This book is the product of shared learning and struggle with literally hundreds of individuals, of countless conversations, meetings, workshops, gatherings, interviews, and readings, as well as feedback from audience members and students. Many people whose names are not listed here have contributed to these pages, and I am deeply grateful for their insights and teachings.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Beverly Bain, Punam Khosla, Datejie, Beth Jordan, Mary Pritchard, Sarita Srivastava, and the women of INCITE!, all of whom were foundational in shaping my identity, analysis, and understanding of these issues and in setting me on the path that has culminated in this book. Thanks to Andrea Smith for cocreating INCITE! and inviting me into what became my political home. Beth Richie, Joo-Hyun Kang, Paula Rojas, Trishala Deb, Remy Kharbanda, Patricia Allard, and Queer (In)Justice coauthors Joey Mogul and Kay Whitlock also all played critical roles in my evolving analysis. I am also deeply grateful to the members of INCITE!’s national campaign on law enforcement violence and to my collaborators on the INCITE! Organizer’s Tool Kit: Alisa Bierria, Nada Elia, Shana griffin, and Xandra Ibarra; and to fellow organizers and participants of the COV4 and Critical Resistance 10 Law Enforcement Violence preconference institutes and the Allied Media Conference Say Her Name/Black Trans Lives Matter Network Gathering.
I finished this book during a period of tremendous personal, professional, and political turmoil. Throughout the last year of writing, death, loss, grief, critique, and self-reflection, both private and public, served as a constant backdrop. I am deeply grateful to the powerful Black women in my life who kept me grounded and focused, and served as doulas in the final stages of labor and self-doubt that preceded the book’s completion. Brilliant Beacon Press editor Jill Petty was literally the very first person to encourage me to write this book after reading my piece in the Color of Violence anthology and has been a consistent champion, cheerleader, and comrade, providing insightful and incisive comments throughout, talking me off the ledge more times than I can count, and going above and beyond time and time again. Visionary, author, and coach adrienne maree brown; co-struggler, scholar, and organizer extraordinaire Mariame Kaba, who graciously penned a beautiful and moving foreword; my sister in struggle, Cara Page; and shero and mentor Beth Richie all offered much-needed advice, critical questions, and essential encouragement to put this work out into the world. This book would not be in your hands if it weren’t for them, and for the many friends and strangers who reached out to offer words of encouragement and support over the past year. Endless appreciation also to Victoria Law, whose editorial insights were invaluable, and to Joey Mogul, Mia Mingus, Dani McClean, Monique Morris, Dean Spade, Gabriel Arkles, and David Perry for reading drafts. Heartfelt thanks to Alexis Pegues and Levi Craske, research assistants extraordinaire, for their critical commentary and dogged determination and skill tracking down information.
And, of course, deep appreciation to Gayatri Patnaik and all of the amazing staff at Beacon Press, who gave the book a new home and worked feverishly and thoughtfully to help make it the best and most beautiful it could be. Special thanks to Beth Collins, Nicholas DiSabatino, Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, Alyssa Hassan, Susan Lumenello, and Louis Roe, who truly went above and beyond, and to laurie prendergast, freelance indexer extraordinaire.
There is simply no question that I would never have completed this manuscript without the support of my brilliant, righteous, and fierce partner in love and struggle, Joey Mogul, who provided countless invaluable insights, endless encouragement, critical suggestions and edits, life-saving space and support, much-needed joy and laughter, and the best writing view ever.
My deepest gratitude to Emi Kane, Jenny Lee, Karla Mejia, Dean Spade, Marie Tatro, Urvashi Vaid, and Kyona Watts for their invaluable friendship and support over the years in so many ways; to Richard Brouillette, for keeping me in one piece and helping me become a better human; and to Clarence Patton, for starting the Pipeline Project, which saved my life. Deep gratitude also to my beautiful and beloved Allied Media Conference family, which every year for the past decade has regrounded and reinspired me, creating spaces for all of us to envision and practice the world we want to see.
I am also deeply indebted to the Windcall program and the Blue Mountain Center for reconnecting me to myself, the world between work and rest, art as resistance, and to my calling as a writer, and for providing a refuge, a space to write, and a new home. Sincere appreciation also to the Hambidge Center for offering space where significant work on this book took place, and to Stone House for creating and offering me Soul Sanctuary, and starting me on a road to healing.
Heartfelt appreciation to Brook Kelly-Green, Margaret Hempel, and the Gender, Race and Ethnic Justice Program of the Ford Foundation, and to Adam Culbreath, Christina Voight, and the Soros Justice Fellowship Program of the Open Society Foundations for believing in and supporting me and this project. Endless gratitude to Tina Campt, Janet Jakobsen, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women for hosting me as a Researcher-in-Residence, and to BCRW, the People’s Law Office, and the DePaul Law Civil Rights Clinic for research support.
I am profoundly grateful to my family of origin—to my father, for always believing in and standing with me, teaching me to fight for justice, to stand for what I believe in, to cheer for the underdog, to never give up, to pursue my dreams, to take risks, to jump fearlessly, to make the best of every moment, and to enjoy the view and the flowers along the way; to my mother, for modeling determination, a taste for adventure and a refusal to accept a lesser life; to my brother Robert for shaping me politically and being one of the most consistent sources of support, laughter, and home in my life. Thanks also to Robert and my brother Greg; my sister, Cindy; and my sisters-in-law Diona and Maria Cristina for making it possible for me to write over the past year and for all each of them has given and taught me; and to my twin-in-love Alyssa Mogul and to Honor Mogul. And, of course, to Che and Kente, who purred along as I wrote.
I am incredibly blessed to have had the opportunity to be in community and struggle with many whose brilliance, vision, dedication to justice, and joy have provided endless inspiration, including Ujju Aggarwal, Gabriel Arkles, Morgan Bassichis, Marbre Stahly-Butts, Flor Bermudez, Xochitl Bervera, Alisa Bierria, Caitlin Breedlove, Rachel Caïdor, Tara Cameron, Collette Carter, Shelby Chestnut, Eunice Cho, Loyda Colon, Gail Cooper, Jessica Danforth, Lisa Davis, Ejeris Dixon, Nada Elia, Monica Enríquez, Jordan Flaherty, Rebecca Fox, Veronica Bayetti-Flores, Elliot Fukui, Lisa Garrett, Pooja Gehi, Simmi Ghandi, Shana griffin, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Reina Gossett, Debbie Gould, Shira Hassan, Paris Hatcher, Kris Hayashi, Deon Haywood, Paulina Helm-Hernandez, Rachel Herzing, Darby Hickey, Amber Hollibaugh, Mary Hooks, Margaret Huang, Gaurav Jashnani, Xandra Ibarra, Myriam Jaïdi, Monica Jones, Naimah Johnson, Shaena Johnson, Che Johnson-Long, Alice Kim, Mimi Kim, J. Kirby, Erin Konsmo, Emi Koyama, Sarita Khurana, Alex Lee, Nakisha Lewis, Luce Lincoln, Deana Lewis, Jason Lydon, Rekha Malhotra, Rickke Mananzala, Meghan Maury, Rachel Mattson, Kate Mogulescu, Mandisa Moore, Addrana Montgomery, Maryse Mitchell-Brody, Anya Mukarji-Connolly, Soniya Munshi, Nadine Naber, Bhavana Nancherla, Isa Noyola, Julia Chinyere Oparah, laurie prendergast, Chanravy Proeung, Kyung-Ji Rhee, Clarissa Rojas, Penny Saunders, Edith Sargon, Joanne Smith, Brett Stockdill, Jay Toole, Ije Ude, Adaku Utah, Wes Ware, Joe Westmacott, Krista Williams, Toni-Michelle Williams, and so many more people I have been blessed to know and struggle alongside whose names I will kick myself for not remembering to include as soon as this book comes off the press.
Thanks to all my fellow steering committee members of Communities United for Police Reform, who model what principled, collaborative, fierce, and joyful intersectional organizing around policing issues can look like—including Yul-san Liem, Jose Lopez, Lynn Lewis, Monifah Bandele, Candis Tolliver, Kate Rubin, Brett Stoudt, Nahal Zamani, Delores Jones-Brown, and yes, Udi Ofer. Deep appreciation as well to the leadership of the No Condoms as Evidence/Access to Condoms Coalition for principled and relentless advocacy, and to the Federal LGBT Criminal Justice Working Group, which has achieved nothing less than a sea of change in how LGBTQ issues are understood at the federal level.
I am profoundly grateful for the intellectual and political labor and inspiration of Angela Y. Davis, whose writings on gender, race, class, and the prison industrial complex literally set me on the path of this work and who kindly and powerfully introduces readers to this book; and of Anannya Bhattacharjee, Devon Carbado, Cathy Cohen, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Y. Davis, Katherine Franke, Joy James, Monique Morris, Priscilla Ocen, Barbara Ransby, Beth Richie, Dorothy Roberts, Barbara Smith, and of Assata’s Daughters, the Audre Lorde Project, Black Lives Matter, Black Women’s Blueprint, Break-OUT!, Black Youth Project 100, Community United Against Violence, Critical Resistance, DRUM, FIERCE!, the Movement for Black Lives, Native Youth Sexual Health Network, Northwest Network of GLBT Survivors of Violence, Providence Youth Student Movement (PRYSM), the Racial Justice Action Center, SNaPCo, Southerners on New Ground, Streetwise and Safe, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Women With a Vision, and Young Women’s Empowerment Project. Thanks also to Rachel Gilmer, Rachel Anspaugh, Julia Sharpe-Levine, and the staff and board of the African American Policy Forum. I am also deeply grateful for the opportunity to know, support, and be inspired by family members of women killed by police including Maria Moore, Frances Garrett, Martinez Sutton, Valarie Carey, Natasha Duncan, and Cynthia Howell.
Thanks to Lynn Lu, Asha Tall, and all the members of the South End Press editorial collective for their labor over the years to build and maintain a progressive press and for being the first to believe in this book. Asha Tall’s editorial comments on an early draft of the chapter on sexual violence were as insightful ten years later and greatly improved the final result. Honor and appreciation to the following people who worked with me on early drafts of chapters: Gabriel Arkles (“Policing Gender Lines”; research on “Policing (Dis)Ability”), Xandra Ibarra (“Policing Sex”), Sheba Remy Kharbanda (“Policing Paradigms and Criminalizing Webs”), and Beth Richie (“Police Responses to Violence”). Deep gratitude as well to professor and friend Michelle Scott Jacobs, for all of her support as advisor to my 2002 unpublished law review article, which presented many of the ideas in this book in embryonic form and was the basis for portions of chapter 1.
Thanks also to Alessandra Bastagli at Nation Books, who encouraged me to write in my own voice, and Diane Wachtell of the New Press, who offered early encouragement and advice on structure.
Portions of the manuscript are based on articles written for TruthOut, The Public Eye, Colorlines, the New York Law Review for Social Justice, Loyola Law Review, and The Routledge History of Queer America. Heartfelt thanks to editors Akiba Solomon, Kathryn Johnson, Alana Yu-Price, and Don Romesburg, and to the students at NYU and Loyola Law School, for making these portions of the book infinitely better than they otherwise would have been.
This book is an honor, a responsibility, and a gift to the fierce young Black women, Native women, and women of color on the frontlines of Ferguson, BYP100, Black Lives Matter, the Movement for Black Lives, #NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline) and Indigenous resistance throughout Turtle Island, #NotOneMore and movements for migrant justice, and countless other struggles for liberation. I am humbled, inspired, and deeply grateful for the fierce, principled, unapologetic, and visionary leadership of Charlene Carruthers, national director of BYP100, whose words of fire close the book, the BYP100 Chicago chapter whose struggle for justice for Rekia Boyd was an inspiration to many, and for BYP100 chapters across the country in leading grassroots organizing centering Black women, girls, and fem(me) targets of police violence. My thanks, too, to Janaé Bonsu, BYP100 policy director, whose image graces the book’s cover, for her leadership, and to L’lerrét Ailith, BYP100 communications director, for always pushing us to center this conversation around those at the margins of the margins, to disrupt gender and make space for folk who live outside gender binaries, and for reminding me at a critical moment in the writing of this book of how my privilege intersects with my work. Thanks also to Sarah Jane Rhee, for taking the gorgeous cover photo and for documenting our resistance so beautifully.
Finally, Cissy Dyke/Mama, Jean(ne) Knight, and all of my Black women ancestors whose names I will never know, and Chloe, Ellie Mac, Isabel, Layla, Meilu, Melody, Nikki, and all the girls and gender-nonconforming youth of color in my life, past, present, and future, this is for you.