Black Queer Feminist and Organizer Charlene Carruthers Talks About How She Became An Activist
Charlene Carruthers is a Black queer feminist activist and organizer. Her work aims to create young leaders in marginalized communities to fight for community interests and liberation. She is the founder of the Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation and author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, available in English and Spanish languages. Jasmine D. Lowe, the Managing Editor at Q26, got the chance to interview her over the phone.
Charlene Carruthers
Jasmine D. Lowe: I wanted to talk a little bit about how you first got into activism. What led you to this point in your life?
Charlene Carruthers: So, I got involved in activism work when I was 18 years old as a college student at Illinois Wesleyan University. And essentially, there were a couple of things that happened. One, they have white students on campus who were advocating for the representation of Black, brown, and LGBTQ students to be removed from our student government. There was also the growth of the Dream Act and the Dreamers' movement around immigration reform and access to higher education for undocumented students. So, I really got involved as a student on my campus, basically just flooding into things that felt important to me. It was really at the end of my first year in college when I went to study for the month of May in South Africa. We were there for about three weeks studying contemporary politics in South Africa. And that completely blew my mind and connecting the history of a struggle because apartheid, the reality of apartheid, the legacies of apartheid overlaid with my experiences growing up in the racially and economically segregated city of Chicago really motivated me to come back home and commit myself to political work.
Jasmine: Was this trip what led you to become a member of the Historic Delegation for Young Activists in Palestine?
Charlene: I met Ahmad Nabil Abuznaid, who is one of the cofounders of the Dream Defenders in 2012. He was the first person that I ever spoke to about Palestine and the occupation of Palestine, the removal of people from Palestine. I remember saying to him, if you have a go, I want to go with you. If you ever take people, I want to go with you. In 2015, three years later, I was invited to join the first delegation, led by the Dream Defenders.
Jasmine: And how was that experience? What did you guys do when you were there?
Charlene: Well, we traveled across the West bank. We spent time at east Jeruselum, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Hebron, meeting with community organizations, learning about Palestinian culture and politics, and learning about the occupation. We went to the center of Jerusalem as well and visited a number of historical and religious sites. It was really both the learning exchange and immersion in a moment where I feel contending with a contemporary form of apartheid and deep separation and deep state violence. We were there in the midst of also a number of uprisings in the U.S. There were people in the delegation who were a part of the Ferguson uprisings, people who come out of various movements in the South. And many of us had just been a part of various things. I believe that the Baltimore uprising occurred later that year, and many of us were a part of that too. I was there, and not even on purpose. I was scheduled to speak at John Hopkins, and it just happened to be the same time as Baltimore.
Jasmine: Did being there during these pivotal events lead you to your work with Chicago Center?
Charlene: The building at the Chicago center had everything to do with recognizing what I felt I wanted or what I needed as a young organizer, and when I saw it adapted in broader movements. It was based on my assessment of what would be useful and what was necessary.
Jasmine: I wanted to dive a little bit into your book, and the reason you spread your message through the written form?
Charlene: I chose writing because writing endures. It endures beyond a singular moment of a protest. Whereas the photos might last forever, but you may not remember everything that was said, or you may not remember every single thing that was done. Writing is something that we can go back to over and over again. I wanted to create something that will be available to lots of people in many ways because "Unapologetic" is also available in the Spanish language. I intend to make it more widely available in other languages if I continue on with the book. I want it to be able to reach people. I want it to be able to provide what I wish I had as a young organizer to people and help shape movements based on what I've learned from being within movements and what I've learned from study, what I've learned from other people, and to put it down on the page.
Jasmine: Now we're in a huge movement, again, with the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in the mainstream media. People are still protesting, and a lot of people are paying attention right now to what's happening, and are actively trying to educate themselves. What is it that you would like to tell this audience going forward who want to become activists and want to make sure they help educate others?
Charlene: That should decide to join this work. It's a lifelong journey, and that requires both self-work and community work, and then neither can happen successfully without the other. In doing this work, we can all and should all commit to studying. We can all commit to being in this work with other people and knowing that we should really seek to be more with integrity, not perfection, because, with human beings, nothing is ever going to be perfect. But at a minimum, we can work towards living within the values that we believe in and out in the world, and in the way that we move in things that we do.
I think this is an incredible moment for people to ask themselves what real safety looks like. What does it mean to live in a world where people don't have to constantly be in fear and ask themselves that question, exploring, joining the long-term movement for the abolition of the prison industrial complex. This is a time where we should be asking more questions and perhaps for some people different questions and coming up with different answers and conclusions that actually tell us that we can't afford to put bandaids and alcohol on the various problems in the world, but in fact, what we need is nothing short of a transformation. To really interrogate that and ask questions, not only yourself but other people about what we can do to abolish the prison industrial complex and create systems that actually are not rooted in punishment--those systems that are rooted in transformation and restoration. I think it's crucial, especially as people call for the defunding of police departments and call for us to have schools free of police to really dig into what safety could look like and what it should look like beyond policing and prisons and surveillance.
Charlene Carruthers' book Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements is currently available for purchase online. You can do so by visiting her website at charlenecarruthers.com.
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