When They Call You a Terrorist: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Patrisse, Opal, Alicia, and Darnell Moore (a professor who will help build out the BLM network) decide they have to go to Ferguson. Some organizers on the ground tell them to come, but others say they should only come if they can offer medical, legal, policy, or reporting support. They decide to organize a Freedom Ride to Ferguson in two weeks, coordinating buses from Northern and Southern California, Texas, New York, and more. Hundreds join a national planning call, and they raise $50,000 for buses and food.

Patrisse, Darnell, and friends fly to St. Louis a week early and then drive to Ferguson, which feels like an occupied zone. Local police and the National Guard are there with tanks on street corners. They notice how much money is spent on community repression rather than support. They listen to the car radio and are surprised to hear local newscasters talking about Mike Brown with love. Patrisse wonders, “Could it be that we matter?” They talk about how Trayvon was killed in a gated community, a place meant to separate people from one another, whereas Mike was known and loved in Ferguson. Out the windows, they see people protesting and wearing Mike Brown T-shirts.

Patrisse, Darnell, and others meet up with organizers at Harris Stowe University (the local HBCU), and the president of the school says they can use the campus as a meeting place for the Riders. They are thrilled and identify hotels where people can stay before meeting even more organizers from Dream Defenders and BYP 100. They head back to LA, feeling like they have the lay of the land. Two days before the ride, the Harris Stowe organizers back out of their promise, but a pastor in St. Louis calls and says they can use his church as the meeting place. Patrisse pauses and then notes that many of the Riders are queer and trans, but he says all are welcome.

The Riders send out a final press release and hold a call with 600 organizers across the U.S. The buses leave the Thursday of Labor Day weekend—it will take 38 hours for Californians to arrive. Many Black trans women risk their lives to travel through the Midwest and, after, tell Patrisse and the other leaders that their presence should have been made more visible. Black trans women are the most criminalized people on the planet. After this, the leaders make sure to always name that they are queer- and trans-led, and to work with Black trans organizations. BLM also decides to always have an evolving political framework.

Everyone arrives at the church on Friday night, and Patrisse meets Opal for the first time—they are happy but also somber because they know there’s work to do. Darnell and Patrisse welcome everyone and review the safety guidelines. The next day, they are in the streets by 10 a.m., standing in front of tanks. Palestinian protestors have taught them to douse their eyes in milk after tear gas attacks. That evening, some of them join a peaceful occupation of the police station, calling for Darren Wilson to be charged (which he never will be). Others (mostly women) use the church to rest, including locals who have been protesting for four weeks.

In the church, they process what’s happening: two Black women have recently been imprisoned for defending themselves against abuse. They talk about their own experiences, too—poverty, abuse, police violence, feeling unseen in the movement despite the fact that 80 percent of protestors in Ferguson are women. The media, of course, focus on the men. This will continue to be true as news outlets cover the growing BLM movement; Patrisse, Alicia, and Opal will not be invited to speak on news programs at first. Patrisse notes, “it is always women who do the work, even as men get the praise.”

This erasure of women’s work is exacerbated by social media; the number of followers someone has supplants the work of people who don’t have time to tweet. Like the many women who organized, marched, and cooked for the civil rights movement, Patrisse, Alicia, and Opal are being erased. They don’t want to be the center of the movement but they don’t want to be forgotten either. Infuriated, Patrisse tells Black women journalists about their erasure, including asha bandele, her co-author and a writer for Essence. asha asks for the whole story and publishes an essay about Patrisse in late 2014. Then, Essence turns BLM into a front-page story, the first article to center the three women’s experience.

On Sunday, the church has a service dedicated to BLM, and many protestors attend. The pastor gives a sermon calling congregants to commit to the movement. After, Patrisse helps pass out flyers in the prosecutor’s neighborhood, asking people to tell him to indict Darren Wilson. Their final day there, they host a discussion on patriarchy in the movement. Darnell describes how he knows, even as a gay man, that he is prioritized. Meanwhile, Mark Anthony and others have turned the church basement into a healing space, where protestors can access massage, therapy, acupuncture, and art supplies. They deserve a place to restore. Before leaving, Patrisse shouts out Assata Shakur’s declaration that it is their duty to fight and support one another, and the crowd repeats it back.

In December, Alicia and Opal come to LA to discuss building out the BLM network. The movement is growing: people want to organize by region and also by expertise and hundreds of organizers across the globe join biweekly calls. Meanwhile, Patrisse’s relationship with Mark Anthony is changing. She learned from Cherice that love is best expressed through labor rather than affection and, as she works around the clock, their relationship loses its romantic charge. Patrisse feels like Mark Anthony will fight alongside her but not for her. At dinner one night, they agree that they love each other but that they are not working. The break-up is painful for both of them, but they know they will always be family. They continue to work well together on Dignity and Power Now.

Patrisse begins to date again—first a trans man who doesn’t agree to nonmonogamy, and then JT, her longtime friend who is part of BLM. They are talking about having a child together when they hear about Sandra Bland, a young Black activist who was pulled over by a Texas state trooper for failing to signal a turn. Sandra refused to put out a cigarette she was smoking, so the state trooper pulled her out of the car and slammed her to the ground. Dash cam footage circulates in which he threatens to “light her up.” He will be fired for perjury, but not until after Sandra is found dead in her jail cell. The police call her hanging a suicide, but Patrisse says that no one with sense believes this—she was on her way to a new job and had talked to her sister about putting together bail.

The African American Policy Forum begins using the hashtag #SayHerName to acknowledge how state violence affects Black women, too. The day after Sandra is found dead, Kindra Chapman (18) is found hanging in her cell after being there for 90 minutes on a stolen cell phone charge. There are so many other stories: Miriam Carey (age 34) killed by federal officers when she made a wrong turn near the White House, Rekia Boyd (age 22) killed by Chicago police while talking to friends in a park, Kathryn Johnston (age 92) killed by Atlanta police who had the wrong address, and many more.

Women have historically been left out of the story, even though many Black women were lynched, too. Some have been killed while pregnant or had their babies cut out of them. Sandra’s death ignites something in Patrisse, maybe because she’s an activist, or because death inside facilities is so rarely talked about, or because women have been leading BLM since the start. Patrisse knows she has to amplify this story and reaches out to friends at Dream Defenders, Mijente, and BLM-Los Angeles (there are 20 chapters at this point). They decide to meet at the Netroots conference in Phoenix, where it’s unlikely people will be talking about Sandra’s death.

Patrisse has some regrets about the action—now, she would tell the full BLM network what they’re planning. But in 2015, they move fast; less than a week after finding out about Sandra’s death, they are meeting in the back of a restaurant in Phoenix, planning, singing, and crying. Someone says that they are doing a candidate’s forum the next day, and that Bernie Sanders will be there. Patrisse suggests they shut it down. She lets the moderator know that they are coming, and the next day, 100 of them storm the forum.

Patrisse and the other BLM members sing “Which side are you on?” and one activist gets on stage to talk about immigration. The crowd of Democrats boos, which motivates Patrisse to jump on stage and yell back at them “How dare you boo her, boo us?! Our people are dying!” The audience stops booing and they continue their action, sitting down and saying in unison that if they die in police custody, people should know that they were killed, protest their deaths, and tell the world they wanted to live. The protest makes headlines globally and Patrisse feels the impact of their work. Back in LA, as she is gearing up for the first Movement for Black Lives gathering (to take place in Cleveland where Tamir Rice was killed), she finds out she is six weeks pregnant.