When They Call You a Terrorist
Page 20
For years, I’ve neglected my own health and caretaking. If I struggled with intimacy in my romances, I also struggled with it when it came to myself. I resolve, in the wake of the Trump presidency, to end that, too. I begin working out again, four times a week. I start cooking more. I am traveling less and spending time in prayer each day. And I include fun in my life, joy to counteract this hate-filled world. I go to the arcade with friends. I roller skate. I designate park days. It’s the Gabriel in me, the Brignac in me.
And perhaps above all, I am intentional with my family, ensuring Future and I have time each week to just love on each other and grow in our love. We center this beautiful child I had long ago imagined and whom I am now watching grow, whom I am now helping to grow, who teaches me every day what is possible. And that what is possible is more than even I can imagine, because as much as I loved Shine before I ever met him, I could not have imagined the depth of that love, the unending expanse of it.
And if ever someone calls my child a terrorist, if they call any of the children in my life terrorists, I will hold my child, any child, close to me and I will explain that terrorism is being stalked and surveilled simply because you are alive. And terrorism is being put in solitary confinement and starved and beaten. And terrorism is not being able to feed your children despite working three jobs. And terrorism is not having a decent school or a place to play. I will tell them that what freedom looks like, what democracy looks like, is the push for and realization of justice, dignity and peace.
And I will say that to my precious Shine, or Malik, or Nisa, or Nina or any of the children and young people we cherish and lift up, that you are brilliant beings of light. You have the power to shape-shift not only yourselves but the whole of the world. You, each one, are endowed with gifts you don’t even yet know, and you, each one, are what love and the possibility of a world in which our lives truly matter looks like.
acknowledgments
Invariably, writing acknowledgments seems to fall as the most difficult part of any book. There are so many who ensured that we arrived here, in this place, the story told as fully and authentically as possible. The fear of forgetting someone, of failing to properly recognize someone who has helped, looms large. Even still, we have to try and in so doing, we begin with our agents, Tanya McKinnon and Victoria Sanders and the incredible dream team at VSA whose love and constructive care ensured and guided us long before there was a proposal or a book or a title in place. But when those did come into view, there was no home better for them than the one Monique Patterson made for us at St. Martin’s Press, where on any given day you can find the hardest-working and most talented people in publishing.
dream hampton, Denene Millner, Imani Wilson, Isaac Skelton and Letta Neely all read or helped with early versions of the proposal that would become this book. We are very grateful for their feedback, all of which was invaluable, as was Robin Templeton’s, whose incredibly sharp proofreading eye ensured we turned in the cleanest copy. And above all, for Nisa Yasmine, the one true daughter, who read the entire manuscript with an eye far more mature than her 17 years. She is a gift to us and the world.
We are grateful to the members of our political family who support and stand with us, even when it’s not easy. They include our colleagues at MomsRising, and Monifa Bandele in particular; at the National CARES Mentoring Movement, and the ever-generous and loving Susan L. Taylor; our Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People’s Movement family; our Drug Policy Alliance family, with special love to Kassandra Frederique, Tony Newman, Lynne Lyman, Judh Grandchamps, Laini Madhubuti, Chloe Cockburn, Dr. Carl Hart and Deborah Small; and for Michelle Alexander who stood with us on faith, and whose scholarship informs us on a daily basis.
We are grateful to Essence magazine, in particular Patrik Henry Bass and Vanessa De Luca, for their work to ensure the first public telling of the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
We live in gratitude for the existence and work of Dignity and Power Now, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Strategy Center, the team at Blackbird, BYP100, Dream Defenders, Darnell Moore, Kirsten West Savali, Brittney Cooper, Malkia Cyril, Rosa Clemente, Marc Lamont Hill, Rashad Robinson, the St. Elmo’s Village family, Reverend Starsky Wilson, the Performers of Power from the Mouths of the Occupied, Law for Black Lives and the Movement for Black Lives.
There are individuals who, because of their various and incredible gifts and magnificent hearts, must be named: Carla Gonzalez, Mark Anthony Johnson, Quay Quay, Tanya Bernard, Cheeraz Gormon, Brittney Ferrell, Alexis Templeton, Damon Davis, Elle Hearns, Aaryn Lang, Lourdes Ashley Hunter, Donna Hill, Vitaly, Ariane White, Sean Sparks, Richard Edmond, Melina Abdullah, Nora Alexis, Everton Brown, Lavon Leak Wilkes, Monica Dennis, Mercedes Chambliss, Piper Kerman, Lateefah Simon, Francisca Porchas, Esperanza Martinez, Kelly Archbold and Noni Limar.
We do this work today because on another day work was done by Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Miss Major, the Black Panther Party, the members of the Black Arts Movement, SNCC, the RNA, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Ella Baker and so many others. We owe you and the world a debt of gratitude.
And first, last and always, our love and gratitude is without end for Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, the leaders and members of the more than 40 chapters of BLM across the globe and the staff of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, Shanelle Matthews, Nikita Mitchell, Kandace Montgomery, Miski Noor, Prentis Hemphill, Whitney Washington, Rodney Diverlus and Rhiana Anthony.
We believe we will be free.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PATRISSE KHAN-CULLORS is an artist, organizer, and freedom fighter from Los Angeles, California. A co-founder of Black Lives Matter, she is also a performance artist, Fulbright scholar, popular public speaker, and an NAACP History Maker. You can sign up for email updates here.
ASHA BANDELE, author of the bestselling memoir The Prisoner’s Wife, has been honored for her work in journalism, fiction, poetry, and activism. A mother and a former senior editor at Essence magazine, asha serves as a senior director at the Drug Policy Alliance. You can sign up for email updates here.
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contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword, by Angela Davi
PART ONE: All the Bones We Could Find
Introduction: We Are Stardust
1. Community, Interrupted
2. Twelve
3. Bloodlines
4. Magnitude and Bond
5. Witness
6. Out in the World
7. All the Bones We Could Find
PART TWO: Black Lives Matter
8. Zero Dark Thirty: The Remix
9. No Ordinary Love
10. Dignity and Power. Now.
11. Black Lives Matter
12. Raid
13. A Call, a Response
14. #SayHerName
15. Black Futures
16. When They Call You a Terrorist
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
WHEN THEY CALL YOU A TERRORIST. Copyright © 2017 by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele. Foreword copyright © 2017 by Angela Davis. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover painting © Anton Evmeshkin/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available up
on request.
ISBN 978-1-250-17108-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-20000-6 (signed edition)
ISBN 978-1-250-17109-2 (ebook)
e-ISBN 9781250171092
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First Edition: January 2018