When They Call You a Terrorist
Book
Review by Kam Williams
When
They Call You a Terrorist
A
Black Lives Matter Memoir
by
Patrisse Khan-Cullors with asha bandele
Foreword
by Angela Davis
St.
Martin's Press
Hardcover,
$24.99
272
pages
ISBN:
978-1-250-17108-5
“We have joined the
rest of the country in protesting in order to get Trayvon Martin's
killer charged. We have gone to meetings and held one-on-ones with
community members. We have painted murals. We have wept.
We have said publicly
that we are a people in mourning. We have demanded they stop killing
us. But we have harmed not one single person nor advocated for it.
They have no right to be here!”
And yet I was called a
terrorist. The members of our movement are called terrorists. We--me,
Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi--the three women who founded Black Lives
Matter, are called terrorists...
We are not terrorists...
I am not a terrorist... I am a survivor."
-- Excerpted from pages 8
and 190
Patrisse
Khan-Cullors is one of the last people you'd ever expect to be a
founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. It's not a question of
her commitment to the cause but rather the host of personal issues
that would have crippled the average person.
But
this 5' 2" lesbian managed to survive a challenging childhood in
a drug-infested ghetto where she and her siblings were raised by a
single-mom who worked 16 hours a day to keep a roof over their heads.
She didn't even meet her crackhead of a father until she was twelve,
as he divided his time between rehab and prison.
One
of her brothers not only smoked crack, but was schizophrenic to boot.
Consequently, Patrisse became intimately familiar with both the
mental health and criminal justice systems. Meanwhile, at school, she
was routinely teased and physically attacked for being gay.
To
paraphrase Langston Hughes, life for Patrisse ain't been no crystal
stair. Nevertheless, when she learned that Trayvon Martin's killer
hadn't been arrested by the police, she was so outraged that she
created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter which soon exploded into a
nationwide movement.
Although
the African-American community appreciated her efforts, the same
couldn't be said for the LAPD which labeled Patrisse a terrorist and
fabricated a flimsy excuse to conduct a SWAT team raid of her
apartment. All of the above is revisited in riveting fashion in When
They Call You a Terrorist, a fascinating combination autobiography
and blow-by-blow account of the rise of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
A
must-read memoir by a beleaguered grassroots organizer with
greatness thrust upon her.
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