You have journeyed with us during Women's History Month as we set out to challenge the traditional commemoration of white cisgender womanhood, and to instead center and celebrate the legacy of Black feminist organizing. As the month comes to a close, we again uplift the liberatory potential of a Black feminist lens, and invite you to join us as we continue to build a world where Black women, girls, queer, and trans people can live abundant lives in safe communities. Our theme of the month "But Some of Us Are Brave: Honoring Black Feminist Resistance to Patriarchal Violence" echoes the title of a seminal text on Black feminism edited by Akasha Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. And in our opening statement, we shared how our gender justice work across decades has drawn immensely from Black feminist thought. Today, we are proud to offer a new resource that captures the breadth of the Center for Constitutional Rights' work fighting together and on behalf of gender-oppressed people, and points to the necessity of centering the experiences and vision of Black cis/trans women and girls, non-binary, intersex, and transmasculine people. [READ THE RESOURCE LIST HERE]In a conversation with our advocacy associate maya finoh, Andrea Ritchie, a Black feminist organizer, abolitionist, author, and attorney, emphasized the world-shifting that is possible when we apply a Black feminist lens: "...when you look at issues of policing and criminalization through the lens of the experiences of Black women, queer, and trans people, you get much more quickly to the need for abolition." If our measure of a just society is one where Black women, girls, queer, and trans people live in dignity, safety, and with joy, we must uproot misogynoir, transphobia, homophobia, and patriarchal violence wherever it exists. We must reconfigure the world. Listen to the podcast or read the transcript on the Activist Files. The Black feminist understanding that everything must change, and that centering Black women, girls, queer, and trans people will get us so much closer to the world we deserve, leaves us, as maya said, "critically hopeful." In the coming weeks, the Center for Constitutional Rights will continue our own internal education about patriarchal violence and deepening our roots in Black feminism. We hope you will join us! Until freedom, All of us at the Center for Constitutional Rights |
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