These last few weeks, activists around the globe have watched an unfolding tragedy in Nigeria: the kidnapping of more than 267 Nigerian school girls from the Government Girls Secondary School, a boarding school in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok. The kidnapping was part of an intentional and organized campaign to close schools in northern Nigeria.
Today, on Mother’s Day, Women With a Vision is joining the New Orleans community in gathering in Armstrong Park’s Congo Square to show support in a demonstration of solidarity for the mothers and their missing daughters.
For many of us gathering across the world today, these offerings of solidarity are a way to move beyond hash-tag activism or the problematic calls for expanded U.S. or Western militaristic intervention or counter-terrorism operations. We understand intimately the ways our own government can perpetuate systems of oppression, and we understand how many policies initiated by our governments work to pathologize Black life domestically and internationally.
What many of us are calling for instead is an universal recognition of the value of Black female life.
The question for many of us is simply: can the world at large stand up for Black women and girls’ lives? What does it mean to recognize Black women and girls as valuable in a global system of white supremacy and patriarchy that has never recognized our humanity? What does it mean to support the lives and survival of Black women and girls, nationally and internationally? What does it mean to work to end gender-based violence and to work toward an activism that speaks at the intersections of sexist, racist, classist, and colonial oppressions and experiences? How do we negotiate, both locally and globally, the way Black girls and women go “unseen” — how our invisibility as humans (or our hyper-visibility as stereotypes) feed into global capitalist power struggles.
What does it mean for Black women and girls to be seen? To be heard? It’s a question we at Women With a Vision have been tackling for a quarter of a century here in New Orleans, a city often cited as one of the most African cities in the U.S.
On a daily basis here in New Orleans, we see what happens when Black women and girls’ lives become expendable. WWAV and our allies struggle against national, state, and local laws, policies, and structures that criminalize poor Black women and girls, laws that work to push Black women out of their homes and deny them access to the resources they need to survive. We see school policies that push Black girls out of schools and onto the streets, and state policies that take Black children away from their mothers. These laws and policies have become a form of state-sanctioned violence against Black women and girls, in all the ways they contribute to the neglect, disappearance, and death of Black women and girls at the hands of the police, the prison system, the health system, and the social welfare and educational systems. Studies have shown Louisiana to be the worst state for Black women and girls in the U.S., as we face more barriers to health and service access than anywhere else in the nation.
In New Orleans and across the U.S., we bear witness to the myriad ways Black females don’t matter. As many of our clients say: the only time we matter is when political forces want to use us and criminalize us. Both in Nigeria and locally, Black female bodies have become a battlefield for political groups, jockeying for control of the country.
The lack of attention given to the Nigerian girls’ kidnappings in the Western media for those first few weeks has already been called out for its racism; here in the U.S. we are familiar with the media’s devaluing of Black female life — how a black child going missing or dying has never carried the weight of a white child’s disappearance and death, how violence aimed at black bodies is a low priority on the scale of moral outrage. And globally we have seen time and time again, the same devaluing of Black life across the world, the way African life has never been met with the same levels of respect and humanization as other residents of the world.
But when the mainstream media failed, grassroots social media took notice, emerging as a tool through which the story has been forced into public consciousness. Nigerian journalists reported on the happenings, and Nigerian mothers banded together to create the #BringBackOurGirls and #WhereAreOurDaughters hashtags advocating for the safe return of the nearly 300 schoolgirls. Activists across the globe took up the call, millions tweeting and blogging the message, sending photos of solidarity, and moving toward rallies of support such as the one occurring today in New Orleans’ historic Congo Square.
Over the last two weeks, Nigerian women’s rights groups have staged protests in cities across Nigeria, calling on their government for better responsiveness, transparency, and to take greater action to rescue the girls. They wonder how it’s possible for hundreds of girls to vanish without a trace, how there is so little protection given to these schools and communities. The girls’ mothers’ actions and on-the-ground organizing have forced attention from the international community and media outlets across the globe, nearly three weeks after the girls were kidnapped.
This is a moment for those of us across the world to learn about the amazing activism birthed through the tireless work of Nigerian women; this is a time to show them our support, to show them that we hear them, even across the distance. This is also a moment to look at our own nation, to see the Black women and girls who go missing on our own soils, and to begin to join our voices together in saying that all Black women and girls’ lives matter.
Our lives matter.