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Sayhername Loudly: How Black Girls Are Leading #Blacklivesmatter

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Sayhername Loudly: How Black Girls Are Leading #Blacklivesmatter ISSN: 1941-0832 #SayHerName Loudly: How Black Girls Are Leading #BlackLivesMatter by-Ileana Jiménez THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE AND ELISABETH IRWIN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS CHANT IN WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK AS PART OF THEIR #BLACKLIVESMATTER WALKOUT IN DECEMBER 12, 2014 (IMAGE: ILEANA JIMéNEZ). RADICAL TEACHER 87 http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu No. 106 (Fall 2016) DOI 10.5195/rt.2016.310 n the early winter of 2014, students at Elisabeth Irwin ways. As Garza points out, “being Black queer women in High School, the same school from which Angela Davis this society (and apparently within these movements) I was graduated in 1961, walked out of the building tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy.” holding #BlackLivesMatter signs. While I don‟t believe my students intended to repeat They chanted in unison. They marched from Charlton the same toxic cycles of racialized sexism and homophobia Street in downtown Manhattan to Washington Square Park that Garza points out in her article, I definitely saw this to a local police precinct in the West Village to Union erasure in our students‟ walkout signs as an opportunity to Square, then up the concrete canyons in midtown, and revise my curriculum, not only in my feminism elective continued their march back to the Little Red School House designed for juniors and seniors, where I started to include & Elisabeth Irwin High School (LREI). Nearly 200 students the African American Policy Forum‟s report, Say Her Name: 1 were led by boys of color, Black and Latino. The students Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women , and other who marched with them were Black, Latino, Asian and #SayHerNamearticles, but also in my American literature white; they were girls and boys, both transgender and course for sophomores, where my team teaching colleague cisgender, queer and straight. Their Black, brown, white, and I included more connections to #BlackLivesMatter. queer, and straight teachers walked along beside them, These conversations are for all young people, not only including their straight, white, male, Jewish principal. those who have access to special topics electives. Garza I marched with them, too, their queer, feminist, Puerto reminds us that “Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Rican teacher from the Bronx whose father is a retired New Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black- York City police officer. When we placed our bodies in front undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all of the precinct for our die-in, the silence resounded. I was Black lives along the gender spectrum.” If we truly intend doing exactly what my father had taught me to do: to to create liberatory spaces for liberatory thinking and stand up (or lie down) for justice. I was just doing it quite action, then all of our K-12 classes must heed Garza‟s call differently than he had ever imagined. to affirm and include all Black lives. Black girls marched too. Garza reminds us that “Black Like their peers, they held signs and chanted and Lives Matter affirms the lives of marched. Some signs read “Hands Up, Don‟t Shoot” and Black queer and trans folks, “Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere.” As I marched alongside them, I noticed only one Black girl disabled folks, Black-undocumented carrying a sign that read “Am I Next?” There weren‟t any folks, folks with records, women other signs that directly called out violence against black and all Black lives along the gender girls and women. No signs signaled violence against Black spectrum.” queer and transgender communities. There certainly weren‟t any signs that read #SayHerName. That was My concern about the student protest signs was short- because the African American Policy Forum (AAPF)—the lived. Black girls at LREI came back to school with an New York-based racial justice think tank co-founded by urgency and a sustained energy around #BlackLivesMatter Black feminist legal theorist, Kimberlé Crenshaw—had not that surpassed that of the boys who led the march. Three yet coined the hashtag, #SayHerName, until a few months Black girls in particular, Kalli Jackson, Ellana Lawrence, and later in February 2015. Even so, Black feminist media had LabeebahSubair, took the helm. Like Black women during already been writing about violence against Black women the Civil Rights Movement and now in #BlackLivesMatter, and girls, including #BlackLivesMatter co-founder, Alicia these three girls made no excuses for their leadership. Garza, in an October 2014 piece titled “A Herstory of the Politicized as ninth graders by the walkout in 2014, they #BlackLivesMatter Movement,” in which she wrote: returned as sophomores during the 2015-16 school year ready to get their peers in formation. They wrote poetry, It is an acknowledgment that Black women made films, choreographed dance pieces, and organized continue to bear the burden of a relentless assault assemblies, all in the name of #BlackLivesMatter and on our children and our families and that assault #SayHerName. is an act of state violence. Black queer and trans folks bearing a unique burden in a hetero- Founded in 1921 by white lesbian educator Elisabeth patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage Irwin, the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of School started as a public school experiment within New us is state violence . the fact that Black girls York City‟s then Board of Education. Since its founding, are used as negotiating chips during times of LREI has survived the slings and arrows of Tammany Hall, conflict and war is state violence. (Garza 2014) the Red Scare, and beyond. During the Depression, LREI became an independent school in 1932 when the Board of In the same way that Black women have always been Education shut down experimental education in its public erased from the historical record of the Civil Rights schools. Today, LREI remains an activist school committed Movement as well as from women‟s and gay rights to its experimental past when students proudly wore blue movements, the queer Black women who founded overalls with proverbial red diapers (O‟Han 2016). The #BlackLivesMatter—PatrisseCullors, Garza, and Opal school continues to attract both students and teachers who Tometi—have also found themselves erased in multiple want to make an impact on a world still broken by RADICAL TEACHER 88 http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu No. 106 (Fall 2016) DOI 10.5195/rt.2016.310 institutionalized oppression and structural violence. Outsider, I wanted to gather Black girl feminist activists in Elisabeth Irwin herself was close to Eleanor Roosevelt and conversation as well. During our time together after school, worked with the First Lady to highlight the school‟s focus Kalli, Ellana, and Labeebah talked about their education at on social change. As Ellana notes, “Before coming to LREI LREI and their entrance into #BlackLivesMatter and in ninth grade, I attended a public school in Queens. I #SayHerName activism. Throughout our conversation, they decided to come to LREI because I admired how EI frequently used the term “master narrative,” which they encourages students to fight for social justice as well as to learned during their sophomore year study of Toni always be socially aware.” Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye. Kalli and Labeebah studied this novel with me, and Ellana with a colleague. Morrison once I came to LREI for exactly that same reason. A told journalist Bill Moyers in a now famous 1990 interview closeted Latina in girls‟ schools for the first seven years of that the master narrative is the “white male life” we have my career, I sought out LREI at 29 and I am now 41. It all internalized as the universal norm (Moyers 1990). This was one of the most liberating decisions of my life. After term provides the girls with a touchstone for naming white years of trying to bring intersectional feminism to girls‟ privilege and supremacy. Naming how the master narrative schools between 1997 and 2004, I was ready to be in a functions in their everyday lives fuels their feminist call to school that had social justice in its DNA. In fact, once I action in #BlackLivesMatter. learned that Irwin was a fellow Smith alum, I knew that LREI would become a home and not just a job. And it is my During our conversation, they were mindful of the home. In the 13 years that I have been at LREI, it has shift they had made from being either one of a few Black allowed my teacher-activism to flourish. It was at LREI girls in a predominantly white private middle school or where my former Black feminist principal, Ruth Geyer being a Black girl in a predominantly Black public middle Jurgensen, supported me when I started my blog, Feminist school with white faculty to later being a part of the 32% Teacher, in 2009, and it was she who wholeheartedly that are students of color at LREI. Kalli identifies as Black approved of the intersectional feminism and activism and Chinese; Ellana identifies as West Indian and Asian; and Labeebah identifies as Nigerian and Muslim. Although they are now at a predominantly white school, all three noted that LREI has provided them with the academic and artistic platform to be activists today. As Kalli notes, it is because she can see herself in the curriculum at LREI, that she is able to claim her Black feminist identity: “I think because I am now at LREI where we talk about Black feminism, I had to get involved because it would be stupid not to be on my own side . I‟m not getting an education that is teaching me to leave myself out or dislike myself or not care about my own history.
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