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CRITICAL LESSONS FROM THE NEW JERSEY 7Re-Thinking “The Norm” In Police/Prison Violence & Gender Violence:Critical Lessons From the New Jersey 7By INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence & FIERCE!(Also published in LeftTurn Magazine, Sep 2008)The New Jersey 7 (also often referred to as the New Jersey 4) is a group of seven young Black lesbian friends who wereviolently attacked in 2006 in New York. They defended themselves from a homophobic sexual assault by a malebystander, Dwayne Buckle, as they walked down the street in the West Village neighborhood in New York City. Buckleshouted “I’ll fuck you straight, sweetheart!” and other verbal assaults, spat on one of the women, and finally got on topof her while he pulled out her hair and choked her. At some point, two men ran over to help the women, and theyproceeded to beat Buckle. Their friend released, the women were walking away from the situation when they werestopped by local police. Even though the events were caught on videotape from a nearby store camera, the group offriends was perceived by police to be at fault (the men fighting with Buckle were never looked for). The women werearrested without being told why. They were all prosecuted in a highly disturbing media atmosphere in which they wereaccused of being, among other things, a “lesbian wolfpack.” Three women plea bargained and now have a criminalrecord, and the other four women (Venice Brown, Terrain Dandridge, Patreese Johnson, and Renata Hill) were foundguilty of gang assault and assault, receiving sentences ranging from 3 ½ to 11 years in prison.This horrifying event is a stunning crystallization of the intersections of multiple kinds of violence: police and prisonviolence, homophobic “hate” violence, and sexual violence perpetrated against women. However, there has beenrelative silence about the case. When we consider the kind of media attention, public outrage, and mass mobilizationsthat happened on behalf of the Jena 6 boys, for example, it’s hard not to wonder why this story hasn’t sparked a similarkind of national fury.WHO IS THE “NORM” IN ANTI-POLICE/PRISON & ANTI-VIOLENCE ORGANIZING?As a young lesbian of color, Terrain hashad to endure the many challenges to be“ herself” when it is not, as some wouldsay, the “ norm.”– Kimma Walker, mother of Terrain Dandridge(one of the New Jersey 7 who was arrested andincarcerated, but recently released), June 2008The question of why there is so much silence surroundingthe NJ7 case and similar instances of criminalization ofwomen of color and queers of color lays bare the ways inwhich queer folks of color and women of color do not fitthe racialized and gendered mold of who gets to beperceived as legitimately victimized or legitimatelyresisting oppression. Discussions of criminalization andincarceration of people of color, as well as of policeprofiling and brutality - in both mainstream and progressive media - focus almost exclusively on the experiences ofyoung Black and Latino men coded as heterosexual, privileging state violence against straight men of color to theexclusion/erasure of state violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people of color andother women of color. In fact, women of color and LGBTQ folks of color have a long history of being systematicallyharassed, profiled, strip searched, body cavity searched, raped, beaten, and murdered by law enforcement agents, basedon their race, gender, sexuality, and class.Please visit www.incite-national.org for more info! P. 65
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POLICING GENDERTrans and gender non
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KHAKI & BLUE: A KILLER COMBINATION
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EVALUATIONWE REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR