For Tina
I buried my cousin yesterday
We grew up together.
Not like "see you at the next reunion” together. No.
Like, we grew up in the same house.
Tina and I wore oversized t-shirts on Saturday mornings and ate pancakes. We argued about which New Kids on the Block member was finest. Jordan? Donnie? Definitely Danny. She was like, "What!?" (I still hold that truth. Danny had "working man's grit.”)
Tina advised me on love, showed me how not to back down from a fight, and she had the finest freeze waves in the state of California. (These girls today don't know NOTHING about baby hair. Tina invented baby hair.) She was cooler, funnier and more steadfast than me. She loved Prince in the middle of a Holy Ghost household and said "Free Palestine!" fifteen years before I was afraid to use the hashtag.
My cousin was brave.
At her funeral yesterday, I laughed through tears. "My cousin was born in the wrong era. If she was in Wyoming at the turn of the century, she would've won rodeos. She had spunk. And I loved her. Her life was hard. But her passion was harder."
Tina's autopsy says she died of a heart attack at 49.
...but I know differently.
She died of heartbreak.
...of the imbalance required to make sense of an unjust world. Short breaths and teeth sucks and generations of (op)pressed DNA. She died of a crisis chemistry. A supreme sensitivity. Stress fractures. Struggled storylines, Rooted confusion. Staying woke when sleep would save your life.
In Africa, they call people like Tina "mad."
In America, they called it schizophrenia.
I heard an interview recently.
The doctor explained that inflammation is the root cause of many physical diseases, and that similarly, confusion is the root cause of most mental illnesses.
(It is a confusing world for suburban, soccer-playing Black girls from Sacramento, or Seattle, who have to confront the injustices that our mothers and grandmothers worked desperately to protect us from. I live in South Carolina now. And sometimes, I think that the southern stoicism of blunts and fatigues might be a better posture for survival. Black women are on the frontlines.)
Some say that I lost my cousin 20 years ago.
I know that's not true.
I looked her in the eyes in July and told her I loved her. "I love you too," she said. We meant it.
We were both there.
If I had to point to the moment our family took an "L,” it was NOT her illness. It was her incarceration—the locking away of her body.
The mass incarceration of Black women is deadly. It is not a solution for mental illness.
I remember her breakdown. The only choice. The call. The police. Her arrest. The collapse of her mother. Her mother's subsequent stroke. The stress. The guilt. The harm. Her release. Her record. Her inability to get treatment or work. Her homelessness. Her re-arrest. Her fortitude and positivity. Her brain's refusal to cooperate with her heart. Her homecoming. Her melancholy. Her wounds. Her cycles. Spirals. The systems. The stuckness. Her break.
GirlTREK sent yellow roses.
As the only remaining sisters of our combined family with 7 beautiful Black boys, my sister Kendria and I stood side-by-side with our cousin-brothers as honorary pallbearers. We wore white gloves and prayed as the boys did the heavy lifting. While they all thanked everyone, I squatted by Tina’s grave and sprinkled yellow petals on her casket. As they floated down, I hummed "When Doves Cry."
Tina, we do this for you.
We live/love for you.
...for all of our cousins gone too soon.
Mental health is deadly. Injustice is deadly. Stress is deadly. And let me say it plain...
Prisons are deadly.
Right now, America has the largest prison population in the world. There are 2.1 million people locked up in the United States right now. We call this mass incarceration.
Black people are incarcerated at a rate nearly 5 times that of white people. This is because of patrolling, profiling, and poverty, not criminality.
The number of incarcerated women has increased by more than 700% since 1980. Women are the fastest growing prison population.
The majority of women are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, often tied to poverty, mental illness, addiction and domestic abuse.
Black women are incarcerated at twice the rate of white women, despite equal crime rates.
Prisons are profiting off our families. Free labor. The history of prisons is directly tied to indentured servitude and slavery. Prisons create jobs, products, exploitative economies.
We don't make this shit up—and we are calling in revival, revolution and real solutions.
...and as uncomfortable as it is to write, love requires truth. This is our actual lives.
Last week, our guest on The Liberation Line was the brilliant, formerly-incarcerated Fox Rich. She reminded us that… prisons are not the solution.
As we march together towards the biggest election of our lifetimes, be sure you know the issues of health justice, the unnamed issues that impact our aunties—and how the candidates are positioned on these issues.
We believe in health justice.
And while we will talk about solutions for mental health soon, I want you to know now that it is systemically criminalized and that going to prison reduces a woman's life expectancy by two years.
Being isolated can reduce life expectancy by as much as 15 years.
The inability to walk freely and be connected to nature further reduces one's life expectancy.
The food, the stress, violence, mental torture. Prison is a health issue.
Here is this week's honorary crew—solution-makers we walked in solidarity with last week:
Fox and Rob Rich, New Orleans-based activists featured in the 2020 documentary Time, run the organization called Rich Family Ministries. This organization focuses on criminal justice reform and provides support for families affected by incarceration.
Gina Clayton-Johnson is the founder and executive director of the Essie Justice Group, an organization dedicated to supporting and empowering women with incarcerated loved ones. Her work focuses on providing emotional support, leadership development, and advocacy opportunities to fight against the injustices of the prison system.
Bryan Stephenson's TED Talk inspired Vanessa and I to be leaders. He has since become a true ally and advisor of our health justice movement. Bryan is a prominent civil rights lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to fighting racial injustice, advocating for the rights of marginalized communities, ending mass incarceration, and eliminating the death penalty. He is also the author of the bestselling book Just Mercy, which recounts his experiences defending those wrongfully condemned.
Yolanda Williams is GirlTREK's lead activist serving justice-impacted women. She organizes Black women in prisons and on parole to walk, talk and solve problems together. If you want to support Yolanda's work please email her at liberation@girltrek.org.
Here's the recording of The Liberation Line last Saturday, please listen and be blessed.
That's it. We are on our way.
Week 1, we walked in solidarity with George Floyd's family for safe streets.
Week 2, we walked in solidarity with Black women in prison.
Tomorrow, we walk with a VERY special surprise guest—one of our generation’s leaders on women's rights. You won't want to miss it.
Please invite your cousins.
This movement will go down in history.
It's easy, you can add the Saturday call to your calendar so you don't forget (Apple, Google, Office 365, Outlook, Outlook.com) and send the dial-in contact info to your peeps with the message:
"Black women across America are taking a walk together tomorrow at 9AM ET. It's virtual and historic and you can dial in. I'll send you the contact. I'll be on the line. We are going to talk about real issues.”
The number's the same. Dial: (646) 876-9923 Code: 734464325# (+16468769923,,734464325#).
Until Election Day,
Morgan
P.S. We're looking for college-aged women who want to organize with GirlTREK around the issues that impact Black women. If that's you, or you have a daughter, niece, or mentee in college, we're having an informational call on Wednesday, September 4 at 7PM ET. RSVP here.
Photos: Tina's graduation photo at her funeral; Me and my cousins at our family reunion. I'm in a white tank top with a stripe and church shoes. Tina is wearing navy blue.