Hi, everyone.
How are y'all doing?
Welcome to Tucson again, traveling poet.
So usually, sometimes, have my spoken
word, my artist performance hat.
Right now, I'm going to have my BIPOC United Tucson
hat, so this is going to be a speak with no holds barred,
with just no holding back.
[SPEAKING TEWA, DINÉ BIZAAD]
As I just shared with you, my introduction in my native
tongue of Tewa and Diné Navajo, it also comes with
the recognition to honor whose traditional land we currently
reside upon in Southern Arizona--
that of the Tohono O'odham nation and the Yoeme Pascua
Yaqui tribe.
My name is Leilani Clark, and my mother's side,
I am from Santa Clara, Pueblo--
Kha'po Owingeh-- from Summer clan, and also Navajo Diné,
from Water's Edge clan.
On my father's side, I'm a daughter
of the African diaspora.
I rediscovered and found strength
within those cultural roots after I
left my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, in 2011,
due to sexual violence I faced within a movement's face.
I also redefined myself as a prison abolitionist-- someone
who doesn't believe that the system of policing,
criminalization, and prisons can be fixed.
But it must be abolished, because it's
fundamentally rooted to the very pillars of this country--
white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy,
and violent capitalism.
I want to share how I reached that conclusion
and begin surrounding myself with like-minded individuals,
who ultimately want to create alternative resources
and responses to address violence in our communities
without having to rely upon the criminal justice system.
Before I left Tucson, I was heavily involved
in the immigrant rights movement and struggle
to defend ethnic studies, which was eventually
banned in the state of Arizona for several years.
I was involved in those movements since my teens.
Throughout my years as a grassroots organizer,
one of the main tactics for movement-building
that I became very proficient and well at
was direct action, like this.
Play that right there.
Shut the mic off.
[INAUDIBLE]
It is all right.
The noises sound like "lock up, lock up, lock up!
Woo!
Yeah, yeah!"
OK, let's see.
I remember-- and boom, goes Nacho.
Nice.
And then sneak around the cop.
Do it.
And then, yeah, yeah!
When our education's under attack, what do we do?
Fight back!
When our education is under attack, what do we do?
Fight back!
OK, we can end right there.
That's the sound effects for that.
[APPLAUSE]
[CHEERING]
Thank you!
So on April 26, 2011, I helped lead this non-violent takeover
with UNIDOS--
United Non-Discriminatory Individuals Demanding Our
Studies--
the ethnic studies student and alumni group
which I co-founded to prevent a vote from passing at the TUSD
school board, meeting that ultimately
would have dismantled Tucson Unified School districts
ethnic studies classes.
I led that action a little under four weeks
after I was sexually assaulted by the director
of a documentary movie covering the student
and youth-led movement I was actively
part of for years previous.
Ultimately, the response to that violence
from the leadership of primarily cisgendered straight men
of color in that movement was silent complicity
with the filmmakers' decisions to remove my few parts
in the film, in order to continue
screening it across the country for fundraising purposes.
And to share the narrative of the Tucson Mexican-American
studies movement, something I was no longer considered
a part of.
A critique I often received within that circle
of leadership over the years was my lack
of filing a police report after I was assaulted.
A little over three weeks after the action
that you just witnessed right there,
a Tucson police officer in an unmarked car
came to my house to interrogate me about my action.
I exercised my rights, told him I
refused to speak with him without an attorney present,
and sent him on his way.
Note to y'all-- learn your rights.
But that was when I first realized my limitations
to go that route of the courts to seek justice.
How was I expected to go to the same entity who currently
had an active investigation on me
to file a report of my own rape?
Because of my activism, I lacked access to the justice system,
and that was when I started to connect
the dots how flawed the criminal justice system really is.
I instantly related to folks who can't go that route
because their identity is both criminalized and stigmatized.
Undocumented community, sex workers,
trans people with the wrong gender on their ID,
survivors with warrants and records,
folks who have been harmed and traumatized by police
themselves or have family members who did not
survive police brutality.
How are we all expected to go to the police?
And even for those that do have access
to the courts for violence, I strongly
believe the system will never truly bring
healing nor reconciliation for survivors.
The cost is far too high.
Just this past Tuesday, when Chanel Miller--
vocal sexual assault survivor of Brock Turner--
was asked on CBS This Morning what
she wants woman who had been assaulted
to know about the process, she said,
"I think it's an extremely brutal process.
We need to do more to fix it and make all
these obstacles transparent."
"The system is not set up for you to succeed.
It's not a nourishing environment.
We need to be working harder to create environment
where survivors feel comfortable being supported,
and knowing that when they do, some form of justice
can be attained.
They won't just be completely demoralized and dehumanized
for an extended period of time."
Responses like this are all fueled
by an inherent and systemic rape culture seen in the courts
through the fact that character assassination
and institutional gaslighting are the chosen methods used
in defense of a perpetrator.
And endless statistics-- so I used to have graphics,
but we're just going to roll through with it.
I was going to show a graphic from RAINN-- the rape anti--
Rape, Assault, Incest National network.
It says a statistics that 994 perpetrators out of 1,000
will walk free.
Will walk free.
That is a very uncomfortable statement,
because as an abolitionist, I inherently
believe all people should be free
and that the punitive criminal justice model will never
end violence.
It only creates more.
Prison abolitionists have to ask, how do we
solve the world's social problems like violence,
without resorting to mass incarceration?
A question posed by the community justice exchange
in their organizing guiding framework.
Abolitionist principles and campaign strategies
for prosecutor organizing.
Questions like that is ultimately
what drove me to Transformative Justice,
a community-created response and resource
to violence which helps mediate dialogue between harmed parties
and the person who did the harm, driven by the survivor.
I say parties, because sexual and domestic violence doesn't
just happen between heteronormative gender
identities or relationships.
How can we create healing and just responses to violence,
so that we can address harm, acknowledge it, repair harm,
and ultimately transform the conditions in which
that violence came about?
As a Black and Native woman, I am very mindful
that gender-based violence is the legacy of historic trauma,
firmly rooted within colonization,
which used sexual violence as a tactic of conquest and war
against indigenous peoples.
And which use the same violence as a tactic
to keep African people in servitude.
The way our punitive justice system responds to violence
with increased violence, dehumanization, and isolation,
will never solve these historically deep-rooted cycles
of trauma replicating itself.
I can speak very well to what type of violence
those institutions reproduce.
Through my journey of healing from sexual violence,
I have also experienced physical violence
at the hands of a man I love dearly--
an indigenous man who spent his adolescent years into young
adulthood within the juvenile justice system
since the age of 12, and faced tremendous amounts
of institutionalized and normalized violence
inside those concrete walls on a daily basis.
A man who, before that, was subjected to violence and abuse
from a very young age at the hands of his family members.
Through loving him, I have experienced firsthand
the condition and brutal survival mode those bars,
surveillance, policing, and isolation created out
of a very beautiful human being.
And even after I was left to wear long sleeves in summer
time to hide the bruises upon my arms,
I do not wish for him to ever have to go back
to a place like that.
Prisons don't get rid of violence.
They just force individuals to become further adjusted to it
and be in constant survival mode.
These are very uncomfortable conversations
to have but completely necessary, and ones which
are too important to be hindered within the confines
of white comfort.
Political agendas are methods of carrying out
this movement-building work that don't speak to our people.
So I am working with groups like BIPOC United
Tucson, MalintZine, Sustainable Nations, Roots to Sky,
Decolonial Healing Justice Program, and the Honor
Collective.
We are adding this entire analysis together
and recognizing that, not only are we
the most impacted communities by violence,
but we are ultimately our own solutions.
We cannot compromise the answers we need in order to fit within
the ever-shifting funding trends of large foundations dictated
by comfortable status quo and forced priorities,
still inherently based upon the deals of white supremacy,
hetero-patriarchy, and violent capitalism.
Those systems, which have always worked against us as Black,
Indigenous people of color, will never
truly allow us to connect those dots that we are still
healing from colonial-rooted violence, which is replicated
within the interpersonal harm our communities are facing
today.
We cannot afford to compromise any longer our strategies,
solutions, messages, or tactics, in order to reach a more
broader audience that still needs reminders of our humanity
and capability to lead forward our own movements driven
by our own self-determination.
BIPOC woman, femme, and queer individuals and communities
shouldn't have to code switch in order for ourselves
to be heard or taken seriously in liberal movement
spaces claiming to be centered upon fighting
for social justice and equality.
We already had to do that enough for survival
in every other sphere of our lives
within this violent system.
Why should this same protocol, driven by racism,
be repeated in these socially conscious organizing spaces?
That is why BIPOC United--
again, black indigenous people of color--
Tucson came into formation this past year,
when we saw and heard those same [? oppressive ?] silencing
measures being used against women and femmes of color who
were both within the organizing meetings of the 2019 Tucson
Women's March, and working under the arc of the YWCA of Southern
Arizona-- the March fiscal sponsor.
We started as a collective group of BIPOC women and femmes,
representing many different grassroots
groups and organizations within Tucson
who published an open letter stating why we would not
be participating in this year's march, which we felt
stood more as a symbolic gesture, versus impacting
real policy change.
One in which we refuse to be tokenized for.
Representing such groups as Black Lives Matter Tucson,
Tucson Second Chance Community Bail Fund,
Coalición de Derechos Humanos, the Coalition of Human Rights,
Chukson Water Protectors, the Tucson Brown Berets,
and [? Teatro de Mirar ?].
We are a group of artists, performers, organizers,
mothers, workers, producers, and abolitionists,
who came together to create our own space to freely voice
our desires to collectively work on
dismantling an oppressive system,
killing us generations over.
Our mission statement reads, "Black, indigenous,
and people of color--
BIPOC United Tucson-- is an organization of racial
abolitionists who believe change will not, and cannot,
come from a system designed to perpetuate and profit from
white supremacy, violence, toxic masculinity, homophobia,
transphobia, and the continued devaluation of our humanity.
We are outspoken and unapologetic in our belief that
this system cannot be fixed.
It can only be dismantled."
"BIPOC United Tucson show solidarity
and sisterhood over any platform awarded to us
for falling within their safe guidelines,
not meant to rock the boat too much,
nor make white women uncomfortable.
And we ultimately hold our own event on International Women's
Day to highlight and uplift the art, voices, and businesses,
of local BIPOC women and femmes.
We created our platform in which we
were freely able to mention such radical notions as prison
abolition, and boldly name all these systems which
does not serve us, and never has, and never will."
"It has been through grassroots BIPOC-led women, femme,
and queer spaces where we have been able to envision more
than our current reality today, which attempts
to solve violence with more institutional violence,
instead of true accountability.
In 2012, it was the online and physical zine, MalintZine,
which first exposed the violence and harm
I faced within the Tucson ethnic studies movement, along
with the cases of violence which followed after."
Because when you set the bar-- when
you don't mention sexual assault,
you set that bar of silence very high.
"So this unapologetic exposure first
served as a necessary form of accountability,
which went in line with the vision of BIPOC United.
Because just as much as we don't need our messages and tactics
compromised by both white supremacy and privilege,
as women, femme, and gender queer people of color,
we also don't need our safety and our well-being compromised
by sexism, homophobia, and transphobia within communities
and movements of color."
"Further community collaboration also included working with
Sustainable Nations, Roots to Sky,
Decolonial Healing Justice Program,
where we held monthly circles exclusive to BIPOC community--
black indigenous people of color--
to begin conversations to both internally
and collectively dismantle harmful and oppressive behavior
seen within our own communities that are
rooted in colonial violence.
With the Roots to Sky program, I was
able to be part of the transformative community
initiatives 2018 peer-to-peer exchange
network of emerging leaders, with 21 different BIPOC
organizers."
"A majority being formerly incarcerated people.
Across the nation, we were able to collaborate together
on how to create alternative responses to violence
in their communities, again, without getting
the criminal justice system involved.
More conversations and spaces like this
are taking place at a grassroots level
and among younger generations, and it's very exciting
to see and witness.
And when addressing such heavy topics
like trauma and violence, it's also
essential to create spaces which can sustain our healing, that
resonates and aligns within our values and beliefs outside
of the eurocentric norms."
The Honor Collective-- healing our nations, offering
resiliency.
A new indigenous-led group that formed in response to also
subjected to unequal amounts of labor distribution that fell
upon the shoulders of local native community,
when organizing around this year's Take Back the Night
event--
a mainstream, white-led anti-violence event,
whose leadership chose to honor missing and murdered Indigenous
women and girls--
MMIWG-- even before indigenous people
were part of that initial conversation.
The dynamics behind the scenes with the organizing
of this event, much like the Tucson's Women March,
came with the stark reminder that, even when
coming together as women, femmes, feminists,
and survivors of sexual violence,
there is still white privilege at play
in regards to whose trauma is more centered and heard.
This past spring's effort led to a very powerful event
for indigenous community, located on the San Javier
Walk District Reservation of the Tohono O'odham nation
to honor missing murdered indigenous women and girls
in a space that prioritized healing, ceremony,
and cleansing, when talking about trauma and violence.
And we hope to hold similar events like this in the future.
But this time, from the start, it
will be autonomously led and envisioned
by the leadership of indigenous community.
We will not be anyone's token.
With the work of collectives like BIPOC United
Tucson and the others mentioned, that are unapologetically
taking space for deep collaboration and building,
this is how we can truly answer that question I first
proposed-- how do we solve the world's
social problems without resorting
to mass incarceration?
Our leadership as BIPOC people from all gender identities
need to be trusted, and our necessity
to carve out spaces for us where we can freely envision, dream,
and develop our voice together without compromise,
needs to be respected.
And our struggle must always simultaneously involve
our healing.
For collective healing will bring
about collective imagination, for collective solutions
to address, to acknowledge, to repair harms, and ultimately
transform the conditions in which that violence is created
in the first place.
Art is the best tool and medicine
we have towards individual and collective healing.
That is why it's an absolute honor
to share this vision and that of the collectives
like BIPOC United and the others that I mentioned, that we are
in the setting where art very much is
being used as a platform towards social justice.
Thank you all very much, [SPEAKING TEWA, DINÉ BIZAAD].
[APPLAUSE]