resolve to raise our families on our own terms, safely. This is the fight for the right to life.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Feminist Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1558612831
• ISBN 13: 9781558612839
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328