Holding Space for Niani: Killer Cops, Domestic Violence and the War on Black Women

 

 

Niani Finlayson

By Sikivu Hutchinson

On December 4th, twenty seven year-old Niani Finlayson, a mother of two young daughters, was shot and killed by L.A. County Sheriff’s (LASD) deputy Ty Shelton in Lancaster, California. Finlayson had called 911 after she was injured by her boyfriend during a domestic violence dispute. It is also alleged that Finlayson was trying to defend one of her daughters against abuse by this individual. The LASD claims that Finlayson was wielding a knife and threatening to stab her boyfriend when police arrived at the scene. Commenting in a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed against L.A. County, Finlayson’s lawyer stated that, she “was not threatening anyone when deputies shot her in the back from behind a glass door”. Body camera footage released this week shows that Shelton shot Finlayson only three seconds after he arrived. Finlayson’s 9 year-old witnessed her mother’s murder.

As Black women domestic and intimate partner violence survivors, we know all too well that this unspeakable tragedy could have happened to any one of us. Nationwide, Black women have disproportionately high rates of domestic violence victimization and are more likely to be killed by a partner, relative or friend than are non-Black women. In the U.S., Black women are also 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a partner, ex-partner, relative or friend than are non-Black women. In the City of Los Angeles, Black women comprise 25%-33% of all domestic and sexual violence victims, though we are only 4% of the population. These experiences make Black women and girls more vulnerable not only to assault and community violence, but also to victim-blaming, criminalization, abuse, and murder by police when they seek assistance from law enforcement. Black women are 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than are white women. Black women domestic violence victims are more likely to be arrested when they contact law enforcement for help in a domestic violence dispute. Known as “dual arrests”, this travesty involves the concurrent arrest of the assailant and the victim in a domestic violence dispute. Racist/sexist stereotypes that criminalize Black women and girls as violent, out of control, and culpable for their own victimization, drive this disparity.

#Standing4BlackGirls Women’s Leadership Project Black women’s survivors’ speak out for Niani Finlayson @ L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. on December 27th

Finlayson’s senseless killing underscores why deploying violence disruptors and mental health intervention specialists who are not law enforcement is critical. In 2020, Shelton shot and killed sixty one year-old Michael Thomas in another domestic violence dispute. Shelton was not prosecuted for the killing and the officers involved in the call had not been assigned body cameras. Shelton’s continued presence on the force belies recently elected Sheriff Robert Luna’s claim that he is committed to purging “bad apples” in a department rife with killer cops and serial abusers.

In condemning this unconscionable atrocity, and expressing our condolences to Niani Finlayson’s family, we are calling on Sheriff Luna to fire Ty Shelton and deploy trained first responder violence disruptors and crisis intervention specialists during domestic violence calls, rather than armed deputies. We are also calling for the immediate prosecution of Shelton by District Attorney George Gascon. 

Finlayson’s experiences, like those of other Black women domestic violence victims, also underscore the urgent need for prevention education and resources in L.A. County and city schools for all genders. Domestic and intimate partner violence prevention is only superficially discussed in middle school and high school health curricula. When domestic violence is discussed, the coverage is piecemeal and not culturally responsive to the lived experiences of Black women and girls. When the Women’s Leadership Project conducts Black feminist violence prevention education outreach in high schools, we constantly hear from Black girls who have been groomed, abused, and victimized on social media and in real time. Nationwide, Black girls across sexuality have few safe spaces to seek refuge in when they are at risk of abuse or have experienced abuse. For many Black women and women of color, early experiences with abuse are a leading predictor of later in life abuse.

L.A. County spends billions on police and prisons, yet continues to underfund restorative justice and healing justice alternatives. The County’s pledge to a “Care First” budget has yet to reap structural gains or benefits for Black L.A. youth. And the underfunding of community youth spaces only compounds the record levels of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide that Black girls, queer and gender expansive youth are experiencing.

Niani Finlayson’s murder tragically exposes the way the intersection of police state terrorism and gaps in social welfare protections imperil Black women, Black families, and communities. Finlayson’s mom Tracie Harris stated that she was pursuing her dreams to become a nurse and create a children’s app.

You can support her family and young daughters by contributing to their GoFundMe. You can also demand the firing and prosecution of Ty Shelton by contacting Sheriff Robert Luna and District Attorney George Gascon.

The #Standing4BlackGirls coalition and Women’s Leadership Project provide mental health resources, youth leadership development, and advocacy for Black girls and BIPOC queer youth in Los Angeles.

Black Voters' Dangerous Dance with Trump 2.0

 

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Word to Black voters seduced by Trump — he thinks you come from sh — thole nations, is itching to deport you, and believes Black men are wild criminals who deserve the death penalty. This past weekend during a campaign appearance, Trump proclaimed that immigrants, specifically from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Unfortunately, these tip of the iceberg atrocities might not sway some gullible Negroes. If early swing state polls are to be believed, the nation is hurtling full speed ahead toward a second Trump administration and Black voters are playing a key role. According to the New York Times, after surveying 2500 voters, “A Democratic advisory group…found that voters in the Democratic base of ‘Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQ+ community, Gen Z, millennials, unmarried and college women give Trump higher approval ratings than Biden.’” Further, “Black voters are more disconnected from the Democratic Party than they have been in decades, frustrated with what many see as inaction on their political priorities and unhappy with President Biden, a candidate they helped lift to the White House just three years ago.” Most alarmingly, “22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important battleground states said they would support former President Donald J. Trump in next year’s election…(while) 71 percent would back Mr. Biden.”

Even taking into consideration the notorious unreliability of early polls, these numbers are jaw dropping, terrifying, and enraging. Trump’s swaggering anti-Blackness, white supremacist outbursts, and fascist policies on everything from racial justice, policing, abortion rights, climate change, job creation, public education, student loan forgiveness, and anti-poverty programs would obliterate any modicum of socioeconomic gains that African Americans and people of color have achieved. Case in point, Black poverty rates are at approximately 22% in the U.S. The 2021 Child Tax Credit, which was implemented under the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan, cut poverty to 5.2%. Nonetheless, the GOP and right wing Democrat Joe Manchin voted against renewing it, and the poverty rate shot up again in 2022. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “The poverty rate for children more than doubled from a historic low of 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, erasing all of the record gains made against child poverty over the previous two years. Progress made in 2021 in narrowing the glaring differences between the poverty rates of Black and Latino children compared to white children was largely reversed.” Earlier this year, unemployment rates among Black workers fell to historic lows, narrowing the racial gap between white and Black workers to 1.8% (Black unemployment rates have since risen again).

This is not to cosign Biden, nor to excuse the rank imperialism, militarism, and neoliberalism of his administration. The Biden administration’s bankrolling of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and the Palestinians is an odious human rights violation which has further eroded progressive Democratic support. On the domestic front, faced with rising consumer prices, mounting debt, erosion of Black generational wealth, and skyrocketing rates of Black homelessness, many African American voters are disgruntled with the administration’s piecemeal efforts to reddress these disparities. But Biden has shown no willingness to step down to make way for a younger successor. And the likelihood that a viable one could be drafted at this stage in the game is slim to none.

The reality is, a second Trump administration would be apocalyptic for Black folks and people of color. Trump has already promised to reinstate his 2017 Muslim ban executive order, institute mandatory deportations, repeal the 14th amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship (which was instituted to confer citizenship on enslaved African Americans), and permanently hijack the Supreme Court and lower federal courts by packing them with Christian fascist Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett clones who will torch the last remnants of constitutional protections for vulnerable communities.

In addition, last week, one of Trump’s lackeys announced that Trump 2.0 would launch a no holds barred Justice Department assault on members of the press who “helped Biden rig the election”. Trump’s threats underscore how Tea Party era anti-immigrant fear-mongering and white nationalism have come full circle in a nation where his supporters gleefully lap up his lies, villainy, and corruption and beg for more. In this please-pee-on-us-and-call-it-rain scenario, Trump, as he predicted years ago, has become impervious to legal challenges, impeachments, indictments or public shaming. At this historical juncture, the sad, insane but naked truth is that (barring a viable alternative) Biden’s reelection is the only thing that stands between democratic civil liberties and civil rights and a complete descent into fascist rule.

Yet, the seeds of Biden’s slide with African Americans are also exemplified by the moral conservatism of some Black voters. Black viewpoints on LGBTQ+ rights are one bellwether. A Black woman voter who was polled in the Times survey stated that, “Biden has not followed through on his campaign promises on immigration (and she) worries that Democrats have gone too far in their embrace of L.G.B.T.Q. issues (while) faulting them for books used in public education that she believes are too sexually explicit.” Similarly, in a recent L.A. Times article, columnist Mike Madrid frames the erosion of Democratic support among Latino voters along demographic and ideological lines. As immigration from Spanish-speaking countries declines, native born Latino constituents are less likely to identify with the liberal-centrist issues that define the Democratic Party’s base. According to Madrid, this demographic has moved “away from the aggrieved immigrant narrative favored by Democrats and toward an assimilating, working-class identity that mirrors its non-Latino counterparts.” Madrid’s supposition that Latinos are rejecting the Democrats’ “grievance-based” politics downplays the continued relevance of social and economic justice in a nation in which approximately 17% of Latinos are at the poverty line and face significant institutional racism and discrimination in every sector. And, while Latinos are more likely to share the religious conservatism of white evangelicals, they are also able to claim white identity on legal forms — a privilege that Black folks don’t have.

Indeed, Black folks’ drift to Trump is downright suicidal, given the high stakes. What, exactly, do Black Trumpites see him delivering to Black communities, other than trickle down Reaganomics on steroids, the complete destruction of anything resembling equity in the public sphere, and the gutting of social welfare, health care, infrastructure, and educational policies that have historically provided redress to communities of color? An old Twilight Zone episode chillingly illustrates Black fascination with Trump. In the episode, the devil, disguised as an innocuous looking everyman, is locked up in a monastery. Despite the warnings of the monks, a visiting traveler releases him after he sweet talks the man into believing he’s been unjustly imprisoned. Mayhem ensues, and the visitor, mired in regret, spends his entire life trying to hunt down and trap Satan for good. This is a piker’s analogy for what the potential “resurrection” and liberation of Trump, on the watch of a disaffected and amnesiac electorate, would do for the nation and the globe.