Like the author, my understanding of the conditions of Black women and girls in society is an evolving story. My story begins in the Chicago Osteopathic Hospital, where I was born in 1985 to two young parents who could only afford a home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Beyond the constant smell of the infamous stockyards that once existed there, I had no understanding of the historical significance of the neighborhood I lived in and the role it played in the evolution of community organizing. Organizer and movement theorist Saul Alinsky, and the institutions he organized with and built in the Back of the Yards in the 1930s, had long moved on. What I knew was that my family was the only Black family on my block and that my safety was not guaranteed.
My visibility in the classroom as a student labeled “gifted” and in the home as the oldest of three signaled various possibilities in a sea of people with limited options. However, that label meant nothing outside of my home, and only went so far to my advantage in the classroom. That label meant nothing to the police. I did not have the words to explain why I feared the police and security guards until I became an activist and organizer in Black liberation spaces. I did not have the words to explain the enduring angst I held about the survival and well-being of the socially and economically depressed communities I moved in between as a child and now an adult.
I told myself early on that I was no different from my family members who did not graduate from high school or had spent time in jails or prisons. I was only one in-school suspension for “sass” or having “attitude,” or one ringing metal detector away from going down the same pipeline. I drilled the saying that “I was no special snowflake” into my head. Despite an exterior air of confidence and certainty, I held on to a sense of insecurity beneath my armor as if it were the only way to stay alive in a city where my girlhood wasn’t valued or guaranteed. The high school security guards, administrative disciplinarians, metal detectors, and police surveillance reminded me of this reality every day.
Unlike the boys and young men around me, my parents didn’t have “the talk” about police with me. And yet, my earliest experiences with policing told me that while their motto was to “serve and protect,” they and their intermediaries had the power to dictate my daily existence (or nonexistence). I work to solve the puzzle of my constant anxiety and fear about the world around me through organizing on the ground in communities across the United States and in places around the globe. Invisible No More does the critical work needed to help explain just where that anxiety comes from for countless Black women and girls in this country. And it has done so in a more holistic way than most texts focusing on the impact of policing in the United States.
Today, I understand policing as inherently violent and beyond any state of repair. The reality of policing in the United States is much bigger than a few rotten apples. Just as the historical roots of the institution are rotten, so is the fruit that it bears in the United States and across the globe. Police are, and always have been, intermediaries and tools for wealthy elites, serving the interests of property owners over those of marginalized people. These realities are what produce images of our brutalized bodies and traumatized spirits on the Internet and stories of police violence from rape to murder splattered across social media and in the press. We have become hypervisible, and yet remain invisible at the same time.
Even in this invisibility, there are those who see us. I bristle at suggestions that “no one cares” in the aftermath of a killing, rape, or other form of violence. In reality, someone does care. It is often likely the person is not someone in power or seen as a valued source. For example, the Black trans and gender-nonconforming community (including some LGBQ folks, but not nearly enough) expresses outrage each time a Black trans woman is murdered. One crucial part of the problem is that they, and the stories they amplify, are not heard or valued as much as they should be valued. They are rendered invisible.
Our stories are powerful fuel for our collective resistance. There is simply not enough political will to build the power we need to end the state-sanctioned violence that Black women and girls experience via the police or other sites of violent power. Invisible No More does the important work our movement needs by telling more complete stories and valuing the resistance of those most directly impacted. These stories should make us all uncomfortable. We should shift in our seats. We should cry. And we must organize. We must all commit to taking action to build the necessary political will to create a society where freedom isn’t a constant struggle. Ella Baker teaches us that through collective organizing, we can develop the strong people, not just single leaders.
To the Black women, girls, and trans and gender-nonconforming folks who read this book, I know that you have stories that are untold. These are stories that must be heard, valued, and centered throughout our movements. Without them, our collective story is incomplete. I want to hear and learn more. The charge of Invisible No More is to not only shed light or increase awareness; it is to agitate us all into deeper political commitments to ending policing and abolishing all punitive institutions in the United States, while developing alternatives to dealing with conflict and harm based in restorative and transformative justice models. None of this has been or will be easy. Taking up a political commitment to abolish punitive institutions tests the core of our humanity.
Frederick Douglass is known for saying that “power concedes nothing without a demand.” I further that argument and say that power concedes nothing without an organized demand. The powers working against ending all forms of oppression are as old as efforts to resist them. Our people have always organized and imagined different possibilities. From the slave rebellions and lunch-counter sit-ins, to the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and the Combahee River Collective—there is much to learn from our legacies of collective resistance and imagination. Yes, our movement today has escalated the call to #SayHerName. But our work cannot stop there. BYP100 is digging into deeper inquiry, outreach, and agitation to advance this work. These tumultuous times call for us to go big and ignite our collective imaginations. Our ancestors want more for and from us. Now is the time to build on the traditions of Black radical and revolutionary imaginations that beg the arguments for self-determination and self-love for the sake of our collective liberation. In doing so we will move closer toward the edge where our struggles and triumph will be Invisible No More in this lifetime.
—Charlene A. Carruthers, national director, Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100)