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If you really want a copy (dm I have extras) ;)

Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu was a Nigerian modernist painter & educator. She was part of the Zaria Art Society, or the Zaria Rebels, which was founded in 1958 by undergraduates at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology (now Ahmadu Bello University). The Zaria Rebels fused Indigenous art practices with Western ones to create an ethos of natural synthesis. Artists in this collective were cognizant of the growing influence of foreign cultural values in Nigeria and combated it by depicting the diversity of their country.

The Zaria Art Society is mostly known by its male contributors (Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Demas Nwoko, Yusuf Grillo, Simon Okeke, Jimoh Akolo, and Oseloka Osadebe), so I was particularly struck by Ugbodaga-Ngu’s piece centered as docal point in the gallery’s booth. Ugbodaga-Ngu was the first Nigerian women to teach at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, and would instruct a generation of Nigerian Modernist painters. Natural Synthesis is in step with artistic movements such as Pan-Africanism and Négritude.

I kept coming back to The Labourer’s Song depth of texture. Two figures are looking into the horizon, and I could projected a litany of realities onto them based on posturing and clothing. The double wood framing brought out the colors’ gritty richness.

This felt like internal parts exposed. I was studying the piece and eavesdropping on a friend groups conversation. They were all mesmerized. One person was in awe at how the mechanical wires were technically handled. The artist utilized repurposed wire, zip ties, cables, and electrical conduits in an aesthetically practical way. The artist Chen was inspired by Taoist concepts of “Chi” by weaving, binding, and crocheting electrical conduits to symbolize the Yin and Yang, the fluidity of the Female and Male. Interdependence and tension are central to Chen’s technological sculptures.

Senzeni Marasela is a cross-disciplinary isiXhosa artist who created a series of red calico stitched cloth portraits. Marasela performed as a semiautobiographical protagonist named Theodora. For six years, Marasela was inspired by her own mother’s dress and played the character Theodora as she waited for her husband Gebane to come back. Marasela was inspired by Njabulo Ndebele’s novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela (2003).

When researching this piece, I was struck by the levels of embodiment in creation and presentation. Marasela wore at least twenty versions of Theodora’s dress in public. Theodora was depicted with her face away from the audience, her garden like shadows.

The artist described their craft as an improvisational portraiture craft. On their artist website, Biu says, “To cut is to reclaim.” I wish I could see this in the sun with the wind. The cutting technique used is naturally gothic. Leaves or fire creep up the canvas alongside a geometric background. The portrait’s subject is closes their eyes. Resting or pondering. The vegetation and shapes on the skin, become less and more legible.

The canvas has wear. I can smell the barbershop. The red is a provocation but also channeling warm. The blade on the scalp is sharp while the images on the wall are obscured. An overflowing portrait with brown/black hands. Tenderness is present in its casualness. Is that an archival photo?

The longer I stared more faces appeared in the canvas’s night sky. The two figures looking into the sky are a mother and daughter. The young girl is a princess and nature is her storybook. Fantasies unravels themselves engulfing the pair into a real life fairytale. The author describes her artistic practice as visual journaling.

The diversity of texture’s here makes me think of trauma. The canvas shifts from darkness into a sparse tan, this change centered by a portrait. A young black person is looking into an unknown space, that mystery motivated by faith.

At the Tanya Weddemire Gallery’s booth at Art Expo I received a postcard created by the artist O’Neil Scott. Scott’s work is inspired by Jamaica in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa. The people’s devastation and their rebuilding process is on display.

A collection of paintings are built into wood creating a series of frames. It’s like looking into windows that drop the audience off into different scenes. The collection of frames create mimic an enclosure with a tin roof. There are rooms filled with grainy patterns then close-ups on different characters. The psychological settings depicted are meant to evoke feelings of home and homelessness. In this work, the artist Uzor was inspired by migrants traveling across the Sahara Desert. The yellow peeking out of a window could be shining sand.

This is a visualization of the vibrational energy gathered when creating sound. The music is red spilling into black. Red is a primary color and regenerative force. Music is a part of a cosmological imagination. Jazz is a testimonial, like all genres created through segregation. The Blackness overflowing the instruments is the sound. Artist Jova Lynne was inspired by musicians such as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Sun-Ra.

Ezeluomba, Ndubuisi. Zaria Art Society, The. Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/zaria-art-society-the.

https://post.moma.org/clara-etso-ugbodaga-ngus-many-roles-in-nigerias-modernist-art-scene/

https://www.chenhungchen.com/

https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article/8/1/114/400619/The-Devouring-of-Time-in-Senzeni-Marasela-s-Art-of

https://www.antoniusbui.com/about

https://julibakerandsummer.com/pages/about

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-5-best-booths-expo-chicago-2026

https://www.austinuzor.com/

She pulled an all-nighter, cutting and resewing thrifted pieces together. Empty soda cans and loose threads surrounded her. By morning, the costume’s hot-glued jewels hardened. She cartwheeled in the living room to make sure the disguise was secure, then dug for a fanny pack from the depths of her closet. It was merchandise from an old non-profit job.

The family that ran the East African grocery store on her block swore she was lying about her ethnicity. Today, the boys behind the counter were delighted to see her all dressed up.

“Elastigirl!”

“Did I do good?”

One nodded, the other clapped his hands.

It was hot even for Halloween. The body suit made her under-boob sweat and thighs chafe. It was early, and the sun was setting. The bar crawl was full of cheap characters. Fast fashion pre-orders and late arrivals at Party City. This crowd did not start a tab nor tip, but packed a non-moving dance floor. Popular music was playing so whites bobbed and yelled. Every culture was mushed together; the transitions fuzzy teleportation’s of genre. Everyone rode a modern wave, passively moving along. She scanned the room clocking every cool looking person of color.

The bartender was so handsome she wondered if he was gay. The tattoos on his biceps twisted as he lifted a box of beer. His hair was longer than hers, dreads loose down his back, and even with a bandana on, he kept flicking hair out of his face. She gave him the black lace scrunchie on her wrist then watched him put his hair in a ponytail. He gave her a cigarette in thanks. On the patio with her drink, she found a seat. The conversation next to her was intriguing.

“That’s the cunt that stole my job.”

“Fuck her.”

“No, it’s okay, she deserved it. I looked her up, and she’s way more qualified than me. On to the next, I guess… At least she’s very well dressed.”

“You should be her friend.”

“Maybe.”

A new character interjects, “You’re literally the smartest person I know. If you can’t get a job, I’m doomed!”

“Thank you, but stop insulting yourself.”

The patio was roofless. Looking into the light polluted sky she saw no stars, just the moon, almost full. A car drove past, music so loud.

“I love y’alls costumes.”

The fairies’ smile took over her face, a piercing laid across her teeth.

“Thank you! Can I touch your suit?” She nodded and the woman’s thin fingers caressed her shoulder.

A pirate asked, “You made it?”

“Yeah.”

“Really cool,” said the zombie.

She fully turned towards the group, folding herself into their conversation. The job-stealing cunt waved at Elastigirl then started walking across the room, Elastigirl made room on the bench.

The woman bounced as she talked, hands with colorful acrylics flapped, which moved her wings. Gold wire was braided then beads were weaved in. The charms were an array of colors— tigerseye, quarts, turquoise. Her back was a delicate weapon, poking anything in her peripheral.

Staring into the sky, the pirate brooded or chimed in monosyllabically. A plastic bird was glued on their shoulder, and the eye path they wore looked real. It was a thick brown leather with delicate cross stitches. At one point they leaned their head against the bird and rubbed their cheek against its bright blue feathers.

A knife had slashed through the zombie’s slip, which left her breasts and thighs exposed. The girl’s light skin had a thick green tint and along her collar bone there was crumbly dried blood. The tatters she wore contrasted the rick owens boots laced up her legs. Mid story she’d spot a friend in the crowd and blow them kisses, keeping her cadence. She turned towards Elastigirl’s friend.

“What are you?”

The mime made a few gestures, and the group responded with recognition. The fairy gathered her medieval skirts. The brown point at the top of her ears looked real.

“It’s time.”

“Ah shit.”

The group left, and Elastigirl’s friend went to pee. Alone, she re-entered and found a seat. In the bar’s mirror, there’s her reflection. On her phone she zoomed into her face among the tall brown bottles. A text disturbed her vision. She didn’t open the message, but read and deleted it.

She’d rather he’d just ghosted her. The blue cheese-stuffed olives were so good she could cry. Eyes closed, she chewed on the toothpick. The bartender still had her scrunchie on his wrist.

“What are you thinking about?”

She opened her eyes.

“The last time I was vulnerable.”

“Geesh.”

She nodded, he poured. When the cold gin hit her lips, she grimaced. Walking the dance floor, she spilled the drink’s rim.

She danced with glass, mask, and bodily fluids underfoot. Swaying the beat was like a cord, swishing her ass faster, pumping her hips, raising her hands. Berserk yet coordinated she melted into it sliding, twirling, and jumping. She sidestepped the occasional grasp at her waist. Bodies on the floor thinned. The house beat caught her in a euphoric loop. She danced in the center freely, two-stepping alone. Clapping up at the DJ booth, she locked eyes with the pirate— their one eye winked.

Behind the DJ booth, the crowd sharpened. Girls were making out in the periphery. Old men were eye raping college students. The random person who bought her a drink was zig-zagging back. A man put his arm around her waist, then someone grabbed at her from the other side, and she stumbled into their chest. The fairy had scooped her from a stranger’s arms.

She melted into this friend group. Squishing into an unknown car, they traveled North. Bottles were displayed like prizes. The pirate tilted Elastigirl’s chin back, pouring down her throat. Brown dripped down her bottom lip, so the pirate brushed it away. She watched them lick the liquor off their thumb. The pirate’s grey eyes were outlined in kohl. A blunt cut between them, releasing the tension.

The next club had a line lopping around the block. Somebody knew people at the front, so the group went inside. The bouncer looked tired.

The bouncer said, “80 a person.”

“There’s five of us, what’s the group price?”

“400.”

“We got 220.” He nodded.

It was an all black party where men with money and beautiful women circled each other. Elastigirl leaned back to be twerked on then twirled by her friend. The mime’s makeup reflected the club lights. The black spots under her eyes were blurred. Knees bent, Elastigirl whipped her head wildly, hair cascading. Shades of orange refract the strobe lights.

It got too hot to breathe. Outside the group rocked in a circle. Smoke from the cold intermingled with nicotine. The mime’s eyes glowed gold, baby hairs escaped her ponytail which created a frizzy halo around her head.

“I’ve been in multiple bougie spaces, n’ I keep asking myself the same questions. What does this mean? What are the specifics? You’d think I’d told them to go fuck themselves. Asking for clarification or, dare I say, solutions, answers, is like mixing water with oil. I think these fuckers take pride in unsolvable phenomenas. Nuance and complexity turn them on. After nutting all over themselves, they take a picture n’ call it revolution. ”

“Its a grand foreclosure of meaning.”

“A performance of meaning.”

“Symbols and minstrels.”

“In another time, I probably would have been a minstrel performer.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“No, I’m serious! Those people were mostly black and professional artists. They made good money, too! What are you ashamed of nigga?

The mime started performing. In the mirror she painted her face, staring into the creases of her hand she caressed her mask. Her face broke into exaggerated frames, for the click of an imaginary camera. Flashes of masculinity and the goofiness of childhood. The mirror had become a phone.

The clique erupted in laughter. One person silently ran away and then rejoined the circle. Another was wheezing and cackling.

“Brava.”

Holding out her phone, the fairy waved it in the group’s faces.

“Next move?”

The zombie turned towards where she parked.

“Let’s go! I’m cold.”

The jazz club ought to be closed. It was an open mic dress up party. Glass lanterns on the wall and candles on tables made the room amber. Drunk couples fondled each other over rickety tables. Instruments were close to dancing feet. The band on deck unpacked their guitars right next to an old man journaling. There was only one mic so people sang together or acapella. No one was timing or organizing the acts. The mic was grabbed in a rush by one, shyly by another, and sometimes it grew silent so the crowd swelled in conversation only for someone to come back up.

Everyone was squished into one booth, Elastigirl at the end with her feet hanging off. The black point of her boots clicked along with the beat. One duo did opera. The pianist hunched shoulders bobbed along with the sad Italian aria. A group of bongos made them get up. Still seated she caught the ass being thrown. For almost an hour a jazz band freestyled. The trumpet’s riff made the back of her neck tingle. Her upper body bobbed with the funk baselines.

Upon request an admirer bought the table multiple orders of fries. They ate with their hands then licked the truffle off their fingers. They wanted the music more, and needed it closer. Dancers were moving with the musicians. The audience acted as background vocals. A cymbalist in the crowd was waved and then joined the band, his clackers traced Elastgirl’s shaking profile.

People had gotten up from the booth, so she sat leaning all the way back, sucking on a thickly cut lime. Eyes closed, sharpness twisted in her jaw. It was dry so she got another and another. The mime slid over her empty drink— lemon with sugar.

Sound music was on. A cellist intentionally ripped the air. A mop of hair scratched at a turntable and tapped at a launchpad while another was maneuvering on a laptop. The noise whispered then started running, until like an airplane it burned, flying into the atmosphere. It was enough energy to make the walls crumble and cars outside combust.

Staff started collecting glasses and tabs were being closed. It was so dark it was almost light. While everyone was distracted Elastigirl slipped outside.

The first cart in the train was active. All of the passengers were in costume. The drunk were sleeping. Her book fit in her coat pocket, unfolding the dog ear, she zoned in. The stops blurred with the pages.

She had headphones with no music. A group of young men sat in front of her.

“Oh shit dude, look.”

She looked over the book’s rim, meeting a man’s eyes. It was Mr. Incredible. He waved at her. She turned her gaze back to the book, feeling his eyes as she finished the chapter, closing the book, she looked up. Eye to eye. She dared him in front of his group. He got up and walked to the end of the train car. Eye to eye, he beckoned for her to come. As she walked, his friend snickered.

“We’re matching.”

“Kinda. Technically I’m dressed as Elastigirl not Mrs. Incredible.”

“Your dressed as the love of my life.” Smirking, she broke eye contact.

“What you reading?” She handed it over.

“Hmm. Romance. You be reading about them having sex?”

“Sometimes. Right now the love interest is being publicly flogged for his crimes against the British. The main character is being held back. She’s absolutely wilding.”

“Yikes.”

“Its a historical romance. In his condition, they won’t be able to fuck for like twenty pages.”

When he opened his mouth to laugh she saw his bright buck teeth, and she knew. He handed the book back, and she grasped his hands, caressing his fingers.

He smashed his face against hers. Metal rings were cold against her cheek. Lips quickly overtook her face. They were biting at each other. His hands squeaked against her latex costumes. Her hands were balled against his chest. She pulled back and he bit down, pulling her back. The lower half of their faces were wet. Arms enclosed her. They were both shaking and panting.

The train doors were beeping. She pushed his chest, breaking the spell. The doors were closing, so she put her body in between. She was split in half, then one. The short walk home was warm. Her feet had numbed and drunkenness worn off. Mist made the sky grey. The humidification warmed her. The sun was shining above the clouds, but what she saw was faded.

Coming off, the costume was slippery. Her bed was covered with Squishmallows, ginormous and tiny. She cannonballed into the pile, falling asleep with her cranberry headband on. The rest was a blink. Something beneath her pillow was buzzing. She set the phone on her headboard.

“Good for you, putting on your bonnet last night.”

“Luck of the Irish.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s whatever, I see your home safely.”

“I’m hungry! Wanna get food?”

“Where do you live again?”

They met in the middle for brunch, currently drinking at the bar while waiting for a table. The music was good, but too loud; they spoke into each other’s ears.

“I like our new friends.”

“Have you seen this?”

She was reflected in the phone. On the internet, her body was moving and people were commenting on it. She was captured from an angle without her consent. Her back was arched against the man’s body. She couldn’t remember his fingers exploring her scalp. The audience could see tongues moving between lips. It was horrifyingly intimate on a public platform. She scrolled through, skimming the public’s reactions.

“I thought it was better to show you than text.”

“Jesus fuck! Do people know it’s me?”

“No! Your lil mask is doing wonders. Him on the other hand.”

“Thank god. Who posted this?”

“His girlfriend!”

“Ah!”

“It gets worse.”

“No it doesn’t.”

Smiling, “We know her.”

She covered her face. “Tell me.”

“Angel.”

“I thought she was gay?”

“She is.”

“Damn, do I like apologize?” Her friend shrugged.

“Whatever, I just reported it for rape and terrorism.”

The stack of pancakes came and went, and the friends went opposite ways. Sunlight was leaking through the smog when she woke up from the food coma. Heart-stomping, she listened to a voice note.

“Hey girl, I’m sorry about the video. It was totally an accident. His stupid ass friend took it then put it on his close friends, where someone I know screenshotted and sent it to me. Out of anger, I put it on my story, and someone screenshotted it, then put it on twitter and TikTok. I’m sorry. I was out of it, but I should’ve known better. I’m not with that nigga no more… Despite all that, you look really good. We should hang out.”

whining through lives

ass forever fat to grasp

it doesn’t matter what you think

but how you’ll perform

theres to many questions too fill

in the blanks of this race

unhirable or unfuckable with

scary thing is you don’t mind

being minted then dwindled down

only art lives in the foam up top

the boiling brown water underneath

is the start button for a machine

asking for what you deserve

is not a need

spending luxury time

breeds fiends

I’ll eat whatever you put on my plate

*smacks lips*

you put your pussy in this huh

Fuel & punishment are going hand to mouth

A body of information & platforms with purchasing patterns

A tinkering coquette crawls on dry rice for discipline

At twilight junkies speed through a Midwestern cornfield

An essential yapper maps theoretical conclusions

On Assata Shakur Avenue tripping into an intellectual labyrinth

The easy breezy secularist burns for free speech

When data disappears there’s no candlelit vigils

Aversion makes the internet bleed

Breaking from its underground seams

An artist starves, becoming a muse

The memory lives on an expiring domain

https://open.substack.com/pub/imanimariejoseph/p/the-miseducation-of-a-deviant?r=2vz0vb&utm_medium=ios

Supposedly “My name is Bélizaire
While my body has passed away
My image stays in circulation 

On canvas
I’m fifteen years old
Person covered 
Then uncovered
In paint.” 

At six years old Bélizaire was purchased
In New Orleans by Frederick Frey whose
Three children are in the paintings foreground 

This oil scene was captured in eighteen thirty seven  
The object was donated then sold for
Seven thousand and two hundred
American dollars then sold again
For an undisclosed amount 

Erasure in tact 
The overpaint’s shadow haunted Jeremy K. Simien  
He had a conversation with his Creole ancestors 

Simien treated the paper
Revealing clothes then a face 
“Restoration revealed me 
In the background
Leaning against a tree.”

The MET acquired “Bélizaire and the Frey Children” 
For an undisclosed amount 

A security guard is stationed at 
Gallery seven hundred and fifty six
Of the American Wing
Protecting an object on display 

Bélizaire is bronze wearing a
White blouse and beige overcoat
Like the worker the boy’s 
Eyes are not present 
He is deep in his own mind 

A lone Black family moves among tourist 
The son looks at up at the painting
The family ask the worker
If he could please take their picture 
In front of Bélizaire

“I was born in eighteen twenty two.
My mother's name was Sallie.
I was the Frey children’s domestic.”

A body with a name
A slave by paper trial
Fully portrayed 
In a southern Landscape 

Through the olive, moss, and pine there’s a body of refugees  
Submerged, we dream, yell, and sing 

This land is ruled by people with white hearts 

Will strangers have the privilege to sell your
“Legacy”

At twenty-six years old and plus-sized, Big Mama Thornton walked on stage in denim overalls. Little Richard was a flamboyant, skinny, dark-skinned man with long greasy hair. They were both performers at the Bronze Peacock Club in Houston, Texas. Both performers began at a young age, cross-dressing and learning theatrical skills on the road.

The 1920's political landscape was open to queer sexuality on the radio, but amid WW2 Black nationalist respectability emerged with deeply homophobic roots. Scholar Tyina Steptoe in the American Quarterly says, "Queerness can refer to gender performance as well as sexual desire and sexual practice." What was so queer about Little Richard and Big Mama Thorton's art?

Willie Mae Thornton was born in 1926 in Alabama. She got her start at 13 years old singing in taverns and within a year would join Sammy's Green's Hot Harlem Revue, a touring company based in Atlanta. Thornton was advertised as the next Bessie Smith, one of her idols. Willie Mae was not conventionally feminine. She would wear a tie and trousers with conked hair.

In NYC, as a Rhythm and Blues Caravan member, Willie Mae defied Johnny Otis's wishes regarding her attire at the Apollo Theater. After a heated exchange, Willie Mae put on the gown Otis gave her, but on stage, hiked it up to show her cowboy boots. Evelyn Johnson, the manager of Buffalo Booking Agency, who promoted Peacock artist, had issues with Willie Mae's dress. Johnson wanted Willie Mae to mimic the women in Jet and Essence magazines, but Wille Mae protested every fashion decision.

In 1932, Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Georgia and raised in the church. He performed in drag and was colloquially known as the king and queen of blues. Little Richard first dressed as a woman on stage in a traveling show called "Sugarfoot Sam from Alabam," where he played "Princess Lavonne." From there, he performed in a troupe called Tidy Jolly Steppers.

Little Richard wrote his classic Tutti Frutti in a comedy troupe. The lyrics were "Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it doesn't fit, don't force it / You can grease it, make it easy."

In 1955, when the track was to be put on wax, music executives made Richard change the explicit reference to anal sex into "Tutti frutti, oh tutti." This decision was rooted in the cultural norms of the time. Blues fans were freaky compared to white Christian audiences, so for Chitlin Circuit hits to go mainstream, they had to be sanitized. A year after Little Richard's radio cut was released, Elvis Presley stole his music and recut the record, earning double the residuals.

In 1956, Elvis also stole Willie Mae Thornton's 1952 song Hound Dog. Thornton's most popular song Hound Dog is about her disgust with a male lover. Leiber and Stoller wrote the song for Willie Mae because "She looked like the biggest, baddest, saltiest chick you would ever see. And she was mean, a 'lady bear,' as they used to call 'em. She must have been 350 pounds, and she had all these scars all over her face. I had to write a song for her that basically said, 'Go fuck yourself'".

Johnny Otis is the one who gave Willie Mae Thornton the stage name "Big Mama." The moniker is normatively feminine in a way that Thornton was not. The mamie label was used to de-radicalize Thornton's queer lifestyle. Thornton was young yet perceived as an older, authoritative figure. This juxtaposition was an intentional PR tactic. This marketing strategy was successful in the case of Ma Rainey as well.

In 1930's Houston Jim Crow was strong, yet there still was a growing gig economy for Negro musicians. The city was coined "Bayou City” because the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards had thriving entertainment districts. Big Mama Thornton and Little Richard were both signed briefly by Peacock Records in the early 1950s, and despite the label's Black ownership, they both felt they were not paid appropriately.

Don Robey, the head of Peacock Records, physically and financially abused his employees. Little Richard was assaulted by Robey and due to the assault suffered from a severe hernia. Robey did not renew Thornton's contract in 1956 because he could not physically threaten her. Robey was frightened by Thornton's physical prowess.

Little Richard intentionally dressed his band in a gay fashion to combat stereotypes associated with Black masculinity. His all black male band was navigating a political environment that was obsessed with the notion of black masculinity endangering white femininity. Little Richard dressed his band as queer as himself to withstand the backlash. A group of Black sissies were not interested in seducing crowds of white women merely entertaining them. Gayness was used as a persona to protect the band from white supermacy’s wrath.

Big Mama Thornton's slick suits and Little Richard's sparkly jumpsuits created the aesthetic foundation for Michael Jackson and Prince. Both these artists were out and proud while topping the charts, speaking to pop, queer, and southern audiences. Little Richard would pivot from sound to sound. Becoming a gospel artist in 1957, then transitioning to rock n roll in 1962.

Gender nonconformity in the 1950’s was perceived as a sign of psychological immaturity. Homosexuality was viewed as a form of sexual deviance as opposed to a difference in lifestyle. Black queerness was a noticeable and popular aspect of blues recordings in the early twentieth century. However, fairies were all over the charts and still being stolen from.

No era is ever entirely safe. Legends are legends across time and definition. The backlash has a different shape every time.

Willie Mae Thornton in Stockholm, October 9, 1965

Little Richard in 1971

Willie Mae Thornton in London 1965

Steptoe, Tyina. "Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard, and the Queer Roots of Rock'n'Roll." American Quarterly 70.1 (2018): 55-77.

Rage, movement, vulnerability, and sorrow were the meat of this nondescript sonic playground. Bull dykes stole away masculinity to break up white spaces. They filled their Black hands with capital in order to smash out the marketplace.

Blues emerged from southern country towns after abolition. An acapella singer would wander down the dirt road with an instrument or two hands clapping on beat. Blues carols were improvisational, sad, and boundless. They were short refrains that sounded soft but unfolded into many textures prostrating to survival.

In the 1920s, local southern blues troops were legends while, to the white imagination, they appeared as minstrels. To a lover, the bull dyke is a jezebel. To a hater, they are an abomination;

Living a queer black life makes personhood a pendulum between admiration and abomination. This double consciousness suspends a descendant of slaves into a sinister chuck and jive. The provocations in Ma Rainey and her mentee Bessie Smith's work display a political promiscuousness.

Braggadocio is what the two women possessed navigating gendered racial dynamics in the North and South, building fortunes, which they spent outrageously on drugs and fashion. Both women did not hide their sexual escapades with various men and women and each other.

Ma Rainey earned a reputation for being hard to work with, but I expect in that period that merely translated to not accepting crumbs. She was loud about her worth and demanded to be paid upfront. The Mothers of Blues embodied a hedonistic philosophy. The enlightenment of inner ownership is a force that frees the spirit in a freaky revolutionary way.

In the 1930s, mainstream radio began to let go of its infatuation with the Blues and hyper-focused on swing. Ma Rainey refused to switch up her style. The legend's popularity up North dampened, and she survived from touring the rural south. When Ma Rainey died, she was 53, and her death certificate recorded her occupation as a housekeeper. Like Zora Neale Hurston, students have revived the legend's presence through allusions in art. August Wilson and James Baldwin's uplifting of Ma Rainey's artistry revived her stardom during the Civil Rights Movement.

Bessie Smith passed away at 43 by what historians coined a death by Jim Crow. She was in rural Mississippi and got into a fatal car crash. The ambulance drove around for several unnecessary hours searching for a hospital that would accept colored people; when they finally found one, she had to wait further for care and died from lack of attention.

Below are my favorite songs by each woman <3

Hammer, K. Allison. "“Just like a natural man”: The BD styles of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith." Journal of Lesbian Studies 23.2 (2019): 279-293.

In the early hours of June 28th, 1969 in New York, the police raided Stonewall Inn, and clashes between the authorities and patrons set off a riot that would last a week, leaving Christopher Street in Greenwich Village burned down. Historians speculate who threw the first brick at the pigs. Still, it is widely regarded that Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were among the many drag queens in the building that threw the first blows at the authorities.

The Stonewall Riot was a fight against police oppression, leading to the Gay Liberation Movement we have today. Following that, Johnson and Sylvia Rivera started the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), with Johnson acting as vice president.

At the 1973 Gay Pride Rally in New York, Sylvia Rivera rushed on stage to give her intended speech even after being banned. Staff reluctantly let her on stage, and she was displeased. Below are excerpts from her speech.

“Y’all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail….Have you ever been beaten up and raped and jailed? Now think about it. They’ve been beaten up and raped…. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women…. They do not write women, they do not write men, they write ‘STAR’ because we’re trying to do something for them. I have been to jail. I have been raped. And beaten. Many times! By men, heterosexual men that do not belong in the homosexual shelter. But do you do anything for me? No. You tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs. I will not put up with this shit. I have been beaten. I have had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way? What the fuck’s wrong with you all? Think about that!… I believe in the gay power. I believe in us getting our rights, or else I would not be out here fighting for our rights. That’s all I wanted to say to you people … Come and see the people at Star House… The people are trying to do something for all of us, and not men and women that belong to a white middle class club. And that’s what you all belong to! REVOLUTION NOW!” (Rivera, 1973)

Rivera's speech ends with her passionately spelling out "gay power." The crowd remains hostile, and boo's her off stage. After that incident, Johnson found Rivera in the STAR house, attempting suicide. Rivera's speech illustrates how most women and gender non-conforming people of color are subjected to domestic, institutional, and state-sanctioned violence.

When Johnson is asked if she started the Stonewall Riot, she sheepishly says no and points out other drag queens' courageous actions that night. Johnson never considered herself a saint, just a woman living her life. She never saw herself as a gay rights legend, just a drag mother trying to raise her children.

Johnson self-identified as a transvestite and drag queen. Historians have speculated whether she would fall under the term transgender or nonbinary, but neither term was widely used while she was alive. Marsha P. Johnson was a woman and used she/her pronouns no matter what clothes she wore.

In Edmund Whites’ 1979 article "The Politics of Drag," he discusses the social perception of drag queens in the gay community. In the center of the newspaper article is an image of Johnson in a long black wig, a tight sparkly translucent top, slim white pants, and club makeup. White asserts that gay men's discomfort with drag queens stems from their resentment of femininity.

As gay men fought for liberation throughout the '70s, they disassociated themselves from the stereotype that gayness is inherently feminine. Instead of dismantling the patriarchy and gender dynamics that make feminity something to be ashamed of, the gay community, in hopes of being respectable, formed hetero-normative ideas of gender to make their gayness more socially acceptable.

In the 1970's the majority of street drag queens were working class, Black or Puerto Rican, sex workers. Transphobia in the gay community is rooted in elitism and racism. White states that.

“Obviously, then, many of the early drag queens were prostitutes. Others, such as the black queens in Washington, may have found that the worlds of the theatre and prostitution were the only ones where overt homosexuals were welcome. Most likely is the hypothesis that homosexuality in all its forms was so forbidden that only in the permissive world of prostitution could it be mentioned at all. Closeted homosexuals were speechless; only those who had entered a milieu of prostitution and show biz could discuss their sexuality” (White, 1979).

Black street queens in New York could not hide their gayness within their white privilege. Drag is a queer praxis and performance art, but the drag queen had become a dirty and criminal taboo closely associated with sexual perversion.

White concludes the article by stating, "All of the objections that straights and gays might have to drag are merely condensed and heightened objec­tions to male homosexuality." I would go further and assert the discomfort is with Blackness’s boundlessness.

The binaries of women and men are cultural, financial, and political in the US, and the drag queens' abolishment of those norms can either be revered or despised. At times in her life, Marsha P. Johnson was revered and despised. Johnson's bouts in mental institutions and time in prison do not indicate that she is violent or unstable but a victim of state-sanctioned violence. Johnson understood the evil and inhumane conditions transgender women, and other vulnerable populations faced in prisons.

In June of 1970, Johnson and Rivera, at the first anniversary of Stonewall, marched hundreds of queer people down to the Women's Detention Center in New York. Joan Bird and Afeni Shakur, both defendants in the Panther 21 Conspiracy Case, were in custody. STAR surrounded the center, chanting, "Free our sisters! Free ourselves!" Johnson and Rivera believed that gay power meant the abolishment of prisons.

In 1992 at 46 years old, Marsha P. Johnson's body was found floating in the Hudson River. The police ruled her death a suicide despite multiple close friends insisting foul play. When Greenwich Village was notified of her death, the community rushed to the spot on the river where officers found Marsha’s corpse. The crowd created a border of flowers where her body was outlined in chalk. Youth surrounded her memorial with pictures, candles, and bright flowers.

Marsha P. Johnson lived as a poor sex worker her whole life. She fought for and pioneered a movement that shunned and ignored her. She screamed gay power at the top of her lungs while barred from their displays of pride. She was an abolitionist and black feminist at heart. Her life was not a tragedy because she lived it authentically until the day she died. Saint Marsha was the doll of New York City!

White Edmund, "Stonewall 1979: The politics of Drag," The Village Voice Archive, (2019).

Raw. I’ll remember your free-like freakum.

Before we’re dust I’ll kiss you here then there.

In awe at my ability to fawn.

Cuddling tight you'll quench this thirsty

Life. We are skin to skin, head between breasts.

We fight wind during the coldest winter

Of all time. Sweat slicks down your baby hair.

I kissed your ankle, you kissed my chin. Down

Low I loved you. We climbed a mountain to

Be in bliss. It's love, sista to sista.

You rubbed the root out of my neck.

I'll bake us lemon melt-away cookies,

Strawberry Rhubarb pie & butter cake!

i approached my nana’s car. this is the first time she will see my shaved head. her eyes widened, she let out a soft giggle, then asked me if I’m a dyke. i stood like stone in reply. she reached through the window frame to grasp my bare brain with her hand. with her full creased palm pressed into my crown she said.

“ bug, you look beautiful. Same as when you burst from the womb.”

anxiety opened its endless wings during class. neck hot i wanted to beat down the professor in front of me. rearing my head back ready to spit knife words. etiquette trapped me. instead of speaking i swallowed a rock. the force left tears in the back of my eyes. burning them away i refused to meet her eyes. my anger stank. the injustice floated like a feather to the ground. my complaint felt inappropriate and flamboyant.

singing karaoke wine drunk on my birthday i’m far far away from home. i feel warm smoking a cigarette gifted to me by an attractive stranger. i’m rereading the hunger games, laying on a private beach with penguins. Rue's bright young face framed in chocolate curls dying against pastel flowers makes me sob.

peaking twilight, i’m stranded at an amtrak station surrounded by cornfields. a crackhead asked me for a light. they spark up and walk down the tracks till darkness disintegrates the glow. every uber i called canceled on me. wishing for the fiend’s company i lay on the ground using my large bubblegum telfar as a pillow. breathing in, i glared above.

i’m briefly seeing this person. it's really hard for me to touch them, but it also feels like we’re touching all the time. liar is the dirtiest word i know to describe them. again I repost a mutual aid for my homegirl who needs a heart transplant. at dawn the boondocks are a deep grape and navy. sitting on the porch the wind whips my braids against my neck, sending chills down my spine. i take deep smoking breaths. letting the cold wash over my lungs. then chest. air flows through my mind, unclouding, slowly getting sharper. emptiness becomes an instant in time, not an indefinite weight. Broke, but abundant!

i was sitting against a tree on an empty golf course when a elderly white man driving a cart appeared through the smog. he invaded my space faster and faster.

“are you carving your name in that tree?”

“no,” i said.

he smiled then disappeared into the milky pine woods.

i have no knife in my hand. why did he ask me about trees? i do not feel safe here.

“are you okay?”

i met her dark almond eyes. the truth didn’t feel there.

“yeah,” i mumbled.

this black professor made my smallness slick. we moved on to the next article of business. sloppy i fall in and out of happiness. i’ll sleep outside of heaven's gates and loiter. the ennui flavored vape died so a nonbinary person hotwired it with their teeth. i hit it. maybe i can’t die.

the lack of care here is making me claustrophobic. glumping lukewarm water Whitney Houston’s voice vibrates the red desert. in a burnt orange dress spread out like a snowflake i look up at the night sky. dust across the dune ocean spins then latches onto the hair along my legs and arms.

i wake up from my nap in a pitch black blowing sand sea. i start sprinting towards the campsite lights. a bellowing stumping trumpet sounds nearby. elephants walk past my peripheral. inhaling and exhaling i try to open my eyes. sobbing wide eyed, a mother and baby walk past me. the cold sand shakes at their weight. the burgundy mountains clutch me in smoke. it takes me a week to completely wash the red dirt from my short afro to know it was real.

In the great great beyond

I run into the sun for language

Inna void of public opinion

I like to burn for things

I don’t understand

Shining a blueblood light in the wound

I’ll slice the air with a bloody machete

Through the badlands to feel warmth

Down Hades river of souls

Looking at my reflection

Canoeing through times mouth

Throwing my soul overboard

I ask the sharks their names

Is that the moon or sun seeping down here

Swimming orisha goddess spawn

Drenched in cowrie shells I go

To the bottom of the world

Picking pidgin out my teeth

Time a bubble I pop in my mouth

The sharks have tasted slave bloods

Healing sounds like the rain taking

A full moon to unbraid words

From smoke unwinding fear out chaos

Flesh n’ bone n’ bountiful dollars

Is an image n’ sound

That my words have been trying to own

Phantom demons slaughter somebody

Harvesting orange yams inna salt swamp

I drink understanding somebodys earn nothing

Language issa enemy

Ship n’ Imma traitor tree

Bearing fear sowed fruit

Imma ocean

Beating down the devil

Ripping words from god meat

Words bond my sacrifices

Words help me find my family

Words are bonds my family must cash to eat

In the morning, she was paranoid observing her roommate's choice of a coffee chain. Knowledge was aloof. Blood and money consumed her dreams, and destruction was busting from reality seams. She began to gather names, organizations, and dates. Reading was the only thing that made her feel in control, and she didn't even do that much. She found a book club on the internet at her local library. She walked for half an hour in the heat underneath the train tracks.

The building was one long floor with private rooms decorated in archival posters. The group was in the children's section. They sat on the floor in a rough circle surrounded by giant plants. The windows let a lot of light in, making the carpet warm. The crowd was primarily Black and gay looking. Cool outfits, tattoos, and piercings were displayed on old and young skin. She sat next to the cutest man her age there.

He was dark-skinned, long, and muscular, with dreads tied into a braid. He had on some oversized band t-shirt and slutly cut athletic shorts. His toes were exposed in sandals. She was astonished by him.

Coochie cutters with a cropped wife beater was a comfort outfit for her this time of year. A bald head, red lipstick, and gold jewelry were essential accessories that elevated the look. She had a jacket wrapped around her waist, but now she felt safe enough to remove it. As she walked back and forth to get complimentary snacks, she hoped he was observing her ass clap and nipple piercings poke through her shirt.

The book club read passages out loud, talked about their opinions, asked each other evidence-based questions, and cried a little bit. No one was keeping track of time; it lasted about 2 hours. In the end, the facilitator invited everyone who had stayed till the end to a rally downtown. The cute guy said he was going, and then she did.

On the train, they sat side by side. They could have stayed strangers for the ride, looking out the window or listening to music; instead, they talked the whole ride. She learned where he went to high school, how many siblings he had, and his favorite films. He was carrying around a bookbag with a change of shoes and three books, one about history, philosophy, and poetry. His phone was ugly and cracked. They had many mutuals on social media, which scared her.

The demonstration was caged into a singular block. There were probably 500 people on the street with nowhere to march. Pigs were there in bulk. Different chants would arise in various pockets of the crowd, and across the police barrier, free to move, was the opposition. There was a migrant woman with a baby strapped to her back selling both flags between the barricades.

He bought a Keffiyeh and gave it to her. She enjoyed watching people on roofs and balconies waving Palestinian flags. He loved watching the crowd part for prayer. It was an honor to join his brethren in such an intimate public display. When it got dark, she grabbed his hand and stood on her tiptoes to say in his ear.

"I'm heading out soon."

"You hungry?"

"Yes."

He added a lot of hot sauce and greens into his pho and judged her when she got pork. When he paid, she wished she'd ordered more than water. They walked out of the restaurant and just looked at each other. He smiled wide, which took up all his face, then hugged her. She laid her head against his solid chest. He called her an Uber home, and they held hands until it came. She texted him when she got home, then ghosted him the next day.

It didn't make sense to her. The girl had just been on her first date, and she was no virgin. He was calm and beautiful, and she felt unfiltered. His eyes sparkled, recounting his last batch of students. After graduating college, she had plans to move away for a new big kid job, and he was staying here. Their imaginary future was confusing. He texted several times, and she just watched, terrified.

The silence lasted three years. She was visiting an illustrious institution's homecoming, rolling deep with her homegirls. In the time apart, she slowly uncovered how miserable she was. Fiscally conservative and socially liberal hypocrites surrounded her. The work ritual was to smack carts in the handicap stall and experience existential boredom. She was itching to quit. Though the idea of going home and licking her wounds was upsetting. She preferred to fantasize about escaping instead of imagining a place to go.

The plan was to get drunk enough not to need a jacket. She meticulously arranged the outfit: kitten heels with an itty, bitty dress. The blonde lace wig snatched her cheekbones and complemented the matching eyebrows. The place was packed; all she had in her tiny couture bag was lipgloss.

She was not paying attention when the floor started to clear for strolling. A large man aggressively shoved her out of the way, making the drink in her hand spill all over her dress. Irritated, she sat on the peripheral, trying to clean it off as best as possible. The crowd swelled, and a gang of attractive Black men started strutting to the center. She was tipsy and staring up at the clouds. The partygoers surrounded the group, totally obscuring her vision.

The crowd scooched closer and closer to where she was sitting, and then the thick wall of backs turned and became hundreds of eyes. The sea of bodies parted, and the synchronized color-coded group of Black men appeared before her. They passionately shimmed their shoulders, stomped their feet, clapped their hands, leaped into the air, and twisted their faces in chants. It felt as if she was being performed directly, too.

The dancers seemed to be approaching her, and when she paid closer attention, she realized she knew one of them. The man she let get away was getting down on his knees, and all his dreads were gone! He looked her dead in the eyes as he and his fraternity brothers got low to the ground. When he crawled to her on all fours, she exploded in giggles.

Playfully, she caressed his shoulder with her leg. In the blink of an eye, he lifted off her ground. The crowd screamed as he raised her into the sky and sat her face front on his shoulders. His hands gripped her thighs, and in between her legs, he could see her purple lace underwear.

In the air, she had a bird's eye view of the function. She could see the cook's grilling and the top of everyone's head. She had one hand on the back of his neck for balance. It was when she locked eyes with her sorors across the party that she desperately needed to get down.

Humiliation collapsed her chest. She beat on his shoulders to let her down. When he said okay from between her legs, it made her twitch, and when she climbed down his body, it grew worse. She was horrified and hoped no one had caught her acting like that on camera. On the ground again, she ran away from him without looking back.

The sun had set when he approached her again. She had her back to him, leaning against the balcony.

"Toyin."

She turned smiling.

"Trayvon."

She'd try not to let him go.

The US surveillance state now includes mall or amusement park size law enforcement hub’s with fast food restaurants. These are military zones embedded in residential areas that politicians commission using citizen’s tax dollars. It seems as if defunding the police is politically unraveling despite Black representation politically present.

When did #BLM start, and where do Black bodies end?

The BLM movement cannot exist within a specific period because there has been no finite decline in collective dehumanization. It could have started in 1955 when 14-year-old Emmitt Till was lynched in Mississippi. The moment of suffering was politicized when Mamie Till, the child's mother, decided to have an open casket. In Chicago, fifty thousand people took to the streets while the media circulated the image of a black child brutalized to death.

Another parade of darkness appeared in 1965 when Rodney King was brutalized on camera by the Los Angeles PD. When of the four perpetrators three were acquitted, riots followed and once again, violence, brandished for all to see, mobilized people.

A person's name transformed into a hashtag on October 20, 2014, when Chicago PD murdered Laquan McDonald. Rahm Emanuel’s administration and the police department worked together to bury the body cam footage, but eventually, the public saw a 17-year-old Black boy be shot 16 times in his back. Due to the controversy, President Obama opened an investigation inside the Justice Department into Chicago's pattern of police brutality. The committee recommended building physical training facilities in disadvantaged neighborhoods to repair the police's relationship with the community.

The internet has tied Black people's names together from all over the country. Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes before his lynching was recorded. He yelled, "I can't breathe," while multiple NYPD officers had him in a chokehold.

A year later, in 2015, Sandra Bland's un-recorded story was vague. The 28-year-old woman was pulled over, detained, and then three days later found dead in a Texas jail. She was lynched, but officially it was ruled suicide.

In 2016, during a traffic stop, Philando Castile's being murder by Minneapolis PD was caught on dashcam footage. The spontaneity of Black humanity and the mysterious ways in which it can be taken away is intergenerational.

In September of 2017, the Chicago Plan Commission approved a police and fire department training center on the West side of Chicago. That same year, #NoCopAcademy movement started as a group of Chicago Public School students who didn't appreciate that the city could fund the police but not their education. The grassroots movement bloomed when environmental justice groups, unions, and Garfield Park residents stood in solidarity with the youth. The campaign canvassed on the West side and found that 86% of residents believed the Cop Academy was not the best use of city funds. From a poll of 1103 community members, 95% recommended the city divest from the Police Department. In 2018, Chicago's first Black lesbian mayor said she was against the construction of the Cop Academy, but once in office, she reversed her stance. By the end of 2019, the construction of the Cop Academy was approved by the city council.

Elijah McClain was walking home when Colorado PD stopped him. Someone in the neighborhood had reported a suspicious character, but McClain was just a 23-year-old who loved music. In 2019, dancing along the sidewalk is on the list of freedoms coded as deviancy. Law enforcement officers put him in a chokehold, and paramedics on the scene administered ketamine without his consent. The young man had a heart attack, was hospitalized, and died three days later.

The new year started, and in March, Louisville PD murdered Breonna Taylor in her home, and then in May, Minneapolis PD lynched George Floyd.

A Cop City is being constructed in Dekalb County, a forest not far from Atlanta. The city announced plans for a new Public Safety Training Academy a month after Atlanta police killed Rayshard Brooks for sleeping in his car. The municipality justified the Cop City by saying the rising crime rate during the pandemic was causing a public health emergency. The land used to be a prison farm and is now being modernized into a state-of-the-art military complex. Atlanta's Cop City is modeled after Chicago's Cop Academy in that they both have a mock neighborhood, swimming pool, firing range, and food court. The fake cities are both educational facilities for practical police training.

In 2020, citizens did the policing for each other.

February in Georgia, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old, was jogging when a group of white vigilantes lynched him. The racist killers were caught because they uploaded the video on Facebook.

In June, Oluwatoyin Salau passed at 19 years old. The teenager routinely attended BLM protests in Tallahassee, so when a community member offered her a ride home, she gratefully accepted. She went missing for nine days then was found dead.

Jordan Neeley was known in New York as a houseless Michael Jackson impersonator. In May, after yelling on the subway, an ex-marine put Neeley in a chokehold and killed him while bystanders recorded. The white man was protecting himself and others on the train despite singing, screaming, disturbing the peace, or existing not being an inherent crime.

Living in a blue state does not mean a community is safe from militarization.

The Georgia State Police assassinated Manuel Esteban Paez Terán also know as Tortuguita on January 18, 2023, for occupying the Weelaunee Forest (Cop City's construction site). That same month, Chicago opened its public safety training facility in West Humboldt Park. The Cop Academy cost a total of 170 million dollars. Its corporate sponsors include Citadel, Bank of America, Motorial, and Verizon. Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, Delta Airlines, and Coca-Cola sponsor the Cop City in Atlanta.

Democrats respond to civil disobedience with an iron fist. Citizens of Atlanta have been using every method at their disposal to say Cop City is not what they want, and the state has consistently responded in an undemocratic fashion. The Atlanta City Council doxed over 100,000 citizens who signed a petition for a referendum to be added to the upcoming election to stop Cop City's construction.

On September 5, 2023, Georgia's grand jury indicted Forest Defenders and President Trump's administration with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The RICO charges identify the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a bail fund, as a domestic terrorist organization. For mutual aid efforts, sixty-one activists were charged as anarchists, sharing the same conviction with organizers of the Jan 6th insurrection, historically interlocking an abolitionist movement with a white supremacist one. The US government says a #StopCopCity criminal conspiracy started when George Floyd was murdered in May, but Cop City's construction wasn't even public knowledge then.

I've seen that look in my mother's eyes. I love school and still find myself in trouble because the crux of learning is understanding that knowledge is not power.

In Harlem, while eating Ethiopian food, my homegirl asked me.

"When did you become an adult?"

It came in three waves. We both agreed that the first was some time in elementary school, when, as little girls, we were adultified. Sensuality and sexuality were bombs detonating in our subconscious.

The second wave for me was going away to school. The college admission process broke my perfectionism bone. Adulthood felt like another reality peeling off the walls. Poverty's lack of mobility left me disillusioned and numb with cold. I stopped watching the news, fell back in love with literature, and protested ritualistically during the pandemic.

The third wave is now. Everyday I am trying to understand myself outside of society. I used to think I hated the pigs; now, I know they shouldn't exist. Evidence shows that the police do not reduce crime but protect private property. My ancestors were private property. Drawing from that history, I see how crime is a symptom of social need. I used to be angry, but now I have resolve.

In high school, I was scared my friends would be killed for their activism. Tamir Rice would have graduated with us 2020 if he was not put to death by the Cleveland PD at the age of twelve. The older I get the more casual the grim reaper becomes.

Do any black people find themselves working against the grain of slavery? Constantly contextualizing your individual pain in the face of collective tragedy. What is power if not knowledge?

Power is slowly becoming less about the physical body (or its disposability) but about data particularly it’s malleability.

In 2021 ShotSpotter, a predictive policing technology, came under fire for its role in the killing of a Mexican American child from the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. ShotSpotter’s artificial intelligence accurately identified a gunshot and sent a law enforcement officer on site. Body cam footage showed that as the officer approached Toledo, threw his weapon onto the ground, raised his hands in the air (an act of surrender), and then was shot dead. I wonder how and why Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old, got a gun?

Using earthquake detection technology the goal of ShotSpotter was to help communities where gunshots often go unreported. However, The University of Michigan’s Journal of Law Reform concluded based on ShotSpotter’s model design that the tool's goal was to increase police interaction in specific neighborhoods, which happened to correspond with an increased rate of police brutality against Black and Latinx communities.

ShotSpotter is an acoustic sensor and cloud-based subscription software that detects the sound of gunfire. Data generated by the system includes precise lat-long locations and corresponding addresses where shots are detected, along with information like the number of rounds fired and type of gunfire over time patterns of gunfire near a particular home address or in a specific neighborhood can be seen. Twenty to twenty five powerful sensors are placed per square mile that suppress ambient noise and detect loud booms and bangs. The sensors begin recording 1 second before triggering sound and 1 second after. The data collected is sent to ShotSpotter’s 24/7 control centers where trained acoustic specialists confirm the location and whether the trigger was a gunshot. If it was a gunshot the local police department would be notified within forty five seconds.

The City of Chicago Office of the Inspector General’s Office reported the data model’s percent of accuracy in identifying gun related criminal activity in 2020-2021 was 9%. The study concluded that ShotSpotter influenced an increase in wrongful stop and frisk incidents on the Southside of Chicago and Calumet, both historically Black neighborhoods.

Through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, The MacArthur Justice Center secured data on ShotSpotter’s confirmed “gunshots” from July 1, 2019 through April 14, 2021. They found that 89% of all law enforcement deployments resulted in no gun related charge, 86% resulted in no criminal charges at all, and 40,000 resulted in law enforcement running into a dead end.

The confusion around how false positives affect perceived data quality is an issue of overfitting. Unclear and private data points are being used to make generalizations about patterns in city wide crime rates. The CSG is a police officer owned and operated company that did an efficiency test of ShotSpotter and asserted that ShotSpotter minimizes false negatives while keeping false positive rates low, however various sources dispute that through low accuracy ratings.

CSG said, “ While calls to 9-1-1 can either be confirmed as ‘true’ or left unsolved and ‘undetermined,’ a false positive report from the ShotSpotter GLS is easily debunked because of the system’s highly accurate geospatial capabilities. ShotSpotter’s accuracy means that the human resource may always be effectively deployed to find out whether a gunshot or other sound has occurred.”

ShotSpotter was not concerned about the presence of false positives because law enforcement was still receiving accurate locations for suspicious behavior. ShotSpotter tracks incidents internally and errors are only noted when a client reports them to SoundThinking. An incident is labeled in ShotSpotters system as false positive or negative. A false positive means a gunfire incident did not occur, but the data model alerts law enforcement as if it did. A false negative means a gunfire incident occurred but law enforcement were not notified.

In Oakland in 2019 ShotSpotter reported about 50 gun shots a day and about 10 of those were reported by the police department as gun fire incidents. That means 40 false positives were averaged a day and still ShotSpotter reports that in 2019 there accuracy rate for all data was 97.42%. ShotSpotter lumping false positives and accurate alerts together distorts an investigation into data quality and the perception of gun violence in Black and Brown neighborhoods.

ShotSpotter charges law enforcement agencies annual subscription fees from $65,000-$80,000 per square mile. The company's biggest contract is with the NYPD earning $28 million over five years for covering seventy five square miles. Currently ShotSpotter is deployed in 90 American cities and its data quality is at best vague and inaccessible and at worst is predatory and fabricated.

A success for the fight against predictive policing was achieved in Chicago. The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson played a cat and mouse game with the public regarding the expansive government contract. During his 2023 mayoral campaign, Johnson pledged to cancel the ShotSpotter contract within his first 100 days, but instead he extended the contract. During his first year in office his position would switch, due to pressure from alderpersons and CPD leadership, from in support of renewing the contract to vetoing it. Finally the city of Chicago stopped using ShotSpotter on Sept 23rd 2024. In total the city spent $100 million for 2,000 sensors.

Machine learning, better known as artificial intelligence, is being used to strengthen the carceral state from predictive policing to facial recognition software. If you have ever ridden on public transit in the United States, you are a victim of the police state. If you have ever gone through customs entering or exiting the United States, you are a victim of surveillance. Being on the internet is inherently exploitative.

Even the BLM movement has exploited it’s people.

Amanda Seales hosted a live discussion with Melina Abdullah, co-founder of BLM Grassroots Inc, about scamming within BLM. I wish I could quote Abdullah directly, but the video has been removed from social media. Abdullah is better equipped to tell this story than I am, but here is what I have gathered about the beginning, peak of notoriety, and fraud in #BLM.

2013 in Florida, when George Zimmerman murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and was acquitted, #BLM exploded on social media. Today, February 5th 2025, would have been Trayvon's 30th birthday.

By 2014, the phrase "Black Lives Matter" was being used as a slogan to contextualize the slaughtering of Michael Brown by Ferguson PD in Missouri.

Patrice Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi claim to have transformed #BLM from a colloquial proverb into an organized group. Soon after the group's formation, Garza and Tometi left the organization, leaving only Cullors. By 2015, BLM was a decentralized movement with a network of local chapters. Cullors has two published books– When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018) and An Abolitionists Handbook (2021).

From 2020-2021 during the racial uprising and global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter Foundation, spearheaded by Cullors, received $90 million in donations. That year, the foundation reported spending $69 million, $37 million on grants, real estate, and consultants, while the other $32 million went into various stocks.

In 2020, the BLM Foundation split creating a sister organization called BLM Grassroots, led by Melina Abdullah. According to the foundation, individual chapters within the BLM Grassroots Inc could receive up to $500,000 from a $12 million fund. Only one chapter in Denver reported receiving any money from the foundation. This was the beginning of the semantic and organizational confusion surrounding BLM.

The BLM Foundation is a non-profit affiliated but financially separate from the BLM grassroots and the various groups underneath that banner.

In May of 2021, Cullors resigned from the foundation and brought in Shalomyah Bowers as the foundation board secretary and his firm, Bowers Consulting. Cullors leadership was under intense scrutiny because the foundation purchased a $6 million mini-mansion in Los Angeles. BLM chapter organizers accused Cullors of using mutual aid to fund a lavish lifestyle. At the same time, the foundation asserts the property was not a private home but a campus for a Black Artist fellowship fund.

Shalomyah Bowers has financially controlled the BLM Foundation since Cullors resigned. In the fiscal year 2021-2022, the foundation had roughly 30$ million in assets. However, by 2023, the non-profit was in a $9 million deficit. In 2023, members of BLM Grassroots Inc., a total of ten chapters calling themselves #BLM10, filed a civil lawsuit in California against the BLM foundation for frauding the public and shutting activists out. LA County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Bowick dismissed the case.

Black Lives Matter Foundation is a DEI campaign that raised a lot of money, and it's still unclear where and how it was spent. Black Lives Matter Grassroots is a diverse group of activists who have been on the ground since 2013. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a corporate entity removed from the working class's material reality.

Yes, theoretically, research is helpful, but practically, people will die before privileges trickle down through academia. Under Trump's reign, I do not mourn DEI roles but the grant money that will be siphoned away. Research that will not feed the poor of today but plant the seeds for our grandchildren. I mourn liberalism's job security while feeling bitterness at the aesthetically radical positions to hold.

I fear being queer has become an identifier as opposed to a political movement. A symbol should be praised while a person is invested into. Protect trans people this, Black joy that, but reparations who? I don't need diversity or inclusion, only equity. Niggas die every day, abroad and at home. Power in pseudo-democracy can change hands. This political cycle, I'll call more people honkeys and coons!

In America, it is legal to murder a trans person of color. Identity politics won't free anyone from the material reality of a sprawling statehood rooted in surveillance. The state of Georgia is using Tortuguita's, the person killed at Atlanta's cop city, journal as evidence against their comrades. The martyred poet wrote, "My gender is a loaded gun pointed at capitalism's heart."

Works Cited

Selby, Nick, David Henderson, and Tara Tayyabkhan. "ShotSpotter gunshot location system efficacy study." CSG Analysis. http://njdc. info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Shot-Spotter-Gunshot-Location-System-Efficacy-Study. pdf (2011).

Ferguson, J., and Deborah Witzburg. "The Chicago Police Department’s Use of Shotspotter Technology." Chicago, IL: City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (2021).

City and County of San Francisco. “SFPD ShotSpotter Surveillance Impact Report.” San Francisco Government, 2021, sf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-02/SFPD%20ShotSpotter%20Surveillance%20Impact%20Report.pdf.

“End Police Surveillance,” End Police Surveillance. endpolicesurveillance.com/.

Gee, Harvey. "“Bang!”: ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection Technology, Predictive Policing, and Measuring Terry’s Reach." University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, no. 55.4, 2022, pp. 767

Leslie, Stuart W. “The Cold War and American Science; Chapter 9.” Dynamics.org, 1993, dynamics.org/SWOPSI/WEB/les09.ed.html. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023.

Conarck, B., & Fenton, J. (2023, August 25). Proposed Baltimore Police and fire training facility has hefty price tag: $330 million. The Baltimore Banner. https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/baltimore-police-department-fire-department-training-facility-M6N7PW4YN5H6FN3YYNQLD6C74Y/

Bagby, Dyana. ““Stop Cop City'' Referendum Petitions Scanned, Posted on Atlanta Clerk’s Website.” Rough Draft Atlanta, 29 Sept. 2023, roughdraftatlanta.com/2023/09/29/stop-cop-city-referendum-petitions-scanned-posted-on-atlanta-clerks-website/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.

Bauer, Kelly. “Controversial West Side Cop Academy Opens after Years of Pushback from Activists.” Block Club Chicago, 25 Jan. 2023, blockclubchicago.org/2023/01/25/controversial-west-side-cop-academy-opens-after-years-of-pushback-from-activists/.

Pratt, T. (2023, November 27). “it’s alarming”: Diary of killed Cop City activist to play role in Georgia lawsuit. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/27/cop-city-tortuguita-georgia-manuel-paez-teran

Berger , Dan . “RICO and Stop Cop City: The Long War against the Left.” LPE Project, 11 Sept. 2023, lpeproject.org/blog/rico-and-stop-cop-city-the-long-war-against-the-left/?fbclid=PAAaa3wz9tlV1QkgIN_RRU3Q-vkBX7v7CfcnwrbrKw60WJW0rgNWMiizk7CUA_aem_AXlOwRxQ-7wcxpo11CE5VpFt1NadmNaYHZTNmMgpu-ztsbNW056rZ6S7WOLtZp3SpvU. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.

Hart, Benji. “No Cop City Anywhere.” In These Times, 22 Feb. 2023, inthesetimes.com/article/cop-city-atlanta-police-violence-no-cop-academy-chicago-climate. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.

Jennifer Bamberg. “Controversial West Side Cop Academy Will Have Mock Neighborhood for Training. Here’s What It Will Look Like.” Block Club Chicago, 10 Aug. 2022, blockclubchicago.org/2022/08/10/controversial-west-side-cop-academy-will-have-mock-neighborhood-for-training-heres-what-it-will-look-like/.

Zickgraf, Ryan. “What Atlanta Residents Can Learn from Chicago’s Version of “Cop City.”” Atlanta Civic Circle, 9 Mar. 2023, atlantaciviccircle.org/2023/03/09/what-atlanta-residents-can-learn-from-chicagos-version-of-cop-city/.

Morrison, Aaron. “Fraud Lawsuit against Black Lives Matter Foundation Dismissed in California.” AP News, AP News, 29 June 2023, apnews.com/article/black-lives-matter-fraud-lawsuit-donations-ruling-da8e7b25a5f2b1dc806af4d44a179078.

Morrison, Aaron. “BLM’s Patrisse Cullors to Step down from Movement Foundation.” AP News, 27 May 2021, apnews.com/article/ca-state-wire-george-floyd-philanthropy-race-and-ethnicity-0a89ec240a702537a3d89d281789adcf.

Morrison, Aaron. “AP Exclusive: Black Lives Matter Opens up about Its Finances.” AP News, 23 Feb. 2021, apnews.com/article/black-lives-matter-90-million-finances-8a80cad199f54c0c4b9e74283d27366f.

Rojas, Rick. ““Cop City” Prosecutions Hinge on a New Definition of Domestic Terrorism.” The New York Times, 26 Feb. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/us/cop-city-domestic-terrorism.html.

Davis, Justin A. “Tennessee Quietly Rolls out Its Own 810-Acre “Cop City.”” Truthout, Feb. 2024, truthout.org/articles/tennessee-quietly-rolls-out-its-own-810-acre-cop-city/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2025.

Reading Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems by Wanda Coleman changed my life. My series of Shakespearean sonnets are inspired by her series titled American Sonnet. Below are some of my favorites <3

I haven’t published my sonnets in order, so I’ll compile them here.

If a criminal doesn’t have rights they are a slave.

Doom dancing with a gun castrated a soldier.

Behave bucking memory skinned for commodity,

Private surplus flesh for others pleasure.

Fiends aren’t human to hoarding dependents.

Blood measures into political bonds.

Bodies tenants for state sanctioned morale.

Fear’s a good crop on a bad plantation.

A ​stargazer rocks in a bone cradle.

The only vacation given is death.

Prisoners are non-citizens to own.

From my homegirls garden a river flows,

Slave patrol quivers as we burn them out!

Bodytime, bodytime, bodytime 
Torture, regular pain, n' discipline creates prison 

Moneyride, moneyride, moneyride 
Organize not mobilize to civilize 

Bodymind, bodymind, bodymind 
If I testify the executioner would cry 

This is a stable job
My body my soul 

Surveillance states “vote or die”
An angel watches

Their killer’s seed punch into a typewriter
Why did slavery end?