#FreeBresha DAYS OF ACTION: OCT 5 & 6

#FreeBresha DAYS OF ACTION: OCT 5 & 6

by Molly Crabapple (2016)
by Molly Crabapple (2016)

Bresha has an important court hearing on Thursday, Oct 6th when the prosecutor will determine if Bresha will be prosecuted for a crime (possibly charged as an adult) instead of given the support & safety that she needs.

We take action in solidarity with Bresha and demand that she is returned home to her family and that all charges against her are dropped.  We call on #SayHerName / #BlackLivesMatter supporters, victim advocates, feminists, racial justice activists, young people, and people of faith to take action in solidarity with Bresha and all survivors of domestic & sexual violence who are criminalized for surviving.

Events are being planned across the US! Visit here and here for an updated list. We want to help promote your event! Please send us info about your action.

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE (Download as PDF): 

  1. TAKE DIRECT ACTION! On Oct 5th & 6th, organize a march & rally, a speak out, a vigil, a flash mob dance party, a concert, a block party, or a fundraiser. Use media! Create zines, short videos, postcards, music, and poetry.
  2. DONATE to the fund to support Bresha Meadows’ freedom:https://www.gofundme.com/BreshaM

  3. SIGN the petition to demand that Trumbull County Prosecutor, Dennis Watkins, drop the charges against Bresha and free her now:bit.ly/FreeBreshaNow

  4. WRITE letters of encouragement and support to Bresha and send to: Bresha Meadows, c/o Ian N. Friedman, Esq., Friedman & Nemecek, L.L.C., The IMG Center, 1360 E. 9th Street, Suite 650, Cleveland, Ohio 44114
  5. JOIN the “Open Letter to Dennis Watkins” project. Send us an open letter to Prosecutor Dennis Watkins who has the discretion to decide to drop charges against Bresha. https://freebresha.wordpress.com/open-letters/

  6. EDUCATE communities about the criminalization of black girls and survivors of domestic violence! Organize discussions and workshops about domestic and sexual violence, explore community strategies for safety and support, resist the criminalization of our communities.
    Educational Resources:
    * #FreeBresha curriculum template
    *  fact sheet on domestic violence and the criminalization of girls
    * educational tools at survivedandpunished.org and No Selves to Defend

  7. ENDORSE the call to free Bresha Meadows. Urge your campus, organization, union, faith community, or collective to endorse the statement posted by Love & Protect:  http://loveandprotect.org/bresha-meadows/

  8. CONNECT WITH FAITH COMMUNITIES. If you are part of a faith community, join community prayer sessions for Bresha’s freedom and mobilize your community. More here:https://freebresha.wordpress.com/faith/

  9. SPREAD THE WORD with friends, families, communities, co-workers, and via social media. Write letters to the editor to your local news media. Blog, tweet, and spread the word on social media. #FreeBresha

Let us know what you’re up to!  Stay in touch via e-mail atFreeBreshaMeadows@gmail.com or connect with us @FreeBresha on twitterand facebook. All updates can be found at freebresha.wordpress.com.

Sign Petition Demanding Prosecutor to Free Bresha Meadows

#FreeBresha

The Bresha Meadows Freedom Campaign urges supporters to sign this petition addressed to Trumbull County Prosecutor, Dennis Watkins, demanding that he free Bresha Meadows and drop all charges against her. Brief excerpt from the petition:

Free Bresha MeadowsTO: TRUMBULL COUNTY PROSECUTOR, DENNIS WATKINS

Drop all charges against Bresha Meadows & release her immediately!

Bresha Meadows is a child survivor of domestic violence who just turned 15 while incarcerated at the Trumbull County Juvenile Detention Center. Bresha is charged with aggravated murder for defending herself, and her family from a father who had a long history of abusing them. We demand that the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office drop all charges against Bresha Meadows and release her immediately.

Like Bresha, an estimated 15.5 million children in the U.S. are exposed to domestic violence each year. Girls and women incarcerated for actions taken in self-defense are disproportionately Black. 84% of girls incarcerated in the US…

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For Bresha On Her 15th Birthday

sketch1470948627641 (Image: Kara Rodriguez )

We write this post for Bresha Meadows, on this, her 15th birthday. As Black and Brown organizers, many of whom have experienced violence in our own lives, it pains us that Bresha will spend this day incarcerated, rather than celebrating her life at home with her family. On July 28, acting in her own defense, and in defense of her mother, Bresha allegedly took the life of her father, Jonathan Meadows.

Jonathan Meadows was killed with his own gun — a firearm he is said to have repeatedly pointed at his own family, throughout the years of abuse they suffered. It is well documented that abusers with a history of violence are five times more likely to subsequently murder an intimate partner if there is a firearm in the home. Brandi, Bresha’s mother, was trapped in a cycle of violence, that both she and Bresha had…

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Night Out for Safety and Liberation on August 2nd

From Allied Media Projects:

Allied Media Projects is excited to partner with local and national organizations, including the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Michigan and the Ella Baker Center of Human Rights, to present the “Night Out for Safety and Liberation” on Tuesday, August 2, 2016, 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at the Detroit Public Library. The event in Detroit is one of several events taking place in 20 cities across the country, that aim to redefine what safety means in our communities, beyond the current frame of safety through policing.

The National Night Out for Safety and Liberation’s mission is to “start a different conversation about what #SafetyIs—one that is focused on how we can build equity, power, and opportunity in our communities.” In the context of police brutality and mass criminalization in black and brown communities, the question organizers of the event are asking is: “Does an increased police presence in a community necessarily translate to more safety?”

AMP invites our network of media-based organizers to participate in this important national conversation about what safety and liberation means for our communities. How do we use art, media, and technology to change the narrative of safety? How can we shift public policy from prioritizing policing, incarceration, and surveillance to instead prioritizing investment in Black and Brown communities and the creation of a stronger social safety net?

SafetyIs
Photo Taina Vargas-Edmond

Organizers of the event in Detroit shared this description:

“On Night Out for Safety and Liberation, we will bring together people with powerful visions for the future: a cross-section of community leaders, thinkers, artists and activists from all around Detroit. Together, we will envision building safe communities where public resources are reinvested from a wasteful criminal legal system and invested in other ways to ensure community safety and accountability like restorative justice hubs and peacekeepers.”

SafetyIs
Photo Tawana Petty

To kick off the event, the the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights will host a 1 hour TweetChat on Tuesday, August 2nd at 2pm EST. The TweetChat is an online conversation that will take place on Twitter. Participants can tweet their questions to @EllaBakerCenter using the hashtag #SafetyIs and or #NOSL16. Organizations can register for the TweetChat in advance here.

Stay up to date on the Night Out for Safety and Liberation Facebook page and Detroit event page.

On Sex Work & Survival: Why We Must Stand With Alisha Walker

Transformative Spaces

The Chicago Sun-Times not only saw fit to publish…

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Navigating Neoliberalism in the Academy, Nonprofits, and Beyond

The Octopus, drawing by Nicci Yin Created as part of the presentation “The Octopus: Cognitive Capitalism and the University” with Natalia Cecire and Miriam Neptune at The Scholar & Feminist 2015: Action on Education

The Octopus, drawing by Nicci Yin

Scholar & Feminist Online has published an exciting collection of articles & videos that builds from the reflections in INCITE’s 2007 anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex! This important multimedia resource is entitled Navigating Neoliberalism in the Academy, Nonprofits, and Beyond, and edited by Soniya Munshi and Craig Willse. The editors outline the core goal of the issue:

The essays that comprise this special issue tackle the nonprofit and school as two key sites in which neoliberal social and economic reforms are both constituted and contested. The issue demonstrates that these two realms are not distinct, but are deeply implicated in one another, often in joint projects of producing for neoliberalism—producing knowledge and producing communities. Put simply, this collection asks: What are the possibilities for transformative politics given the capacity of neoliberal capital to incorporate, absorb and/or neutralize demands for social justice? And what can we produce in excess of neoliberalism? Considering the nonprofit and the university together offers an opportunity to rethink the relationships between activism and scholarship, as well as a chance to re-theorize neoliberalism from the bottom up.

Check it out now!  To purchase The Revolution Will Not Be Funded anthology, it’s now available as an e-book!