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<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="http://radfag.com/2015/12/02/misogyny-on-the-mag-mile-a-turning-point/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://radfag.com/2015/12/02/misogyny-on-the-mag-mile-a-turning-point/">http://radfag.com/2015/12/02/misogyny-on-the-mag-mile-a-turning-point/</a></a></small></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Misogyny on the Mag Mile: A Turning Point</h1>
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<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_2700"
data-shortcode="caption"><span class="entry-date"><a
href="http://radfag.com/2015/12/02/misogyny-on-the-mag-mile-a-turning-point/"
title="11:31 am" rel="bookmark"><time
class="entry-date"
datetime="2015-12-02T11:31:06+00:00" pubdate="">December
2, 2015</time></a></span> <span class="sep">·</span>
<span class="byline">by <span class="author vcard"><a
class="url fn n"
href="http://radfag.com/author/radfag/"
title="View all posts by rad fag" rel="author">rad
fag</a></span></span>
<p class="wp-caption-text">After Black, queer women
organizers were physically attacked on the Magnificent
Mile, we must ask what the next steps of our movement
will be–and who will be leading us.</p>
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<p>Several prominent Chicago youth organizers—all of them
Black women, and the majority of them queer—were
physically assaulted on Black Friday during the hugely
successful shutdown of the Magnificent Mile in honor of
Laquan McDonald.</p>
<p>The religious leaders and community elders who called
for the demonstration rallied early in the day at the
Water Tower in the Loop. Several youth
organizations—BYP100, FLY and Assata’s Daughters—were
invited to participate, and appeared in several photo
ops with Jesse Jackson Sr. and other public figures, the
majority of them men.</p>
<p>As organizers began to address the crowd, several
well-known Black elders forced their way to the front,
pushed youth organizers back from the mic, and one man
actually began elbowing a young, Black, queer woman in
the face. Minutes later, when one of the heads of BYP
confronted the elder, he swung on a second Black woman,
shouting sexist and homophobic slurs, and a small
scuffle ensued.</p>
<p>In the wake of the altercation, youth organizers
performed their own mic check to address the crowd, then
promptly left the march—some to treat injuries, while
others simply felt deeply unsafe and disrespected.</p>
<p>The Black, queer women targeted in this attack were the
same ones who had been clashing with police in the
streets all week, including the night the video of
Laquan was released. They were the same organizers who
had staged and been arrested in the shutdown of the IACP
conference in Chicago last month. They were the youth
who have been working tirelessly to lift up the name of
Rekia Boyd, and who created a seamless campaign to fire
Dante Servin, the officer who killed her. They were the
same youth who have been instrumental in organizing for
and ultimately winning a trauma center for the South
Side, and who led the original Black Friday shutdown of
the Magnificent Mile in 2014.</p>
<p>In short, they were badass, Black, queer, young women
who have orchestrated and overseen long-term
campaigns for Black lives in the city of Chicago with
little to no support from the male elders who attacked
them.</p>
<p>The incredible turnout for the Black Friday
demonstration displayed Chicagoans’ ability to forge
direct connections between capitalism, corporate revenue
and the squelching of Black life. It undeniably fueled
the firing of police superintendent McCarthy, and the
calls for further resignations resounding through the
city. Yet the media frenzy generated by the video of
Laquan McDonald’s murder and its subsequent cover-up
meant the sudden appearance of community members,
religious leaders, and well-known Black figureheads who
have not been in evidence at the countless political
demonstrations over the past two years. Large numbers of
these were men, significantly older than the organizers
who have been leading the fight for Black lives in that
time.</p>
<p>The assault of young women activists on the Mag Mile is
both tragic and terrifying. When placed in the context
of the larger demonstration, and the state of Black
organizing in Chicago, the attack raises crucial
questions about the next steps of the movement for Black
liberation.</p>
<p>Black Lives Matter was founded by young, Black, queer
women. This is <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/">not
up for debate</a>. On both national and local levels,
Black, queer women have been on the front lines, while
simultaneously organizing strategy, tactics and
messaging behind the scenes. It was their groundwork
that <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.autostraddle.com/badass-black-queer-women-paved-the-way-for-the-mizzou-movement-315857/">made
the uprising at Mizzou</a> and subsequent campuses
around the nation come to fruition. It is their deeply
capable organizing that has made the founding of new
organizations, the execution of game changing actions,
and the sustaining of the struggle for Black lives
possible.</p>
<p>This is not accidental. As youth, as women, and as
queer people, these revolutionaries stand at the crux of
deeply oppressive systems, and carry a unique
understanding of the ways racial injustice is dependent
on misogyny, homophobia, nationalism, adultism,
capitalism, and so much more to maintain its potency.
Not only have they shown themselves over generations to
be the most fearless warriors for justice, their demands
are consistently the most radical, their vision the most
clear, their abilities to unite and connect the
disparate members of their communities the most
well-honed and indispensable.</p>
<p>What is alarming about the attack that happened on the
Mag Mile is that it requires us to revisit these facts
as though they are revelations, rather than things that
should be common knowledge to any individual claiming to
be a part of the movement for Black lives. Attacking any
young, Black, queer woman—but especially those who have
been fighting harder than anyone else in their city for
justice on a daily basis—is the equivalent of showing up
late to class halfway through the semester and throwing
your textbook at the professor.</p>
<p>It’s not surprising, then, that many of the male elders
who organized the march, as well as those who took
prominent positions in media coverage, posed not merely
less radical demands, but ones that actually contradict
those advocated for by young, Black, queer women
throughout the last year. Calling for vague reforms, and
even demanding there be <em>more</em> police of color,
not only displays a lack of knowledge of the issues the
movement has already rejected, but undermines the
nuanced and more fully-formed demands for <a
target="_blank" href="http://byp100.org/stopthecops/">economic
justice</a> and the <a target="_blank"
href="http://radfag.com/2015/10/24/happening-now-fundblackfutures-action-shuts-down-iacp-conference/">redistributing
of resources</a> that youth organizers have heralded.</p>
<p>There is a long history within Black struggles in the
US of purposefully silencing youth, women and queers.
From Claudette Coleman—a teen mom who was the first
person on record to refuse to give up her seat in
Montgomery—being swapped out for a depoliticized Rosa
Parks, to Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and other women
being banned from speaking at the famed March on
Washington. The reoccurring rationale for erasing the
contributions of these radical figures is
respectability. As movements gain momentum and
visibility, the militant voices that spark them often
become seen as threats to mainstream acceptance, and the
faces of the true leaders too controversial to be beheld
by the structures they are railing against.</p>
<p>Is it any coincidence, then, that as national scrutiny
falls on Chicago over issues that youth have been
drawing our attention to for years, male figureheads
felt the need to physically attack young, Black, queer
women who have been leading the fight long before there
were any cameras to record them?</p>
<p>Ultimately, as our movement swells and attention grows,
there is a question about how leadership will be shared.
One of the greatest successes of the Black Lives Matter
movement thus far is its decentralized form of
organizing—not a leaderless but a leader-full movement,
to quote BLM originator Patrisse Cullors. This structure
is the intentional design of young, Black, queer women
organizers. Its dismantling or undermining in the name
of ego represents not just the sexist dismissal of their
hard work, but a disregard for the movement’s early
triumphs, and lack of forethought for its future.</p>
<p>And as so many of the leaders and experts that
materialized this week before the cameras were nowhere
to be found in the campaigns pioneered by youth
organizers, one must ask where they will be once the
media hubbub has died down.</p>
<p>Will the preachers and pastors who tout “Black love”
remember to extend that love to Black women and queers?
Will the public intellectuals and talking heads who call
for “Black unity” reach out to youth as more than mere
tokens? Will the sectors of our communities that chant
“stop the violence” intervene when they see youth,
women, queers being assaulted by their brothers and
sisters?</p>
<p>One thing is for certain: We will always be here, and
we will always be at the front—whether we are recognized
by our more privileged counterparts or not—no matter
what slurs or threats are hurled at us, no matter from
what party.</p>
<p>In the words of BYP leader Charlene Carruthers: We
started this shit. We gone finish this shit.</p>
<p>Special thanks to Veronica Morris-Moore</p>
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