The 30-Year-Old Radical Black Queer Feminist Who's Rahm Emanuel's Worst Nightmare

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34941-the-30-year-old-radical-black-queer-feminist-whos-rahm-emanuels-worst-nightmare

There is little doubt that the Black Lives Matter era of protests will be branded as a millennial moment. But Black women are so prominent in the movement’s leadership, the era might also be characterized as a matriarchal moment. For example, in the outrage following the release of the Laquan McDonald video depicting a 17-year old being shot by a Chicago cop 16 times, four of the most prominent groups that spoke out—Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), We Charge Genocide and Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY)— were led by Black women. This gender alignment marks a stark deviation from a deep tradition of patriarchal leadership. This is not your grandfather’s black freedom movement. Charlene Carruthers, the 30-year-old national director of BYP100, makes clear that this female ascendancy, as it were, has scholarly roots in the sterling work of feminist public intellectuals such as Cathy Cohen of the University of Chicago and Barbara Ransby of the University of Illinois at Chicago. BYP100, for example, is an offshoot of the Black Youth Project, a venture launched by Cohen in 2004. A well-known theorist of Black queer feminism, Cohen’s views have strongly shaped the agenda of BYP100. In These Times sat down with Carruthers to talk about the role of BYP100 in Chicago’s anti-police-violence movement and why the group thinks it’s crucial to “fully incorporate” a Black queer feminist perspective.

How did BYP100 begin?

In 2012, a group of young Black people who were part of an advisory council for the Black Youth Project said to Cathy Cohen, “We want to have a national convening with other Black activists from across the country.” And so Cohen secured the resources, and 100 young Black folk were invited to attend a convening called the “Beyond November Movement” in 2013. What we intended was to discuss movement-building for Black liberation beyond electoral politics, in the aftermath of the election of President Barack Obama. That Saturday night, the George Zimmerman verdict was announced. We gathered in the circle and listened. There were all kinds of reactions to the “not guilty” verdict: Some people cried, some people screamed, some people left the room. And we stood in a circle processing that moment.