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OUR DEMANDS

  • Honor the memories and tell the stories of Black women and girls who have been killed by the police. #SayHerName.

  • Invest in forms of community safety and security that do not rely on police officers.

  • Reallocate police budgets and divert those resources back to where they were taken from: mental health services, domestic violence services, shelters for people without homes, education, increasing jobs, etc. 

  • Hold police accountable for violence against Black women and girls. Both the City and officers involved must admit liability, and issue apologies to the families and communities of women and girls killed, abused, and assaulted by officers.

  • Create and pass reforms that specifically address the home as a site of police violence against Black women.

  • End the use of no-knock warrants.

  • End the practice of sending officers to mental health and domestic disturbance calls. Officers should not be first responders to mental health crisis calls.

  • Adopt and enforce police department policies banning officers from searching people to assign gender based on anatomical features. Require officers to respect gender identity and expression in all police interactions, searches, and placements in police custody.

  • Create and enact use-of-force policies to prohibit the use of Tasers or excessive force on pregnant women or children.​​

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

  • At protests, demonstrations, and other actions against police violence include the faces, names, and stories of Black women alongside those of Black men.

  • Local and national organizations and social movements must find ways to support all families who have lost a loved one to police violence and all surviving victims of state violence. 

  • Use an intersectional gender and racial lens when developing policy platforms to ensure that comprehensive solutions to state violence are being built and that the myriad ways in which it impacts the lives of all Black people are addressed. 

  • Create spaces to discuss how patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia impact Black communities as a whole.

  • Hold individuals and organizations accountable for addressing how our communities sometimes recreate systems of oppression.

  • Develop skills to talk about the multiplicity of ways in which state violence affects all Black women and girls. In so doing, stakeholders can move beyond a frame that highlights only killing. All Black women—transgender, non-transgender, and gender-nonconforming—must be included in this reconceptualization.

  • Acknowledge that both public and private forms of violence are devastating the lives of Black women and girls.

RESOURCES

  • Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw, available at https://soundcloud.com/intersectionality-matters 

  • “From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally About Women, Race, and Social Control,” by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, in Overpoliced and Underprotected: Women, Race, and Criminalization, 59 UCLA L. Rev. 1418. 2012. (available at: https://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/59-6-1.pdf) 

  • Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. By Beth Richie. New York: New York University Press. 2012.

  • Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls. By Monique Morris. New York: The New Press. 2016.

  • Invisible Betrayal: Police Violence and the Rapes of Black Women in the United States. By Black Women’s Blueprint. 2014. (available at: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/sites/ushrnetwork.org/files/36-police-wapb.pdf)

  • Law Enforcement Violence against Women of Color & Trans People of Color. An Organizer’s Resource & Tool Kit. By Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (available at: https://incite-national.org/stop-law-enforcement-violence-toolkit/)

  • Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. By Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock. Boston: Beacon Press. 2011.

  • “Law Enforcement Violence against Women of Color.” By Andrea J. Ritchie. In Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. 2006.

  • Caught in the Net: The Impact of Drug Policies on Women and Families. By American Civil Liberties Union, Break the Chains, and Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. 2005. (available at: https://www.aclu.org/caught-net-impact-drug-policies-women-and-families)

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