Voice of Consciousness

This clip of #DEMSinPHL provides an insight on Hillary Clinton's thinking regarding the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The entire time of the #DNC, Hillary Clinton's connection to people as a mother. This was no exception. Honestly, Sandra Bland's and Jordan Davis's mother said very touching words; my heart was stirred. However, I wondered the entire time as I watched and re-watched this clip if these Mothers really understood what it would take to bring justice to this nation, as this nation condones, invites, rationalizes, and excuses police violence. The difficulty to attaining transformative justice that these Mothers did not address is that police violence is a form of state-sanctioned oppression. Police are protectors of the State. They are gatekeepers of the criminal justice that enforce the laws of the nation-state and its derivatives. Attaining transformative justice in this nation-state will require more than God's favor. It will require more than ...

I went to Bloomington's Consciousness Raising Rally for Trayvon Martin in "celebration" of my successful dissertation proposal oral defense. I have always tried to draw a distinct line between my scholarship and whatever activist voice that I have. The events of Trayvon Martin, however, capture a timeless problem of intersectionality to which even standard progressive politics may be blind. The poem I presented, and its precedent, draw from the thesis that the hate-crime of Trayvon Martin bespeaks the fatalizing stigmas at the nexus of race and gender.