Jared Ball (Moderating) - Summit for Accountability In Social Movements (2021)

Jared Ball: Greetings everyone, and thank you for joining us at this very important summit regarding accountability and social justice movements. My name is Jared Ball, professor of communi— whoops, sorry about that— professor of communication studies and Africana studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, and host of I Mix What I Like, as well as co-founder of this Black Power Media platform. I'm of course honored to be here Thank you, Dr. Ali. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us at this gathering largely organized by my esteemed co-moderator, author, teacher, theorist, JEGNA, and so much more, Dr. Joy James. The origins for this summit come from organizers and/or impacted families who have watched opportunistic family politics and revenue streams emerge from Black freedom movements for decades. With their critiques, we intend to discuss past mobilizations, current crises, contradictions, and map strategies for political analyses that increase the stability and security of our communities as we demand and practice accountability and social justice for Black liberation. We have a few questions to be posed to our guests, who will offer a brief introduction of themselves on way to responding.

Speaker 2: We will then—

Jared Ball: we will discuss with them those questions for roughly the first hour or so, and then move to theirs and your questions in the second. The video will be archived here along with associated statements at imixwhatilike.org. where they will remain free— freely accessible to all. So thanks again for joining us. And Dr. James, I'll turn it over to you for any initial comments before we bring up our first set of guests, panelists, and questions.

Joy James: Thank you, Professor Ball, also known as Jared. And thank you for all the contributors today. I see this as a healing moment and very much a learning moment. I want to say a little bit about the origins and then We'll proceed. So, activists, very young activists— I don't know what very young is anymore— activists in their 20s were central to this endeavor that we're joining in today. Da'Shaun Harrison, Rebecca Anne Wilcox and others, John John Moore and others, have helped put together this summit. And also, the conceptualization of it came from activists and— Activists. Organizers and activist academics, right? So there's 3 things that stay in my mind that I want to put forward in the 2 minutes I have left. One is political agency, the second is spirituality, and the third is protection. I would argue that the political agency that we have now is collectively coming from streams of dedicated people. If you think back to the Black Panther Party statement that came out in 2020, Asking questions about political celebrities representing movements. If you think about the BLM 10 statement that came out later in 2020, the mothers here, Shapell Wells and I believe also Dorothy Holmes is here, have worked with me and taught me a lot over five years. The activists themselves have suffered trauma. It's impacted families, as Jared said, who become the catalyst to movements. But also there are activists organizing who've also lost. Family members to gun violence or murder. So political agency comes from different sites. The spirituality grows out of our trauma. And the third thing is the protection, which is absolutely necessary if we're to go forward— how we protect ourselves, how we protect each other, and how we protect a legacy of struggle. And so I'm very heartened by the responses of the people who are participating, by Black Power Movement for being such a strong ally and offering a platform and committed to learning more.

Jared Ball: All right, right on. So Dr. James is going to graciously step back for a few minutes so we can invite more of the panelists on. And we will—

Speaker 2: I will do that now. Let's see. And To the stream.

Jared Ball: Uh, okay. All right, first of all, greetings everybody. Apologies for the, uh, again, the inelegant transition here. Uh, we are endeavoring to get as many people on as possible, uh, mindful of the fact that there may be a need to, to change folks in and out to accommodate the amount of folks that we have, uh, And the ability to get them all on screen. So again, welcome to everybody. And initially, we're just asking you all to respond to 3 questions we hope you've all had a chance to see. The first being, how did or do you trust and set expectations? What conflicts, contradictions, or betrayals exist? And what is accountability and consequences if groups or individuals refuse to honor accountability in freedom movements? And please, on your way to responding, do give a brief introduction of yourselves. And Ms. Shaperlle Wells, I believe we'll start with you.

Shaperlle Wells: Okay. My name is Shaperlle Wells. I am the mother of Courtney Copeland, also the vice president of the Courtney Copeland Memorial Foundation. My son Courtney Copeland was killed in 2016. And basically, he was allowed to die by the Chicago Police Department. He went to them for help, and they refused to help him. And so, for me, For me, I have always been an activist, even before this situation hit my own family personally. And so, I believe that right now what we're seeing in the movement that's out here is that a lot of the organized— organizations are actually speaking on behalf of the families But they are not actually including the family in the development of plans and actions. And that's one of my biggest concerns, because I feel, as a family member, sometimes we are left out of the planning and the execution of the movement. And the movement was born out of the lives of our children.

Speaker 2: Right on.

Jared Ball: Felix, you want to go next?

Speaker 2: Oh, you need to—

Jared Ball: I'm sorry, we need to unmute you. Sorry about that. Go ahead. Oh, it says I can't unmute you. Your mic is disconnected.

Felix: Can you hear me now?

Jared Ball: Yes.

Felix: Okay, cool. Hey, y'all, I'm Felix. I'm a Louisville community organizer with my organization BOSS. We've been around for 3 years helping Black creatives and entrepreneurs find business resources to elevate their platforms. Through the uprising, we started a nonprofit branch— well, not really nonprofit, but along those lines. branch called Blacktivists where we do a lot of tenant justice and tenant empowerment, and we've just been here fighting for justice for Breonna Taylor and other Black lives since last May. Do you want me to jump into a specific question or just freestyle?

Jared Ball: Initially, we were asking everybody to answer at least the first of those 3 questions: how did you Or how did or do you trust and set expectations?

Felix: I think the best way to trust is to just kind of— you just kind of have to be vulnerable. You have to kind of believe that people are here for the right reasons. But I think setting the boundaries are absolutely important. I think people have to give space to those who have been doing this work and also to the families who are going through the trauma. And I think that people need to use their platforms in a deliberate way. So that's the way that I create my boundaries.

Jared Ball: Uh, Ms. Wells, had you said all you wanted to say on that question?

Speaker 2: I just want to make sure.

Jared Ball: Go ahead.

Shaperlle Wells: Well, yes, I have, uh, basically, uh, stated everything that we need to, uh, state that, you know, like I said, you know, um, the movement was, was started because of what was happening to our specific children. And it's not just like the high-profile cases. We know that there are many, many, many cases that go unheard of. But the reality is, is that the impact of the families are experiencing, you know, it's very deeply rooted. And so I just encourage BLM and all of the other organizations to not forget about the families. Because we are the reason that they exist. And so, I just want to, you know, be clear. And I support all of these organizations who are actually out here helping us to get our messaging out and to also to help us to, you know, get in the media, to get whatever platform that we want to have out. But I just don't want us to get lost, us meaning the families. of the victims that have been accosted by police brutality.

Jared Ball: Sure, sure. Max, let me turn to you and invite you to give a brief introduction of yourself and to respond to this first question of how did or do you trust and set expectations?

Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Max Parthus. I'm the co-director for state operations for the Abolish Slavery National Network. I'm also the acting director for the Paul Cuffee Abolitionist Center. How do you trust people? How do I trust and what expectations do I set? It's really a level, certain levels of things. When we first started out, trust was about, can I trust you with my life? Because the things that we're doing get you killed, literally, you know? So can I trust you with my life is the first thing. And I keep my circle very small. We have a lot of organizations that we work with, but the people that are the core team that I deal with is people I trust enough to trust with my Because our predecessors have tried everything we're doing right now, and they are in the ground. So I keep that in mind at all times. And what expectations do we set? Well, as an organization, we have bylaws. That's one thing, for certain rules that we have to go by within our own organization, who's coming and who's going and how we do things and how we make decisions. So those are the expectations there. I think there's unwritten expectations that everybody is aware of. Well, we probably all have some, and those also apply too.

Jared Ball: All right, right on. Ashley, you want to jump in? Again, we're asking folks to give a brief introduction of themselves and take a minute to— or a few minutes to respond to the question, how did or do you trust and set expectations?

Ashley: Hey, can you all hear me?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Ashley: Sorry, I had to step outside. Thank you all for having me. Before I introduce myself, I just want to take a second to raise some names and bring some names into this room, and also just center myself on why I'm here. So I want to bring the names Reverend Carlton Lee into the room. I want to bring the name Darren Seals into the room. I want to bring the name Edward Crawford, a.k.a. Scooter, into the room. I want to bring Bassem Mazri into the room. Forever Palestine, free Palestine, always, all days. I want to bring Donye Jones, the son of Melissa McKinnis, into the room. And I'd also like to bring Marshawn McCarroll and Erica Garner into the room. Ashe. I'm from St. Louis, a.k.a., now known as Ferguson. I've been an activist, as they call it, from my teen years, before I even knew what activism was. I was raised in this tradition. I was born in my blood. My family taught me who I am from an early age. And so, in 2014, when Mike Brown was killed in the streets of my hometown, it wasn't even a thought of what to do, right? I was one of the thousands of people, or hundreds of people, first off, from my community, that took to the streets without a plan, without, you know, knowing what we were going to do, but just knowing that we had had enough and that we could not stand that you had killed an 18-year-old child.

Yane Strong: Right.

Ashley: And left him in the street for four and a half hours. And so that's the history that I come into this setting with. The people whose names I raised, some of you may be familiar with their names, some of you may not. But all of those are activists that we have lost since 2014. There's a reason I want to center in that because when we're talking about this, we're talking about real impact. We're talking about real consequences. We're talking about material consequences, and we're talking about a continuation of trauma and harm that cannot be. Overpass. These are all people that I knew. Not that that matters, right? But that's too many names. And so to get into the conversation here, for me, very much like what Max said, setting expectations around organizing really requires an understanding of the depth of what you're getting into. Again, I was raised understanding the sacrifices that came before me. The people who made them understanding and the people who got into it and didn't know what they were, you know, potentially sacrificing, and honoring all of them equally. Because when we say Black Lives Matter, we really mean it. Every Black life is precious. And so, when I got into this work, I had to acknowledge that there was a certain risk that I was taking. But the way that I got into this work most deeply, everyone was taking the same risk. When you went out into the street in Ferguson, everyone caught the same tear gas. Everyone caught the same rubber bullets. Everyone— it didn't matter if you were a child, you know, differently aged.

Shaperlle Wells: Right.

Ashley: It didn't matter who you were. Everybody caught it the same, and so that really united us and bonded us. There wasn't an opportunity to fake the funk when you have to bond together against violence that's threatening your life. And so, so many people look at that, and it is trauma, and they see the trauma in it. But there's also a particularity of experience in it that I would never trade for the world because I know something about those people who stood next to me night after night after night after night. And what I tell folks, and I've told folks since that day, is. You know, they're like, how did you survive it? We really formed troops, just like the people they send overseas. We each had a cadre of folks that we were responsible for checking in with, for being accountable to, for making sure their well-being, you know, they were eating, basic needs, for making sure they got home safely, for making sure they were protected. And so, again, there was no opportunity to really fake the funk. And so I'm grateful for that, because I know how I've seen people show up. Everyone doesn't have that opportunity. And that's what I realized as we kind of navigated out of the streets and into, you know, more—

Tone: Right.

Ashley: Organizing rooms and legislative spaces, I realize that there's a lot of opportunity for people to fake in those spaces. There's a lot of opportunity for people to present politics that they don't embody, and they don't live in those spaces. And that's why I think it's incredibly important that we continue the resistance, not because of the trauma and not because, you know, we need to show white people, but because there is something special that happens when people go out into the street and they take power. So I'll stop there and let others into the conversation. But thank you all for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Right on.

Shaperlle Wells: I appreciate that.

Jared Ball: Bianca, let me, if I can turn to you, same thing, if you would just give a brief introduction. And we're asking for a first response to how did or do you trust and set expectations?

Shaperlle Wells: Thank you for having me. My name is Bianca Jamar, Dr. Bianca Jamar. I'm an epidemiologist and a clinical research scientist regularly, but I'm also an activist, a womanist, the founder of Burn the Cape Foundation, and I Hi, my name is Helyeh Doutaghi. I began working in the Black Lives Matter movement preliminary— preliminarily prior to its uprising. I started working in activism in 2009, but then went full speed into activism in the birth of— after the Ferguson uprising, during the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of Mike Brown. How do I trust and set expectations? I think it's important to make sure that you and your expectations that are understood To make sure they're understood so that they benefit everyone. So, when setting expectations, I like to let people know what can be expected of me, what they can expect of me and my leadership, what we should be able to expect from each other, what I would like to expect from them, which primarily is trust, a foundation, loyalty, understanding that our ideologies are the same, that even if we may have different political views, that we have these same goal, make sure that our boundaries, as far as how we respect one another and how we treat one another, are aligned, and making sure that what you say is what you stand behind and not that— that you're not more concerned in what it looks like versus what it actually is. So I would say that is how I set expectations and a boundary for trust.

Jared Ball: Sure, right on. Well, if, with everyone's permission, Ms. Wells, I'll just go back to you to start with this, the next set of, the next round of questions, which is what conflicts or contradictions or betrayals exist as you see it? Oh, let me make sure you're unmuted. Oh, let's unmute you. Sorry about that. Please go ahead.

Shaperlle Wells: No problem. Well, I would say— I wouldn't say— betrayal, to me, is like a big word. So I wouldn't say— I just think that there are people who have separate agendas. I have seen in this movement, because there's a lot of money being thrown at Black Lives Matter, Local activists— I only can speak about Chicago. I'm sorry. I'm out of Chicago. You know, you have high-profile activists like Jamal Green. You have Will. You have Jedediah Brown. All of these people who zoom the streets running when a Black person is killed. So you have all these people.

Yane Strong: Right.

Shaperlle Wells: Who have capitalized, personally. I'm not talking about, you know, the family or the organization that's surrounding in the areas getting bigger, or they're helping family members and everything like that. I'm saying personally, they're benefiting from the death of children. And so I think that, you know, I wouldn't say betrayal, but I think that we have to have more accountability.

Ashley: Right.

Shaperlle Wells: For the funds that are coming into the community, because they're being sent by whoever based on the fact that they want to help the families who have been impacted. They want to change the community, the surrounding communities. And I personally simply do not see any change with all of the billions of dollars that have been thrown at this movement. And so, for me, as an impacted family, I'm trying to figure out where is the money going?

Ashley: Right.

Shaperlle Wells: Who has access to it?

Crystal: Who—

Shaperlle Wells: how do we, as families, get access to it? How do we express our needs in the community of, say, you know, maybe we want to do a rally for our child, or maybe we want to have something— you know, like I said, I have a foundation. How do we, as family, get the attention of these so-called grassroots movements?

Martin: Thank you.

Shaperlle Wells: Who have been receiving millions and millions of dollars, and the people who are directly impacted, meaning the families in the Chicagoland area, we're getting nothing. We're getting nothing. And so I see all the time there, that's where they're sitting on the mayor's board in Chicago. I remember when Mayor Lightfoot was still running. For mayor, and she had put together a council of activists. And I'm like, how can you have a council of activists and you have no family members on the team? And so, to me, because they are high-profile, quote-unquote, activists, they have a seat at the table. Well, with families, we can give you more detailed information on how We can better serve the community, prevent any more crime, because we saw what happened to us. And so, you know, I always— I'm always thinking about how can we, as family members, bridge the gap between activism and the people in government to actually get a seat at the table. So, I mean, like I said, I wouldn't say it's betrayal. I just think it's a lack of communication.

Speaker 2: Right.

Jared Ball: Right on. Let me make sure I'm bringing Dr. James back up.

Speaker 2: I think—

Jared Ball: did you want to interject at this, say something at this point, Professor James, or—

Joy James: Well, I appreciate everybody's sharing. I mean, our questions are in general, and so of course you are adding more and making it deeper and richer. I was kind of struck by what Ashley said about how we continue the resistance, and then people have talked about trauma, but also being eclipsed by governmental entities, elected officials you think would be on your side. That's how they campaign, right? And so, you know, as, as we're working through your questions that you want to pose to people, right, who are listening to learn from you, I'm wondering how you see the resistance continuing, having longevity, and the accountability, the strategies for accountability, so that government officials, nonprofits, media actually respond to the realities that we're all dealing with, but that you know specifically because you've been in the struggle in ways that— where you're under-resourced but incredibly disciplined to stay in struggle.

Shaperlle Wells: Well, for me, Joy, I think that the only thing that government, the public, actually listens to is economic boycott. I mean, Black people have a trillion-dollar economy. And the only way that we're going to get legislative movement, as well as also the things that we actually need in order to stop this brutality against Black and brown people, is that we have to actually We come together as one particular unit and have a massive economic boycott. That's the only thing that's going to change this.

Joy James: I'm wondering what other people think. I heard a pastor, Black pastor in Rochester, say after George Floyd's murder, if you kill us, we will kill your economy, meaning that this massive strike or boycott. And I know also, Professor Ball works on these economic issues. But if that's a strategy, how do other people see using economics as a way to redress our disposability?

Shaperlle Wells: Well, I think that we all have to come together. Like I said, you know, when I think about Tulsa, when I think about how we had that striving economy and we had blocks and blocks of economic power, And we saw what happened in Tulsa and how they destroyed our neighborhoods, because, you know, they did not want us to be successful. But it showed— Tulsa showed us that we have the ability, if we all continue to buy Black, make conscious efforts to support Black foundations, Black grocery stores, Black clothing stores, To circulate our dollars within our community. When they start seeing us pull back our money, then they will begin to listen to us. Right now, they're not listening to us. They're just basically just saying, okay, we're gonna throw some money at them, we're gonna shut them up, give a few people, uh, some dollars, and then they're using that to justify what they do to us.

Crystal: Right.

Shaperlle Wells: Because we have been, um, Basically, we have been silenced by the money. And so now you see that because some groups are being allocated different dollars, now the fierceness of our fight is diminishing, because they have been overcome by the money aspect of it. So, like I said, you know, we have to break down this infiltration. in our groups and come together so that that way we can push for one solid agenda.

Jared Ball: Would anybody else like to respond to that question about the economics or various responses that are possible? Sure, go ahead, Felix. Let me make sure you're unmuted.

Speaker 2: There you go.

Felix: I do want to respectfully disagree that I do think there has been some betrayal. I think if you are a community organization and these funds have been blessed upon you and you don't spend them in a way that uplifts the community, that that is a betrayal and that that should be addressed and those organizations should be held accountable. It wasn't given to those organizations to amplify their spaces. It was given to them to amplify Black spaces and Black people. So I definitely think that that is a betrayal. I think that also we need to address the scarcity mindset that exists within our communities. And I think that's why we don't have a big enough economical kind of protest presence, because we're scared of what we already have and what we will lose, and we don't believe in the strength of us together. I think that was very visible in my community over the uprising, how we were so easily manipulated and split apart by these celebrity activists that come here to serve their agendas and not really the community itself. So I think those are conversations that we need to address as well within ourselves about healing and, you know, mental health and all of that stuff, to address that before we can move forward in any other ways.

Ashley: I'll hop in here for a second. Am I good, Jared? Can you hear me? OK. I'll try to be quick, but I definitely want to agree with Felix. I think that, you know, there's absolutely— not even I think, I know that there's absolutely been betrayals. Again, you know, the names that I brought into this room, those people did not have to die. Their lives did not have to be shed. Some of them were definitely preventable. People were left to fend for themselves. They were left without resources, resources that they brought into their own community, resources that people gifted to their community with the expectation that it would get back to those activists and support them in their work. And continue the the resistance that people believed in and what they saw. One one thing I do want to say about this question is I think a way that the betrayal felt the deepest to me was the failure to honor the traditions of what Black resistance and Black movements have looked like. We got somehow caught up in the celebrity where people who aren't even associated. Or on the ground of the community somehow become the voices of these communities. Like, you know, Ms. Wells was speaking to, you have people that are directly impacted on the ground that you could tap into and get their experiences, hear from them. That brings the community together. That galvanizes us. But those people are being left aside for folks who have academic language that they then weaponize against these communities to assert themselves as authorities. That's absolutely a betrayal. When you say you stand for poor people, you stand for Black people, you stand for impacted people, Uh-oh. If we sit back and we honor— can you all hear me? Sorry, I feel like—

Speaker 2: Yeah, you did break up.

Jared Ball: I heard you break up for a quick second.

Ashley: Okay.

Jared Ball: Right at— you were saying, if you're for the people, and then—

Ashley: Well, I don't know where I was going with that, but I'll just quote, you know, Chairman Fred Hampton, I am the people, I am not the pigs. You're either one or the other. You're either doing the work of one or the other. So I'll just summarize that in that way. The final thing I want to say is that the betrayal that felt really deepest to me Was a failure to honor our traditions. Again, in Ferguson, everything shut down. I don't think people understand that that entire city was completely shut down. So what that means is that kids were not able to go to school. People were not able to receive the assistance and the food that they needed. They were not able to travel. They were not able to protect themselves. You know what we did? People formed food kitchens. People formed meals like Mama Cat, Cat Daniels. And fed the activists like myself who were out there for 12, 14 hours a day. We had other people who formed freedom schools who were teaching the babies. We had people who formed transportation so that folks could get to and from the sites of resistance when they shut down the public transportation or the highways. We knew back roads, right? We also formed protection cadres so that people who needed the safety, right, who needed to be protected, had that. So, no one was more important than anyone else. We all needed and depended on each other. And that has been the history and the tradition of Black resistance. And for me, it is an absolute failure when we fail to acknowledge that it takes a diversity of tactics and a diversity of people to get us anywhere. And I'll stop there. Sorry, y'all, because I can go.

Jared Ball: All right. Right on. And Dr. Jamar and Max, as I invite you to respond, I'm going to bring up Some of our other guests, and in a moment we'll give them a chance to all introduce themselves and join the conversation. We do intend for this to be as conversational as we can get it, but I know you all were just waiting. So Professor Jamar, did you want to jump in with it to respond to anything that's been said so far? Please go ahead.

Shaperlle Wells: Yes, thank you. To piggyback off what Ashley said and the Honorable Chairman, Fred Hampton. You are either the pigs or the people. You're either with the pigs or the people. And when it comes to contradictions, conflicts, or betrayals in this movement, I would agree that there has been many. I would agree with Felix that there has been many. We say, we speak on and advocate against the blue wall of silence, when a lot of the gaslighting that we hear is that all cops aren't bad. No, there's some good cops. But when you're standing alongside someone who's committing atrocities, who is oppressing your people in your face or other marginalized people in your face, and you're not saying anything, silence is complicity. Silence is violence. You can't say that we don't uphold a blue wall of silence, but then within grassroots organizations you are accepting money in exchange to stay quiet about the sexual, physical, or emotional abuse of several female— I'm sorry, women, Black women or non-Black women that are also women of color activists in the movement. And they are being forced to march alongside their abusers in order to march for Breonna Taylor or to march for Atatiana Jefferson or to march for George Floyd. You know, we can't say that— you know, speak on the farmworkers who are not receiving the proper essentials that they needed during this pandemic, but we're taking kickouts and payouts and side money to stay quiet on numerous atrocities that we know are happening, or pursuing neoliberalism, using our influence and our platforms to disrupt actions that could possibly be fruitful to the movement and produce extreme results. You can't say that, you know, you're standing on one side, but then you are using misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, transphobia or other types of harmful rhetoric towards marginalized communities to further oppress them. You can't— again, we may not have to share the same political ideologies, but we should all share the same humanity. When we stand together in this movement, you know, again, we should care about what it is and not what it looks like. We should care about what's happening behind the scenes to our most affected, because we know that a lot of politicians will say that they care. But then, when they get that seat, they then proceed to show us how much they don't care and how much those were just words. You know, we can't say that we're tired of the death of Black and brown lives while reenacting it on a Grammy stage with a $5,000 gown on for white entertainment. There's multiple contradictions and conflicts where our actions are aligning with the systems that we advocate against every day, but then we claim to stand against them. Like Ashley said, and like Chairman Fred Hampton said, you're either with the people or the pigs. There is no in-between. And a lot of us are saying we've chose our side, but our actions are saying something else.

Jared Ball: Right on.

Shaperlle Wells: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Jared Ball: Max, I know you've been waiting, but we— so let me go ahead and let you jump in. I think you hear me, right? You should hear me, right?

Speaker 2: Okay.

Jared Ball: And then we'll turn to our— the BLM crew and start to shift the conversation a little bit. Of course, allow them to say what they want to say, but shift the conversation a little bit to some specific experiences with the organizing. But Max, go ahead.

Speaker 2: I actually want to address all 3 points about that conflict, contradictions, and betrayal. Is that okay, Max?

Jared Ball: Sure.

Speaker 2: All right, awesome. First, let me say thank you to the hosts for inviting me here to be a part of this conversation. I really appreciate it. And shout out to the supporters who came and are in the chat there talking about us. Uh, first of all, I need to make it clear, I'm a slavery abolitionist, and I mean that in every sense of the word— literal slavery abolitionist, just like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner. Why am I a slavery abolitionist? Because slavery is still legal in the United States, and it's still in practice. So what— even when I hear, like, you know, you're either with the pigs or the people, in my mind, I hear you're either with the slave catchers or the people, because that's what they are, are slave catchers. They're hunting us for profit and filling quotas and going out there and putting us in these cages, where if we lay on a slab, like a brother out of New York, Kalief Browder, it's worth $350,000 a year. —to incarcerate him. We are used as economic development tools and property and commodities that are literally sold on the open market in the form of prison stocks and jail bonds, right now in 2021. So that's my perspective from the very beginning. I'm not looking at any of this as a mistake over time. I'm not trying to consider this as something that, you know, over years bad men might have made some errors that we can fix. No. This is intentionally done and has been done since 1865. There's no such thing as mass incarceration. If it was truly such a thing as mass incarceration, there'd be 5 million more white people in prison right now. We have more Black men in prisons, in cages, in this country right now than the top 5 populated African nations combined. That ought to tell us something about what's going on. It has nothing to do with crime and punishment. It's all about slavery and economics.

Jared Ball: Right.

Speaker 2: And that's the conflict that we have right there, because, you know, I see everybody's like, Max, you right. Max, you right. But when we get in these conversations, we never talk about that. We talk about them as if they're some kind of legit organization. We say police instead of slave catchers. We say mass incarceration instead of slavery. See, mass incarceration is not against the law. They could have quadrupled the number of people in prison tomorrow, and there's no law to prevent them from doing that. But slavery is illegal everywhere. Right.

Crystal: Everywhere.

Speaker 2: All over the world. And we have this conflict of understanding and egos. When I step into a room as a slavery abolitionist, people don't even want to hear me talk. They just, you know, they're like, nah, Max, we don't want to get into that too— just too much yet. And it creates hella conflicts. Let's face the truth. Let's deal with the root issue of this problem, which is slavery, human trafficking and genocide. These are crimes against humanity. And we've been mobilizing the international community to address that. The ICC now is charging the United States with the police are equal to crimes against humanity. In the spirit of Mandela, is charging, putting together a tribunal where they are indicting the United States on charges of genocide and slavery. And we're getting support from places like India and China and Russia. Even China called out us about the 13th Amendment. Okay. So that's the conflict. We've got to deal with the truth. The contradictions is there's 4 different narratives vying for control about what we're dealing with here in the United States when it comes to this death and destruction and murder, death, kill that's happening. And those 4 narratives are divided into 2 different camps. On one side, you have criminal justice reformists, and you have prison abolitionists. Right. They do not look at this as a crime against humanity, to the best of my awareness, and they treat it as something that can be fixed by doing certain things, like eliminating this part. If you get rid of plantations, maybe slavery will end. If you get rid of chains, maybe slavery will end. And/or tweaking things all over the place. They don't view this as a crime against humanity. On the other side of that fence, you have prison slavery abolitionists, who focus primarily on prison labor as the example of slavery. And they call it a crime against humanity. And then you have slavery abolitionists like myself who see this whole system as part of a system of slavery, as it has always been, and we also say it's crimes against humanity. The dividing line is whether or not we are charging crimes against humanity. Can you fix this, or do you need to abolish it? Is it a crime, or is it a mistake? We don't seem to be able to agree upon that, and we need to, dearly.

Ashley: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Our lives depend on it because of what's happening. So the contradictions are right there with those 4 narratives. And then last is the betrayal. Willful ignorance is a betrayal. If you know— like, I'm going to throw a name out there, like a Van Jones. You've been in the 13th film. You know how the 13th Amendment works. You've been able to break it down for other audiences. But every time you get a chance to talk about this, you go straight to reform, as if you don't know what the hell's going on.

Shaperlle Wells: Right.

Speaker 2: That is betrayal. That's willful ignorance. We're out here suffering and dying and bleeding, and you want to play footsies with master about what you need to say. I'm not having any of that. So that's betrayal for us when people do that. Our voices matter. I'm standing here telling you this is slavery right now. Does anybody disagree with me? No. See? And that's how we got to act. So that's where I'm at with it on those 3 issues. Thank you.

Jared Ball: Appreciate you, Max. If I could just humbly say very quickly in this transition, I see less of a contradiction in Van Jones's participation in that documentary, given its political trajectory. And I would just humbly at some point want to engage folks more on this conversation about this concept of buying power, the circulating dollar, and our ability to boycott. I would like to have a A broader discussion at some point with that. But not the time or place as we are right now. So if we can, I'd like to transition to bring in our BLM 10 representatives and ask them to, of course, say anything that they would like to, but please do introduce yourself briefly on the way to doing so and respond to anything that has been said or that you would like to say.

Felix: Thank you.

Jared Ball: And we're asking that you all, of course, talk a little bit now about your personal experiences in this movement. And if I can, just selfishly as the moderator, I want to start with my own place of origin and my favorite city, and that would mean right there in D.C. with April. So please, if we could start with you, Sister April, please let's do so and welcome. Greetings to you.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

April: Peace, everybody. Afrikan Land.

Shaperlle Wells: Peace.

April: So we are BLM 10. There's 10 of us chapters that came together basically calling for accountability publicly. I say publicly because we've done so behind the scenes. And I think I want to begin by saying something we've said all along, which is that people are already on the ground doing this work before before the rebellion, before anybody came to help in Ferguson. There was already people on the ground, and that the movement was happening there. Yeah, I'll say that. Before anybody else came, and that is where the movement started, this iteration of the movement started. And it was just so— it just It just so happened to be that the media focused on the founders. So I want to start out by saying that. Anybody else? I don't want to take up all the time because I know it's a few of us.

Tone: We talk all the time.

Yane Strong: Okay. Can you hear me fine?

Jared Ball: Yes, indeed.

Yane Strong: Awesome. I just would like to— you know, the reason that I put these quotes, you know, up in the air when my beloved comrade mentioned the founders is because to found means to start, and this— there was no starting that these people did. And this co-founder narrative is— it's really important to interrupt it because it's this— it's part of what enables or empowers certain individuals to try to claim a authority that they don't have. And so we all know that we are part of a longstanding liberation movement that has been ongoing since before we even were brought to these soils, that started when we were met with the colonizing aspirations on the African continent, that were met That was the resistance that happened in the Middle Passage. That was the resistance that happened all throughout the duration of that first form of chattel enslavement. And so, you know, throughout the entire— it's moved, it's changed, it's transformed, because the system transforms the ways that it seeks to capitalize off of our lives, off of our talents, off of our bodies. And we transform in response to that. Ongoing movement, and there's not anybody who founded this movement in 2016, in 2013, in 2020, or 2010, or anything like that. So this co-founder narrative has to be interrupted. And I just also want to say that we now use the term BLM 10+ because there are more than just 10 of us, and and many chapters around. The country have had our experiences, and we don't even know all of them, because we've been kept separate intentionally, so that we don't have the ability to be as collectively oriented and to have the same collective power, the same way that the system separates parts of our community so that we don't have that collective power. That same methodology has been used within the Black Lives Matter network community in order to prevent us from being able to come together to do things in a way that makes sense, so that we can actually be in good service to the movement. And the last thing I want to say, just as it relates to the BLM 10+ and many chapters, is that we have consistently seen ourselves as a part of the movement. We do not agree with and support this narrative that we are the movement. Movement, that we have seen ourselves as a part of the movement. We operate with the other organizing— the other members of our organizing community, other organizations in our communities. And we have never been comfortable with the idea of Black Lives Matter overrunning the work of our comrades. We are a community. And so we want to interrupt that as well, and want to make sure that our movement community knows that those things that are being said, and that you may hear out, you know, by these people who have taken authority that is not theirs, that that is not the attitude of the organizers that are on the ground, that are collaborating for mutual aid, and in doing that work, collaborating to support families, And doing that work, collaborating to establish self-determination in our communities with the other organizers in the organizing community. We joined this network so that we could be connected with each other, so that we could bring resources together to connect the— our communities to what's happening in the other communities. And unfortunately, that didn't happen. But we're working to make that happen now, as we're developing ourselves. And so I'm— oh, by the way, I'm Yane. And I am— I am out of Philadelphia here with my beloved comrade Crystal. Yeah. So greetings, comrades.

Crystal: It's really wonderful to be here with you all, especially folks who represent some of the incredible organizing we've seen over the past few years. And I just want to say that this is and is not about Black Lives Matter, the organization. This is and is not about specific organizers who have been sort of promoted as the faces of this moment and this movement. Right? Like, we can speak as chapters to the specifics of Black Lives Matter as an organizational formation. But the reason why we're speaking about this is not because of gripes we have against people, but because we recognize that what we're seeing in this organization or formation is happening Elsewhere, right? And that if we want to be free, if we want to continue to struggle in a healthy liberation movement, we have to understand what is happening, what has happened, if we are to have something different that can actually rise to the revolutionary occasion that we have in front of us. And so I want to say maybe a couple of things, which is that it's important for us to understand how we. Started, and where the seeds of what we are witnessing in this moment was started at the very beginning, with the erasure of folks who were doing the organizing work on the ground, who didn't need professional organizers to tell them how to struggle and resist. Okay? Let's start there. What we saw after that, and, you know, through many different iterations of Black Lives Matter, but we see this in many different organizational formations of the past few years is a lack of vision, in many cases, a lack of revolutionary and radical values. Right? We are seeing the limitations of certain frameworks in this moment. So, for example, calling yourself leaderful, but then only elevating specific people as co-founders, that is a contradiction And it's a tendency that we have to name and work against, right? And then if we look at this moment, the reason why the BLM 10+ had to exist is because some— a faction of BLM decided not to continue with an internal accountability process. Unbeknownst to us, without our permission, they decided to go public with a new formation without the consent of the majority of BLM chapters. And so our internal accountability processes that have been ongoing for years, by the way, those had to be made public because the stakes of this are not just an organization, right? What we are seeing here is the elevation of an organizer-managerial class, where you can, you know, be an organizer in a position to gatekeep who has access to resources and power and court favor with the very systems that we say that we are trying to undermine and attack and abolish and build something new, right? We have folks who are in these elevated positions who are in positions to control our revolutionary movement. Problem if they are not accountable to our organizing community and our people. And in addition to that, we are also seeing the way that this foundation money, right? Like, we have a longstanding critique of the nonprofit industrial complex and what that has meant for our movements, right? This whole notion that the revolution will not be funded. Guess what? The revolution will also not be founded. Okay? We need to be talking in this moment about the foundation industrial complex, because that's where things have gone now. We have seen in the past year hundreds of millions of dollars go into entities that are not accountable to anyone. Right? And so these are among the reasons why we felt the need to come forward to be clear about what we've seen, what we've experienced, and what needs to change if we stand to participate in and drive a movement that can actually rise to the revolutionary moment that we are in.

Jared Ball: Right on. Let's just keep on going up 95, check in with Boston. Appreciate your patience. Welcome, and please add on.

Martin: Peace, y'all. Martin, he/him, bein' in Boston. Here with Tone, we're core members in the chapter. So all of the things they said was— I really ain't much for me to say, to be honest. But I do want to point out, for one, that we do have a chapter statement that's out that really outlines and details these things that we're talking about. Check out blmchapterstatement.com, and you can see that. And then to illustrate the difference between being responsible and being accountable, Responsible is just saying that you are the person connected to the mess. Accountable says I'm going to clean it up. If it's something to restore, then I'm going to restore that to whatever it was before. But in this case, I think accountability is needed because there's been a disruption and a refocus, a refocusing of the work that is happening in directions that aren't particularly serving us, or they have interests that are not being that Yeah, I think for me, personally, my own accountability is telling the story, because I got folks who won't even talk to me, because they've told me this years ago, and they're like, there's nothing new for you. So I— and I just got to take that. And— but my penance is making sure that I'm clear about how we think, how we feel, and that you do as much as you can to make sure that the next generation doesn't do the same thing.

Tone: Yeah, peace to everyone. Again, my name is Tone, she/her. Good to be here and see comrades and Thank you. I'm really glad to be here and see that accountability is being centered, which is very important. The work is great. We have a lot of things to do, and we don't really have time or energy to kind of silo it in a different direction. It is very important that we make sure that all people come along with us, our comrades, those families that are affected, and we do the work that our community deserves. And that's what we're here to center, and that's what we're here to talk about.

Shaperlle Wells: So, thank you.

Jared Ball: Right on. Ashley, you had a— you had something you wanted to jump in with?

Ashley: I did. Thanks for tapping me in here. I just— I had a response to what Crystal, I believe, was saying about the foundation and a point that feels really important for me to make, particularly with respect to my own experience, right? People ask, how do these things happen? And oftentimes people have a projection that we're asking something from people that we're not in community with, that we don't know, that we've read about in the magazine and say, oh, y'all got $90 million. You need to break us off some, right? And I just want to be really clear that there are pathways through which these people enter into our communities. They form relationships with people. They, you know, make sure to integrate themselves into your community, into your activist circles, into your organizing circles, into spaces that they would not be welcomed into otherwise because they have no roots in that community. And then once they have gained that proximity, They use that proximity to revolutionaries and people who are moving on the ground and, you know, fueling these resistances to advocate for money, to get these funds on the backs of the people on the ground, right? And they tell you, okay, we're building this together. This is something, you know, that we're gonna house. This is gonna help our movements. And then when it comes time to actually distribute those resources, to give people the things they need, again, like I said, activists are left out in the cold. Families are left out in the cold. Entire communities are left out in the cold.

Shaperlle Wells: Yeah.

Ashley: My community of St. Louis, where my family has lived for over 100 years, I am firmly rooted in, was left out in the cold. We did not have the foundations set up for the influx of money that came when people saw us and wanted to support us. So folks came in, made friends with us. We uplifted them. You know, there's some accountability that needs to be had in that, where we uplifted them without the proper investigation, because we're in a moment of crisis, right? So you're thinking someone Black is coming to help you. They're saying all the right things. They're moving in accordance for a couple of days, and now we're going to build this together. And then poof, everything is gone, and they've ran off with the bag. And not only with the bag, they've run off with the, you know, resource of people's attention, the resource of people's understanding of who is actually moving, you know, this movement, who has sacrificed for this movement. So it's not just about the money. It's not just about people that, you know, are visible or seen. It's about the ways and through which they have really, you know, insidiously entered into our movements and then extracted the resources from our communities.

Jared Ball: Right on. Thank you. If I can, I would like to pose a question or reframe a question to the extent it hasn't already been addressed. And then to folks in the audience, not only do we appreciate you coming through, but please do start to either repeat or raise up questions that you have or comments that you might have for those of us who are gathered. And then, of course, to those who are here as our guests, please do feel free to let me know when you want to jump in to respond or raise a question yourselves.

Ashley: Of course.

Jared Ball: But to the extent that it hasn't been addressed, or to the extent that I may have just missed it, I do want to come back to this specific question of accountability and how you all would like to see accountability maintained or defined or, or, uh, brought about? Um, Ms. Wells, if it's all right, I'll start with you, and then anyone else who wants to jump in, please just let me know, and I'll come— I'll, uh, you know, get to that, uh, get to you right away.

Shaperlle Wells: Uh, well, as far as accountability, I can tell you, like, everything that happened with my son's case, I actually investigated. I went door to door. I didn't have any groups or anybody helping me to figure out what happened to my son. And so, I think what we could benefit from as a family is, you know, people who are going through the same type of things that I went through, is that there be a manifesto, a— A blueprint. A plan, a plan of action that families could actually have, like a platform. Like, I'll just say, basically, I didn't know anything that I was investigating. I didn't know the proper procedure. I didn't know about FOIA requests. I didn't know where to go. So I think that by us having these organizations available, that there should be something on your website, hey, if you have a case, Let's let's this is what you need to do XYZ in order to get the documents you need, in order to get you know lawyers involved, in order to get people to go out there and march with you to pass out flyers. You know, I just feel that a lot can be a lot more can be done for the families, and I can say that those type of accountability because somebody. Is getting this money. Somebody is getting this money. And I know that a lot of— right now, I will say BLM is in a transitional period, where you're branching off from the global network and all of this. But I understand every organization goes through different transitions. But if the global network has the I think that every chapter needs a piece of the pie. So legally, you have to figure out how can you go after this money, because when people donated, they donated to the global— go through every city, every state where there is a chapter. And it's unfair for the global network to have all of the benefits and have this umbrella and not be able to help the community, because the money was collected. For the people, it wasn't collected for a few people in high places. And so we also have to realize where this money is coming from. We know that it is Soros. We know that it's the Ford Foundation. All of these things that have been historically fighting against Black people and imprisoning us—these are the same people who are funding this organization. So when you figure out what type of money that we're. We have to have some type of ethics as Black people to say all money ain't good money. We heard that saying a lot of times. All money ain't good money. Sometimes, sometimes I pass on some things because of where it's coming from. And so these are the things that, you know, like I said, you know, that I'm looking at. And just to have that extra support out there for the families.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Shaperlle Wells: Because I had to literally get on the computer and research. But since there are establishments, established organizations in the major cities, I think that you— what I think that would be easier for families, parents, what I have, is to have some type of manifesto, some type of toolkit that families can go to to make sure, hey, you got this all together. And then, if the families need your help, to be there open and available to assist, because it's just you know police brutality. And I and I tell people all the time: don't get stuck in this in this box because there's a lot of things that are going on in our community other than police brutality. Black on black crime. We have these resources. You know economic disparity. Food despair, food deserts. It's a lot of things that are going on in the Black community. And this money that is coming to our community can be used to improve it. So, I mean, that's where I am with this. It's a lot that we have to do.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Shaperlle Wells: And I— and let me— before I depart, I wanted to also say that we have to think about what's the big picture? What is our goal? What is our— I mean, you know, for me, I know, and And for me personally, I'm looking for legislative movement. And so I don't believe that we can do a lot of legislative movement without the help of other people. So I don't want to— I'm not the type of person who wants to say, oh, I'm only going to deal with this certain person and not this person. I think we have to be open as people who want to see progressive change to work with everybody. And I know a lot of organizations like, oh, I don't want to work with them. They don't— no, we can't be like that, because we would eventually need to sit at the big table, and that's where the white folks at. We're gonna— we have to be able to get at that seat. So how we get there and everything is a process that we talk amongst ourselves as a Black people, but we eventually have to get to that table in order to actually impact and change the lives the way that we want to see it.

Jared Ball: Right on. Thank you very much. Professor Jamar, let's turn to you, if we can, to get your thoughts on this and anything else. And then, of course, we want to also start to raise up the specific question about the Women's March and issues surrounding that, as well. So, I know we We would like to have that be part of this. And then, Brother Max, I see you. We got you on the stack, as well. So thank you very much. But Professor Jamar?

Shaperlle Wells: Thank you. So, in regards to accountability, I think that the model that many people have used within activist spaces goes into— is in accordance with restorative justice practices. Personally, I'm not a fan of restorative justice, for multiple reasons. However, when it comes to Specifically sexual abuse, it's important— restorative justice, either/or, is important to— it's important that it centers the most victimized. When it comes to situations of sexual abuse, it tends to center the abuser and not the most victimized. Another issue that arises in restorative justice when it comes to terms of sexual or physical abuse is that harm reduction should be the main protocol, the main approach. If there's instances where certain activists, whether women, trans women, members of the LGBTQ, non-binary members, don't feel safe because other leaders have been accused of abuse or they have been abused by them, and you are putting them in a position where, in order to march for justice and liberation, they have to march alongside their abuser, that's counterproductive to what we say we stand for as a liberation movement. It kind of, again, goes back to the same principle when it comes to the slave catchers. You know, there are no good sleigh catchers, because even if you're not the one that's pursuing these harmful actions and being abusive yourself, you're 9 times out of 10 standing along someone who is. You see something, you don't say anything. Your silence is complicity. In the activism spaces, it tends to mirror that same protocol. Depending on who the accused is, what resources they have, How much money or donors they can bring in, how big their platform is, how many followers they have, is usually what adjudicates their innocence and not their actions. So what ends up happening is that people that are accused of either being abusive or mismanaging funds or any types of inappropriate behaviors are not held accountable for these actions because they're able to supply more press. At certain actions that we may have outside, or they're able to get more funding for particular grassroots movements, or able to align whoever with certain members that have certain influence or are able to make things happen for them personally. When it comes to accountability in these social justice spaces, I think transparency is extremely important. If you are an organization such as BLM, the global network, there should be transparency for every activist that you claim to represent. There should be a clear, established— whether via budgeting or whatever types of functionalities you use to document your ledger of business, it should be clearly transparent what's happening with every dollar. You know that grassroots organizations are not grant-funded. So if you have grassroots organizations that you're working with or that you claim to be assisting with actions, you should be using your resources to help them, not just showing up with your influence and wearing your nonprofit shirt and trying to divert all of the attention and the press your way, not using your platform or your nonprofit organization to put your name on the flyer and take credit for the entire Not using your nonprofit organization to contribute to the erasure of Black women and men activists, and that is also happening a lot. In the beginning, I said that a lot of today's activists within our movement tend to care more about what it looks like than what it is. I was referring to social media. I know my personally, I've spoke with a lot of activists, and I never said I'm from New York City, but personally, I spoke with a lot of activists. Who said they wanted to be the next Al Sharpton, or, you know, said that they wanted to have lots of followers and wanted to use activism as a career goal to becoming a public figure, or an influential person, or a brand ambassador, or a model, or whatever their personal career goal is. They want to use activism and the press or the media attention that comes with activism to pursue their actual goal. So, what started out as a necessity is being viewed as a commodity to many people that have their own ulterior motives. And when we're not careful with who we catapult to the front and who we allow to be the face of this movement, what ends up happening is that everyone is held accountable for their personal actions. For instance, when you get on the Grammy stage in a Prabal Gurung $5,000, $10,000 gown, and reenact the death of a child, the entire movement is looked at as less than genuine. The entire movement is looked at as if it's arterial motives that are tied around fame and celebrity instead of getting rid of qualified immunity, making sure that farmworkers are counted as essential workers and getting pay, making sure that maternal mortality is getting the proper funding since Black women saved the election. Making sure that the VP, Kamala Harris, is not using the community that helped place her in that seat and lying to them, and then all of a sudden becoming pro-ICE or pro-sending migrants back to their native countries that they flee due to refugee circumstances or, you know, dangerous or environments circumstances that affected their quality of life. I think it all starts with who we allow to lead and who we allow to be the face of the movement, and making sure that we demand transparency in every aspect of accountability. You know, none of us are perfect. All of us being raised in America were raised under a quota of white supremacy. Accountability is a daily effort. You have to be accountable every day. You have to check yourself of your own implicit biases every day. You have to be willing to do the work. And a lot of people are willing to take credit for the work, but when it comes to actually doing the work, when the cameras stop rolling, they want to use bullying tactics or use their influence or use their platforms to inhibit fear in the most victimized or the most marginalized or those that are dependent on them the most.

Jared Ball: Right on. Thank you very much. April, I believe you wanted to jump in on this as well, please.

April: Yeah, I think, you know, I was sitting there listening about restorative justice and TJ, and I think what also happens in the movement is that we use a lot of jargon that we don't understand and we don't know how to do. And then we— and then what happens is we then think that's what that thing is, right? Restorative justice, people use it incorrectly. TJ, I mean, just the basic understanding that there's a difference between making sure that the difference of really understanding disposability versus consequences and, you know, versus punishment, right? And if that means that someone is feeling like people aren't centered, the most, you know, whoever, whoever was harmed is not centered, then that's an issue, right? But if we seek accountability, like you said, as something that we practice in every moment, and that we are— you have to opt in to being accountable, you have to opt in to say, I— this is part of my life that I'm going to, you know, that I'm going to do everything I do through that lens, right? And so what you have is people who have the opportunity to opt out and then call it community. And, you know, accountability really means like a set of practices that you are beholden to and that you are, you are willing to be, to let, you know, if you're in community with people, to lovingly hold people to those same standards, right? It also means setting expectations. We talked about that. A lot of times Conflict comes because we want—we're upset at somebody for an expectation that we never had. You know, we didn't agree on, right? But when we do agree on expectations, we also have to have built into that like processes that we've all agreed on will take will take place when that happens. And you know, one of the most upsetting things about this about all of this. Is the complicity of other movement folks. What happened in BLM didn't happen overnight. Folks know, folks who are currently or previously in the organization know. And so what you know is that for 7 years, people in the movement didn't say anything. They saw us struggling. They did not intervene, period. And it was— it shouldn't have taken us to go public. We've wanted to go— we've had letters 4 years. Like, some of us have, you know, gone to, um, you know, some chapters have taken it to where they're, they're going publicly. Um, and what that is, is like, if we're not all accountable, if we all don't believe that this is something we have to work on, we don't know how to do it. Just because you know the word centering, just because you know, um, you want to say people aren't disposable, but at the same time, no, you should not be marching with the person that harmed you. That's not RJ. That's not TJ. There are boundaries, period. And if you take somebody putting a boundary down on you to be silent, to not take accountability, you're opting out. And we have to be very clear as a movement that if you're opting out of being accountable to the organization that you're in, other organizations have to say, we cannot do this with you until you fall in alignment with, you know, with the standards that you profess to have, period, right? That we have organizations that are umbrella organizations that also see this happening, right? We have a duty. Don't— please don't quote Assata unless your duty is real. That's real. Unless you are going to actually protect and love people, don't say it. I don't want to see it at your rallies. You might get your mic. I don't know, but we're not protecting anybody for real, for real, by allowing people to be silent. And if you were part of a process where you know that the people who were in the process did not finish their part—I'm gonna say that again—they were in a process that you helped do, and then you see that that process, the agreements that were made. Didn't happen, you are complicit. You're complicit because you allow— you, you said that you were going to take on, uh, this part of accountability because Black people need to get free, because it is revolutionary for us to be able to handle these things inside, inside the family. Um, but you have a responsibility to the whole community. And when you say whole community, it's not just the movement community, right? Like, we are out here, we are a very small percentage of Black folks that need to get free, right? Because that's all of us. And so that also continues to happen, right? And as far as the money goes, let me be clear, we have done our work in the community without the funding. So I want to be very clear that this isn't about us not totally being able to do what we do for our communities because we weren't given the funding. To be clear, BLM has already said that chapters get money. So whether or not they decide that they want to take longer, not give it, make nasty emails to people about being part of BLM 10, it doesn't matter because you're going to come up off it if the rest of the community would say again, we're not going to do these things, we're not going to further put you on a pedestal until you fall in alignment. And I'll be the first to say, we all have harmed people. This is not about a moral dilemma between who's right and who's wrong, right? Harm gets passed back and forth. But if you harm, you have a responsibility to, to fix that harm. The fact that if you get called out for 7 years and you don't apologize, something is wrong. You have to admit that you were wrong. It's never too late to admit that you're wrong, but say it. Talk about how you won't do it again, because we are modeling a new way of being with Black people.

Shaperlle Wells: If you say—

April: if you say you don't want police, then let's do something different, right? And lastly, I just wanted to say, this is another— we have heard a lot. About this money invisibility, and it's been turned on us as if we're not asking for something that wasn't granted or wasn't given because of our blood, sweat, and tears. People have died. People that we work with are in hiding because they are they are being surveilled. They are being attacked. So don't use that happening to you as a way to discount us. And so I you know I really want you know. There are things in this world that you just can't do, and one of those is opt out of accountability and then talking— and then talk about building an accountable world, period.

Jared Ball: Right on. Okay, thank you very much. Uh, Yaneh, uh, Professor Strong, did you want to— I think you were going to jump on and, uh, add to this.

Yane Strong: Yeah. So I appreciate the comments that were said earlier. Also have been reading through the comments from people who have been watching. And so there are a couple of things that I would like to speak to as it relates to some of the comments. First of all, one of the comments that I want to raise to my comrades here is that we're speaking a little too vaguely. They want some specifics. And, you know, and they want to know, and people want to know who did what. So I think, you know, that's an important question, an important request. And I am, for one, am glad to honor that. So as I speak moving forward, I will speak with some more specifics. Another thing that was raised up was around the comments Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your comments about the table and the importance for us to have a seat at the table. And, you know, and certainly great respect for, you know, for you, my sister, in your commentary. I just want to throw out the suggestion that we build our own table. So I don't know what the cursing— but anyway. At the end? At they table. You know what I'm saying? The only thing I want to get close to their table for is to set that— set that joint on fire. So, you know, that table was built on top of our bodies, on the bodies of our ancestors. And as long as it exists, it is holding— it is on— it is in that space. It is— it does not need to exist anymore. We need to get rid of the This whole thing, the only way we get free is to eradicate that which is eradicate the cage. We don't need to paint the bars of the cage some pretty color and decorate it and put lights around it. We need to eradicate the whole thing. But what I really really wanted to talk about and focus on is the the idea of counterinsurgency specifically is something that. I just feel is extremely important for us to understand when we're thinking through this process and what we have actually experienced and what we have witnessed. Like, we are in a real time— like, when COINTELPRO was happening during our earlier season in this liberation movement, people didn't know that COINTELPRO was existing. They didn't know. They couldn't examine it in real time. We can examine COINTELPRO COINTELPRO and counterinsurgency in real time. Right now it is actually happening. And so I want to reference— there's an article that really gets into this that I reference a lot. I find— I feel like, you know, I really appreciate it. But one of the things that it does is it quotes from the counterinsurgency pamphlet, the handbook of the U.S. government. And so it defines COIN, counterinsurgency. Insurgency. It says COIN is distinguished from traditional warfare due to the focus of its operations, a relevant population, and its strategic purpose: to gain or maintain control or influence over and the support of that relevant population through political, psychological, and economic methods. Okay. So in this case, first of all, just recognizing that they made this distinction, that it is distinguished traditional warfare, which means that they understand this as warfare. So, you know, that's something that we need to understand. We talk about defeat the war against Black people, stop the war against Black people. We say that because we are being engaged in war. Our communities are being sanctioned. You know, sanctioning is not only happening to other countries. They sanction our communities. They are occupying our communities, and they are shooting our people down. In the same way that they're shooting people down in Haiti and in Colombia and in Uganda, we are being— and in Palestine, we are being engaged in war. So it's distinguished from traditional warfare because it is— because of the focus of its operations, the relevant population. The relevant population is us. And its strategic purpose, to gain or maintain control or influence over and the support of the relevant population. So we had a community that was setting police stations on fire. We had a community that was up in arms and ready to burn things down. Okay? And then you have certain leading organizers who have been put in a position to tell the movement what it is is not supposed to be doing. Those people being elevated in that particular way, whether they were elevated, they were being used that way intentionally, you know, by following along the lines of people like Karenga, you know, and intentionally redirecting the movement, intentionally working with the government, knowledgeably or not, they had— we had individuals who were elevated Allowed themselves to be elevated, and then were receiving money. You know, because we know, like another thing that my good sister said is all money ain't good money. And so, you know, we get these money. We still don't know where the money came from. We BLM organizers still don't know where the money came from, who the influence therefore is coming from. But they use financial, political, and psychological methods in order to take. Control of the population. Now they're telling— when you say things like moving from protest to the polls, now you are taking this community who is all ready for revolution and in a rebellious state, and you are having them now shift their focus to a reform-based reality, a reform-based approach. And now they are now operating to the benefit of the very system that we were supposed to be against. That is how BLM as a national network has been used. It is an absolute example in counterinsurgency, and we need to understand that. That's the reason why we have to go against this. We have to call upon— call for accountability, because otherwise our movement maintains itself in the hands of our oppressors, in the hands of the state. That is what BLM is. And anybody who's watching that BLM national space needs to understand that you are watching and following individuals who are, at this point, tools of the state.

Crystal: If I could add something really quickly, I think we don't have to look far for examples of what Yané is talking about. Right? We had a whole summer, Abolition Summer, right, where we— I mean, for the first time in many of our organizing experience is we're having national, international conversations about abolition. And so we went from being in the streets talking about defund and abolish to electing a top cop. That is the exact reality that Yanay is talking about. To bring it more local, Walter Wallace Jr. was murdered on October 26th, 2020. That week, we had a nationally recognized group of organizers, who also did this in Louisville, helicopter into Philadelphia with a get-out-the-vote bus. I mean, what are we talking about right now? This is exactly the kind of counterinsurgent practice that Yanni is talking about, the fact that so quickly our conversation shifted from abolition in a serious way to electing and the lesser of two evils, and the fact that our critical movement infrastructure is implicated in that, that is evidence of the success of counterinsurgent practices and the fact that we need to do this work that we are in the midst of if we are going to avoid having this happen every time we have moments of Black insurgency that have the capacity to shift things in meaningful ways. Right? And so, just the last thing I want to say is, I think one of the incredible things about this phase of our struggle is the way that we have censored things like healing, the way that we have censored things like principled accountability and restorative justice. However, I will say that it concerns me the way that we create false equivalences with the kind of growing pains that happen when you are learning what it means to be radical and principled, and the serious state-sanctioned and structural and systemic forms of unaccountability that harm each and every one of us who organize, that make us unsafe. It concerns me that we are unable to— it seems that we are unable to distinguish between the interpersonal and intercommunal, and then what is happening within our movement that is evidenced by this right here. So when we see people who, yes, they are individuals, yes, they should be protected, yes, they should not be the subject of right-wing attacks, but when you use this kind of straw person, this straw man of right-wing attacks to defuse and to cover up the internal principled accountability that is being demanded from the people on whose backs you are able to elevate yourself, that is something of a different order. And so I think, you know, I just want to reaffirm that when we are talking about accountability, there are levels to the shit. Okay? There's levels to it. But in addition to there being levels to it, we have to engage with systems and structures in a different way than we engage with with each other interpersonally. And when people who may have at one point been our comrades, may have at one point been our siblings, when they become part of those counterinsurgent structures, we cannot hide behind— we cannot hide behind this notion of not airing out dirty laundry. Right? We have a duty to our freedom struggle to root out the ways that That such individuals are being consciously or unconsciously used to demobilize our movements, because that is what we are talking about. We are being demobilized right now.

Yane Strong: Yep.

Crystal: And if we do not take more seriously and have more clarity around what real accountability looks like— and the financial part is one part of it. We can do this shit without resources from foundations, and we have been. However, why should we? If we got money, why should we? But also, you know, we can't continue to shield people because we love their beautiful Black life. If you are a danger to our movement, you need to be held accountable, and we need to have some radical truth-telling about that, period.

Jared Ball: Thank you very much. Absolutely. Max, I know you're next. If you wouldn't mind, take a couple of minutes, and then we do We need to bring up Dr. James and unfortunately start to steer towards the close. But Brother Max, please go ahead.

Speaker 2: One, first, in regards to Sister Wells, there is a manifesto that you asked about that does exist. It's called Mother's Message to the New York-New Jersey It's from May 17th, and it has 10 points that they call their 10-Point Justice Platform and Wishlist for Families of Police Murder. So you may be able to find that online. That might help you with what you were looking for regarding something that gives family an opportunity to see what it is we need to do next, now that this has happened to us.

Yane Strong: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Also, further, what you were talking about, the big picture, that's where I'm at all the time right now. I'm looking at the big picture, you know? I know we're coming in hard on BLM, but I also see the Southern Poverty Law Center, too. And I know that they got hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore accounts. I know that they personally developed the Black Identity Extremism label, which the FBI adopted. And they're supposed to be our allies, right? But you know, it's not much conversation about those organizations at all. I'm not here to try to defend BLM in any way, shape, or form. I'm not a fan; never have been. As a matter of fact, they co-opted what we were doing. They pushed us aside. They silenced us while we were out here talking about ending slavery. Suddenly became a potpourri of everything, and nobody knew what the hell they were after. We talk about liberation. We talk about freedom, but we don't talk about liberation and freedom. Freedom from what? We have slavery, genocide, human trafficking happening for real, for real in this country. And, you know, the proof is in the pudding. Since we established the Abolish Slavery National Network, we've abolished slavery in 3 states. On the 19th of June this year, we have a federal amendment being issued, the 28th Amendment, which will remove the exception clause from the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. All of that is actually happening right now. And we've done it on a shoestring budget, because ain't nobody giving us no money, either. They ain't giving us no space, either. They barely let us talk about what we're trying to express. I'm happy to be here today so you guys can hear a little bit about what's happening, you know? So the big picture for us is to end slavery, literally end legalized slavery. It is the problem at the top of the food chain. The biggest problem right there in our face is that from 1865, we went to convict leasing, chain gangs, mass incarceration, and all of it is still legalized slavery. Right. And until we end that, you ain't gonna get no fairness. You ain't gonna get no justice. You ain't gonna get none of that. And slave catchers are gonna be masquerading as police. So for us, that's the primary focus right there— accountability in that, in slavery. Help us do that. You know, we ended slavery in the Constitution of Utah, changed the Constitution for the first time in over 100 years, and we did it on $740— $740. You know, on the operating budget of ending 3 states and now organizing 30 other states that are doing the same thing, we have about $15,000. I wish I had some of those millions of dollars that Black Lives Matter has accumulated. We'd have ended slavery already and already have positions where people who could be freed out of these cages. So, for us, the next step is legislation, as Sister Wells said. Now that we've formed this organization, now that we've actively started challenging these white supremacy tools that they have in our Constitution and eliminating them— Right. We're building these coalitions so that we can do it all the way across the country and internationally, because the problems that we're dealing with right here now in our for-profit prison systems and our policing for-profit systems are being duplicated worldwide. So you have human rights atrocities happening in places like Ghana, in Haiti, in Nigeria, in Europe, in Australia, where for-profit prisons, like Yeah. Like G4S, which just recently got bought out by somebody else. G4S, for like 7 years in a row, was the largest private employer on the entire continent of Africa. We're talking about a prison company being the largest private employer on the entire continent. You know, that's a big problem. We can't keep acting like it don't exist and going to all these other things. Let's hold— let's get that on the table and deal with it first, because you ain't going to get nothing else done as long as slavery is legal. How can you possibly have freedom on one hand and slavery on the other?

Shaperlle Wells: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Because one's going to be a lie. So, for me, you know, like I said, I'm not a fan of BLM. As a matter of fact, one of my mentees, Muyahdeen Dibaha, was the leader of the Charleston movement down here. And I've seen the drama he had to go through with BLM. And he ended up getting murdered for his efforts in this fight and lost his life. And they have never tried to help us as an organization at all in what we're doing. As a matter of fact, they are the people that I talk about when I say willful ignorance. If you go to their website right now, they act like we don't exist, like we haven't ended slavery in 3 states, like it happens every damn day, like there's not a federal amendment on the table right now. So that's ignoring this opportunity for real liberation, real freedom. Because after we do that, the next step is to challenge these things in courts under badges and incidents of slavery. We are going to fill the courts up because they will no longer have the protection of an exception clause that allows them to do this. Every time we challenge them in court, they say, you know, Well, we can use slave labor because it says right here in the 13th Amendment or in the Minnesota Constitution or in the Arizona Constitution that it's legal. And they get away with it every time. When we take that out, now they become the criminals. Now we get to hold them accountable for crimes against humanity that they are doing on purpose to us. You know, there's a million cops in the United States, right? And I've talked to maybe about I've interviewed about 30 or 40 of them, and I've asked them all the same question about the 13th Amendment. And I also asked them, first of all, if they knew about the 13th Amendment. Only one said yes. I also asked them how many times do they lock someone up or, you know, catch someone and put them into a jail where they feel like that was wrong, they wish they didn't have to do it, but because this is their job and because of the law, they had to do it. And they told me the average is like 2 or 3 times. 2 or 3 people. When you just multiply that times a million, you're talking about 3 million people unjustly incarcerated in prisons. How many slaves do you need to catch to be a slave catcher? Just one. That's all you need. And that's what we have today. Even the Department of Justice has come out under Eric Holder in Missouri telling us that the police there became nothing more than revenue generators, revenue collectors. And he meant So our priorities, I think, are a little mixed. I also think that we're ignoring the biggest opportunity that we have for liberation in this country today, and that's the slavery abolitionist movement. Thank you very much.

Jared Ball: All right, thank you very much for that. I think we wanted to move next to Bianca, and then Dr. James, did you want to say something? I'm—

Joy James: I had some questions.

Speaker 2: We've got about 5 minutes.

Joy James: We have 15 minutes left.

Jared Ball: Mm-hmm. Go ahead.

Joy James: You going first, Dr.— Professor?

Shaperlle Wells: I'm sorry. Okay. So, while we were talking, I didn't get a chance to address the specific allegations and accusations that brought me here today. I did want to do that. I'm going to try to move as quickly as possible. The specific allegations began During the organization of the Million Man's March, which transpired in New York City around the time that Trayvon Martin was killed. During that time, I worked with Justice League and Women's March, as well as some independent organizers to facilitate that action in New York City. The action was a success. Over a million people were out. And there was a true civil disruption, which was the goal. However, multiple Black women organizers were also physically and sexually assaulted by other male leaders, specifically from Justice League. There was a restorative justice process to address it. However, through gaslighting and undermining leadership, it kind of was swept under the rug. Moving on to 2016, as a member of the Women's March, there were a number of different allegations. And there's actually— I have a letter from the prior director of development for the Women's March in New York City and internationally. And if it's OK, I'd like to read it. Is that OK?

Joy James: Sure.

Shaperlle Wells: Awesome. Thank you. My name is Lindsay Asher, and I am a Japanese American woman. In 2016, the day after the election, I began organizing Women's March with a lawyer from Hawaii. The momentum grew rapidly, and we went from 1,000 attending the march in D.C. to marches happening in every state and eventually onto every continent. This was right after Donald Trump was elected the first time. I lived in Geneva, Switzerland, at the time, working at the U.N. with women in conflict war zones against U.S. imperialism and the arms trade in Southwest Asia and Africa. With my knowledge and background of working against the USA, I quickly rose to become the director of development for Women's March headquarters that was based in New York City and internationally. The marches were scheduled for January 21st, 2017, right after Donald Trump was elected for his first term. I'm sorry, yes, right after Donald Trump was elected. Shortly after New Year's, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour came to the board of the Women's March stating that they believed there should be more diverse faces in the media representing Women's March. They stated that they had experience through Justice League, which was an organization they started under the training of Harry Belafonte. As the director of development for Women's March, we were receiving an influx in donations that we had planned to use to uplift the activists in participating cities. Tamika, Linda, and Carmen offered Justice League to be our fiscal sponsors at a rate of 9% of all funds, since we did not have the time to register as an NGO. Women's March received $2 million in donations and $2 million in merchandise sales. Tamika, Linda, and Carmen soon became quote-unquote celebrities in the movement, rushing to accept awards from Angela Davis, photo shoots, interviews, and refused to show up to board meetings that we needed them at in order for the organization to continue direct actions that we were planning against the Trump administration. One of the most influential opportunities that Tamika, Linda, and Carmen cut off was when Democratic senators were going to sneak us into the Congress floor in masses to shut down a conservative vote on women's healthcare. Tamika refused to participate because she had been arrested on International Women's Day, and the judge in NYC warned her that she would face a sentence if she was arrested again within 6 months. We began to notice that the group of women who were receiving the public accolades were actually hindering our movement from progressing forward. They were all receiving salaries and using the money that was donated to pay for their flights, vacations, while myself, along with an undocumented Mexican woman, were promised we would be paid a salary only after I allocated a large grant to continue to organizations. Once I secured a $1 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, I was then told that my services, along with Jimena's, were no longer needed and we were not paid for our work. The total funding they owed me was $40,000 and Jimena $10,000. I sent Women's March an invoice, in which they refused to pay. Refused to acknowledge and reached out to multiple law firms who at the time refused to take my case because of the public support of Women's March. As soon as the women drained the funding from Women's March, they left the organization in 2018 to begin capitalizing off the media towards the blatant murders of Black people. I have kept this information to myself along with other women who experienced nonpayment, as we didn't have enough people to support us at the time. When I saw that the mothers were also experiencing similar exploitation off the lives of their children, I reached out to Bianca to explain to her why and how Women's March moved from a people's movement to a corporation that benefited off of oppression. When organizing with Women's March, I questioned Tamika's close relationship to Farrakhan, who had been mentoring her and felt uncomfortable with her involvement while she was using Malcolm's quotes. In a meeting that I attended once with older activists from the Vietnam era, they warned me to be very careful about Tamika Carmen and Linda because of their connection to Farrakhan, who is known to have full control of the current movements, and Harry Belafonte, who is taking DNC— known as Democratic National Convention— money to train, quote-unquote, activists. They believe that were both— that both were operatives from the CIA who are sending activists into large movements in order to suppress the uprising we so desperately need. I saw this play out when they purposely did not show up to our board meetings. In 2017, both BLM and Women's March was labeled a terrorist group. —terrorist threat and were being spied on heavily from the CIA, FBI. I received an anonymous email telling me that my apartment was bugged and activists within BLM were showing up murdered and disappeared. Shortly after this, Patrisse disappeared and came out with BLM rebranded as a corporation. Thank you to the mothers and all of those involved in the Black Power movement. That was from Lindsay Asher, who was a prior director of development at Women's March, and myself, who I have the last letter that I would like to read is was written by myself and three other people on our departure from Black Women's March and the reasons why we would be departing. This was written by myself and Somalia Rose, but also signed by Phoenix Robles and Queen Jean of the Black Trans Liberation Organization. Effective immediately, the majority of Black women members of Black Women's March. BWM have voiced dozens of grievances to Caroline Gombe, the founder, regarding her racism, colorism, exploitation, displacement, erasure, abandonment, manipulation, coercion, and other forms of abuse we've endured from her. Due to the severity of these grievances, Caroline should have been effectively and immediately removed from the founder's position within Black Women's March by a majority vote a long time ago. In response to the grievances filed, Caroline has chosen to disregard the countless requests to resolve these grievances with the members who have put in tireless work. Caroline has changed the credentials to both BWM GoFundMe, Instagram, and email, blocked almost all of the abused members out of Google Docs with pertinent information to events they've committed to. Caroline used our individual career credentials to reach out to organizations in order to both negotiate and secure collaborations with other organizations, then shut those Qualified members out of pertinent information to carry out their duties, with the intentions of sabotaging their reputations afterwards. Caroline has refused to take responsibility or accountability for any of our grievances. Caroline's impulsive, vindictive, and condescending behavior led to the resignation of one of the two co-founders. The remaining co-founder was voluntarily willing to let Black women members of Black Women's March continue to suffer in silence instead of taking accountability. Accountability, implementation of the proper changes, and the effective yet immediate removal of Caroline, although they agreed this was needed to preserve the integrity of the Black Women's March movement. Therefore, effective immediately, we are left with no further choice than to share our truth and announce our immediate departure, effective immediately. We all take an oath in activism and community outreach, an oath to commit to the learning and unlearning necessary to be the change we want to see. Oppressors do not reserve the right to complain about oppression. We can't properly advocate against this white supremacist system alongside a founder whose character and behavior emulates it. Performative activism is the ultimate exploitation of Black people's pain. Number 1, Caroline has accused unambiguous dark-skinned Black women organizers of being colorist, intimidating, and unworthy of protection. Number 2, Caroline canceled booked hotel reservations for Black women members —of Black Women's March because she was upset that they were arriving later than expected due to situations outside of their control. Caroline did this knowing they were still coming. Number 3, Caroline referred to several elderly Black people coming from the March on D.C. for the 53rd anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech as, quote-unquote, you people, because she did not want to be seated near them. Phoenix was on the same bus and confirmed that the bus adhered to social distancing and was in accordance with all safety guidelines Caroline agreed to when booking her ticket. Number 4, Caroline demanded that a Black woman, professional photographer, videographer, and member of Black Women's March Phoenix stop taking pictures of other members within other orgs while in D.C. because they would not allow her behind the Speaker's Gate during the 53rd anniversary for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech. Number 5, Caroline criminalized, victim-blamed, stereotyped, and physically chastised Phoenix right after Phoenix was physically assaulted by a man at the march for Marsha P. Johnson. Excuse me. Number 6, Caroline spewed condescending colorist rhetoric as a biracial woman with a Romanian mother when grievances concerning her leadership were addressed. She also implied that Bianca, an unambiguous dark-skinned Black woman was a quote-unquote colorist after Bianca acknowledged Kamala Harris's biracial identity. Number 7, Caroline intentionally—

Jared Ball: Bianca, Bianca, forgive me for the interruption, but I, I'm— unfortunately, I'm— I need to interrupt and, and we have to move on. Um, uh, please forgive this, uh, but, uh, we are running short on time and we wanted to give— I know Felix has to give some specifics. Dr. James has some questions, and then unfortunately we do have to begin to wrap. So my apologies to you, but we do need to move on.

Joy James: Yeah, I do want to interject that the people listening have raised questions. So I know, Felix, you want to say something, so go ahead.

Felix: We can answer the questions too. I just know we was brought here for specific subjects, and I don't feel like they were really touched. in the questions previous to getting to this point. So I kind of feel my sister Bianca too, like we have things to address and not enough time to address them. So I don't really feel rushed in my last speaking either. So we can do the questions if that works better for y'all.

Joy James: No, I mean, we can— we're gonna go over. It's just I didn't know if you wanted to hear the questions from the folks as well. And right, a 2-hour platform is not Not enough, but thanks.

Felix: Yeah, I can hear the questions first and then try to incorporate that into my final little statement.

Joy James: Well, there's 3 basic ones, and it's about support, right? So one specifically, how can the people who've been, who've been giving their energies to other folks support you all specifically? Like either, you know, material aid, leveraging your analyses, showing up for— do you— so that's one, right? The second one, which you may or may not ask, I mean, it's about impacted families, and there's not— the majority, I don't believe, here are impacted families. But what about the political contradictions in working with impacted families and impacted families among themselves? And the third Which is the last one, which is about a sector that's also influential, but I don't believe I've heard much of it said, is what is the role of academia and its tangible support that could be given as opposed to deflecting? So again, sorry about the crunch in time. We've got, you know, 15, 18 minutes left. So whoever, you know, Felix, starting of course with you, if you find Are these questions about tangible support useful to close out? Those are the questions.

Felix: Yeah, for sure. I wanted to leave with a statement about Black faces in high spaces are always going to be more loyal to those high places than they are these other Black faces. And I only say that because as a Black person, my life is always in danger. And as a trans person, my life is always a protest. So these celebrity activists are very disingenuous. These— the way that they come to our cities, more specifically my city, Louisville, and they team up with these Black elites, and they kind of hoard these resources from the people on the ground actually doing this work, is a disservice not only to the community, but the movement itself. And I wanted to say that I don't trust celebrity activists. I don't think that they do the legwork. I don't think that they do the research. And I don't think that they have an authentic dialogue with the people on the ground.

Crystal: Thank you.

Felix: They're only there to uplift their own agendas, and their agenda, their politicals, are all to get rich, richer than they already are. So that does not serve us, and that does not move us forward in any ways. I tried to write down a couple of notes because I knew we was getting short on time. We've moved beyond that. A lot of examples for myself, millennials and Gen Zs, a lot of our examples come from these celebrities. So I think it is the duty of our elders to train us and let us know what that activism really looks like, because there was no onboarding process for us this year. Our onboarding was getting shot in the face by tear gas when we went out to support and uplift these Black names that we lost at the hands of white supremacy. So that's another way that we have to be accountable, is in knowing that some of us don't know what that looks like outside of what we do in ourselves. So we need each other to uplift those accurate and appropriate I say be sketchy of anyone whose only means of defeating our enemies or the system is to work with them, because we cannot defeat them from working within. We can only just defeat them by abolishing them altogether and starting over. We do not need a seat at a table. We need to take the fucking table and create our own. This is not— the system has already shown that they do not care about us. They do not want to care about Yes. And they will not care about us. So we need to stop using ourselves as the martyr for every other race to get equality. Everyone's getting it before us. So we need to stand strong in ourselves and in each other, and we need to create what we know already can exist. They've already shown us that they destroy successful Black communities day in and day out. They don't want us to succeed. It's not about succeeding on their own terms. So I just wanted to leave people with that. Like, the support is in supporting the grassroots people who are actually doing this work, not the people that you see with these big platforms, because they don't need any more elevation. They are out of touch. They don't know how to really connect to the people on the ground because they don't have to. So that's the best way you can uplift us. I think for celebrity organizations to come into town— I want to thank you, Bianca, for uplifting the trans situation. I think for a celebrity organization to come into town And to not care what getting arrested as a trans person looks like, and to just devalue us in that sense, I know that they're not here for Black lives. They're not here for movement work. They're here to uplift their platform more than they already have. So my way for you to support is to do your own research and look into the people really on the ground who don't have access to these funds, but are still making this work move. Because if we can do that without access to the funds, that should be alarm I'm swearing to you that these people have so much access to funds, and they still don't do anything. So I speak for that. When it comes to BLM, I don't think it's just BLM National. There are so many BLMs that have gotten access to millions and millions and millions that we can never prove. And I don't know how we hold those people accountable, because they've moved that money to places we can never see, we can never touch. And I think that the best way for us to move past that is just knowing who those people are and not allowing them to continue to disrupt these spaces anymore. So I thank y'all for giving me a platform to speak. I ain't gonna go too much in because I know we only got a little bit of time, but yes, do your research, look in the grassroots movement. We are out here moving this work for the people, and the fact that we can do that with the dollars in our pocket— we didn't get the millions— that should show you that these people, Until Freedom, these big BLMs, they should be able to move a lot more And the fact that they're not moving work should be alarming to you, the people giving them your dollars and your time and your physical being at their actions.

Speaker 2: Thank you, Felix.

Shaperlle Wells: I had a question for the BLM members. Have you considered establishing your own organization outside of BLM? Because I think because you are still attached to the global network, And there is a discrepancy between what your belief is and obviously what the global network believes and what their agenda— it seems like you guys have 2 separate agendas, so that that way we, the people on the outside, can support people who want to support us. Like, for me, like I said, you know, usually I'm out here by myself doing my own thing, but I would like to join organizations. That would actually benefit the people as a whole. And so I'm just wondering, with the other chapters, with D.C., with Boston, with Philly, and are you considering merging? Because I think that everybody on this call is pushing for abolitionist movement. So let's do it. I mean, it is what it is at this point. We need to get on the ground. And do what we can do together and work for the people.

Jared Ball: Yanei, Professor Strong, you wanted to jump in on that and fold that response to Ms. Wells into whatever concluding comments you have for us this afternoon?

Crystal: Sure. And I think I really appreciate your question. I think it is the question to ask us, and I hope that our comments won't make what I'm about to say a surprise, which is that nobody here in the BLM 10+ is seeking to be back in community, in organizing community, with the Global Network Foundation grassroots industrial complex. Okay? You know, we are trying to do the work that we should have been doing all along. Which is to build a sound movement infrastructure, sound organizational infrastructure that has a revolutionary vision, that is able to resource one another, that is able to be democratic in governance, that is able to be transparent. You know, we have been trying to build this within this container for years, but I think it's very. Clear that if accountability is not a two-way street, then it's a nonstarter. And so, I'm saying that to say that our purpose in continuing to speak out about— in truth, in radical truth about what has happened, is because there are lessons that our movement needs right now, that our experiences can share. It will tell us to be mindful about what happens at the beginning. It tells us to be mindful about the way individuals are elevated. It tells us to be mindful about the use of certain buzzwords without it being matched with an actual radical politic. Right? Like, these are things that whatever we build anew, which is what we are certainly planning to do, to build a new formation that departs from what we're experiencing now. Right? Like, we carry The lessons, the betrayals, the the mistakes that we've made, right? We carry those things with us so that we can build something that rises to this revolutionary occasion. And I also wanted to just add to the questions around how to support. You know, BLM is not alone in the things that we're describing, right? You know, I said. One of the first things I said was this is and is not about BLM, right? Because this is literally an international infrastructure that is designed to demobilize radical movement, right? That's that can't be just BLM. And so I think it's very important for us to continue to elevate, and we've been elevating to support your local grassroots organizations, right? BLM Philly, BLM. DC, BLM Boston, we do great fucking work. Excuse me. Chicago. Chicago. Like, all of the— you know, we do real work, and we've done it without resources. You know, up until— like, we had $5,000 that we received from BLM National in 6 years. Right? So we literally built this out the mud on some real ish. Okay? And so I'm saying I'm saying that to say that there are organizations like that wherever you are. So support the folks who are doing the work. Look at the work that they're doing and support that work. We don't need to look for some national or international big-money organization to save us, right? It's the people right next to us, right? And if there are organizations who are doing that work, like the Black Alliance for Peace, we need to show them a lot more love. And there are many other folks who are doing that work. We can support those folks who have shown improvement. But otherwise, we can support our local grassroots organizations. Right? That's a way that we can build their capacity to do more. And finally, to this point about academia, I didn't introduce myself with my title, with my occupation. And part of the reason for that is because I'm an organizer. Organizer first. In the academy, I'm disrupting that shit as much as I can. And I think if we learned anything from the past few months, we are in— behind us is a Welcome to Philadelphia sign, which is depicting the dropping of a bomb on May 13th, 1985, on the MOVE organization headquarters here in West Philadelphia. And the academy was a collaborator with that. Because the University of Pennsylvania held hostage the remains of 2 children who were killed by state violence for 36 years without the consent of the family. And so I'm saying that to say that the university is also part of what we're trying to abolish. Now, there are radical people, a couple, who are doing real work to support our movement. But we know who those folks are. They're not just using our movement buzzwords to get the academia bag, right? They are showing up for and with our movements. And so we need to be able to differentiate whether it's a community organization or an activist or an academic or a journalist, whomever. We need to look at their work and let that determine whether they deserve our support.

Yane Strong: I would like to just offer I also add on to that. And thank you, Crystal. And thank you, you know, I mean, everybody here. I just really want to appreciate all of you. I want to appreciate Black Power Media for creating this moment for us to be able to come together and speak. I want to say a couple of things. So as it relates to the support question, One national organization that's been mentioned in here recently is the Black Alliance for Peace. And I'm a member of the Black Alliance for Peace. There's some other folks that are in here that are members of the Black Alliance for Peace. One big difference between the Black Alliance for Peace and like BLM Global Network is they are very, very specific about where their funds come from and very— and have built— I've worked and helped build the Black Alliance for Peace. And the Black Alliance for Peace built itself to be transparent, particularly with its membership, and to be accountable. And so it's a very different kind of national organization that's very significantly under-resourced, because they only get their money from the people. So that's an example of a national organization that you can trust. You know. And so I just want to share that. And also as it relates to support. One of the questions that was asked was specifically around families. And I want to give an example. In Philadelphia, we mentioned— Crystal mentioned Walter Wallace Jr., who was murdered October 26th of last year. And, you know, we have stayed in close community with their family, with his family. And his family has joined with organizers and organizing community. To help with developing things that were happening in the community, have vision for what's going on next. And I also am— I speak— I personally speak most closely with his wife. And what I can say is, like, she is being very intentional about learning, right? She's like, anything she knows about, she wants to— if she can't make it, she's watching it on a livestream. She shows up at all different actions and activities. She's begun to come come to organizing meetings. And what we are doing is we are lifting and supporting her leadership. Right? We are getting behind and hearing her voice, and sharing what we've learned, but also learning from her. And so, we're not going and trying to tell her who to be. We're not going and trying to tell her what to do, what her priorities are, or what they're supposed to be, or anything along those lines. We are supporting her. We are letting her and the family know that There is a community around her and them that will love and support them, and actually elevating their leadership and making space for their leadership. And I think that's an important approach when it comes to supporting families, because they are the ones that know the pain.

Joy James: Right.

Yane Strong: And so, they are the ones— even if they don't have all of the political education, because they were dropped into the movement suddenly, we can give them the political education. We can help them to learn, as we are always, of course, continuing to learn, because I don't know anybody at any level who knows all the stuff. But we can also follow their leadership. And that's the important thing that I think we have to remember, is that the people who are closest to the pain are the ones that have the solutions. And so we have a duty to get around them. We have a duty to get around our disabled families. Right. We have a duty to elevate their voices. We have a duty to get around and elevate the voices of our LGBTQ family, our gay family, our trans family, our nonbinary family. They all have their own specific struggles. They have their specific realities. We need to hear from them, and understand how we get behind them and lift them up, and what it is that they're supposed to be— what it is that they need. Need to transform their reality. So when it comes to actually just providing support, it's like put your ear to the ground, see where people are actually doing work, and then— and where people are struggling. Because if you go to where the struggle is, if you go to where the pain is, that's where the solutions are. It's with the people. It's never with a quote-unquote leader. If you're seeing their faces around too, too much, they probably a problem. You know, you got to find a balance. You know what I'm saying? So that's what I say. Find your way to the people. Once again, though, just really thank you for this platform, and we are going to continue to put more words out. And please make sure you go to the website for it's BLM chapter statement that has our first statement, has our second statement, and also has corroborating statements from other organizers who have had the same experiences that we have with the Global Network Celebrity.

Tone: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much.

Jared Ball: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Tone: No, thank you. So we would like to offer and uplift everything everyone else said, but with respect to what people should do, academics and otherwise, is holding people accountable. Do the analysis. So if goals are neither generative or advance a political analysis and vision, they lead to like vacuous programs, and we should be questioning that. We should try to understand people's theory of change, What is the work, and how are people intending for us to get from point A to point B? That should be something that people are questioning, and they're really receiving real answers for. Also, how are we centering not just those people who do this work in terms of organizers, but as mentioned here, people who are affected as well as political prisoners and others? These are things that we need to bring to the table and make sure that like we have a really strong analysis. But what is the plan? And what is the plan to bring people along? What is the plan to assess and address the power structures? So without questioning that, we fall prey to being enchanted by social media or enchanted by, you know, just flowery prose that don't really amount to much. So it's our duty, not just as organizers, not just as people who want to participate and want to believe, but also academia and people who are affected as well.

Jared Ball: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that.