black bodies

How many of us have heard about Keith Porter Jr.?

| Sheree

I’ll tell you the truth, I heard about Keith Porter Jr. 1 day ago.

Keith Porter Jr., a 43 year old father of two girls. He loves fishing and spending time with his family. Laughing.

Keith fundraised for battered women’s shelters, supported street artists, advocated for health services. With real family and friends, real daughters and a real presence in his community, Keith Porter Jr. is no longer with us.

Rest in Power Keith.

On New Year’s Eve, in Northridge, Los Angeles, Keith was seeing in the new year with family and friends in his neighbourhood. Tradition was to fire a gun into the air in celebration.

An off duty ICE agent, heard the shots, and inserted himself into the situation. A situation he shouldn’t have been in as an ICE agent is supposedly trained in compliance, transportation, custody paperwork. Immigration.

ICE is not designed or trained in community engagement responses. community law enforcement.

It is argued that after a short verbal exchange, the ICE agent shot and killed Keith.

Official reports from federal agencies say the ICE agent was responding to an ‘active shooter situation’. The department of homeland security says Porter fired at the agent before he was killed (in cold blood).

Watch how they change the narrative. Remember Keith Porter Jr. the man laughing with his family, caring and empathetic will become the monster who deserves to be dead.

Family and community advocates dispute this claim, stating that there is no independent released video evidence showing Keith Porter Jr. posed an imminent threat or fired at the agent.

Rather than lethal force, this off duty ICE agent should have done his citizen’s duty and called local Police as this was not an immigration issue. This was not his jurisdiction, his authority.

Keith Porter Jr. became an imminent threat only when this ICE agent turned up.

ICE has no community engagement training. They might have authority but not in the community, they don’t have the judgement and empathy to be on the streets. But obviously this ICE agent, off duty, thought otherwise.

Nearly two weeks ago Keith Porter Jr. was shot and killed. And people, the average person, even those online are just starting to find out about this murder. Only after Renee Good’s cold bloodied murder.

There is selective outrage in America. As I wrote last week, I have no issue with the response to Renee Good – that’s how we should be respond in this situation.

But

#SayHisName

Keith Porter Jr.

His family had been struggling to get his story, his unlawful killing into the current media cycle. This just compounds what I’ve been saying about the lack of visibility in mainstream media of black people being unlawfully killed by law enforcement.

Be honest have you heard of Keith Porter Jr? But you’ve heard of Renee Good?

There are arguments we can put in place here . You might not have heard his name, Keith Porter Jr. because he was killed by an off duty ICE agent not on duty with a large crowd there. Might be because there’s little video evidence circulating around. But the main reason is because Keith Porter Jr. was a black man.

This is part of the reason for not using #SayHerName for Renee Good. 

No one’s even heard of Keith Porter Jr. No national attention for his murder but within 24 hours everybody knew Renee Good’s name.

This is the very reason #SayHerName was created for the invisible black women and black men who are causalities of the state, of state terror.

And it’s only now that white people are waking up to this terror when black people have been enduring if for centuries. This is why I argue to consider the language used and to give credit and recognition for where it originated, why it was created in the first place.

And yet the same stories are being used to justify the unlawful killings of Renee Good and Keith Porter Jr. They were both pointing weapons at ICE agents, posed a threat and had to be eliminated.

I say

2 different people

2 different cities 

but the same structural problem.

Later down the line this might get read as the one bad apple or one bad moment. But this is clearly a system which once hidden no longer neededs to remain hidden.

A system that is built without limits or accountability.

De facto special powers bestowed by the Trump administration on ICE that seem to supersede police powers. ICE is now inserting itself into everyday life and every day neighbourhoods. And as we are witnessing this very presence is killing people. Killing more and more people who weren’t even their targets.

But that no longer seems to matter.

As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I don’t have an issue with the response to Renee Good – that’s how we should be responding in a situation like this. I just argue that the others, and there’s a long list that is growing of people who have been killed by ICE during this administration, deserve the same energy that is surrounding the murder of Renee Good.

As last time I checked, these are not animals, criminals or just talking points but human beings. Real human beings with grieving families. And this is something that gets forgotten in the media.

We need to continue to have these conversations and we need to keep fighting, on the small and large scale, against fascism near and far.

 

the abuse of power is coming home to roost

| Sheree

What is your mission?

If you’ve been watching the news this week, you’ve seen that it’s been dominated by what is happening in America. Or the actions America has taken elsewhere in the world. Flexing their muscles, going in for the strike.

In my opinion, what is happening, right now, is that white people can see the power of the state being used against people who look just like them.

This is where AfroSurrealism takes on significance – because the reality of blackness is the power of the state is always and, repeated for centuries and generations, been used against black people. Being black is a surreal experience. THEN. RIGHT NOW. ALWAYS.

The abuse of power has been turned up to the max so that no one is safe. But some people can’t see this yet. Maybe even deny it, spin a false narrative around it.

There’s a quote somewhere that I remember which goes something along the lines as, they’ll come for me in the evening, but then they’ll come for you in the morning.

Fascism had raised its head once again. But did it ever go away for black and brown bodies? Did it not just change its mask, switched up its playbook?

There’s protests across American cities against the unlawful killing of a white woman/ mother by an ICE agent. These protesters scream out, “say her name.”

The thing is this – no disrespect or condoning of this violence or unlawful killing as it is an abuse of power and murder. I am outraged but …

I am also outraged because #SayHerName was an awareness campaign started by Kimberle Crenshaw to bring attention to the unlawful killings of black women by law enforcement that were going unreported/ not getting the same level of outrage and attention as when black men and boys are killed by law enforcement, in comparison. And this doesn’t even start into the ‘white woman syndrome.’

#SayHerName was needed to highlight and remember and get justice (?) for black women who have been killed in custody, or when calling 911 for help, or when sleeping in their beds, or for just breathing while black.

#SayHerName is needed for these unlawful killings of black women not for the white woman killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday because everybody knows her name and everybody is saying her name.

What happened in Minneapolis was wrong and the Trump administration is lying about it and blaming the victim. This is an abuse of power and is being played out, as the images of the bloodied seat and the bullet hole in the windshield, as a threat.

You get in the way of us, protest our regime then this is what happens to you, is the message. They rule with fear, threats and intimidation. The ICE agent is immune from prosecution because he was just doing his job. His job for the state. Above the law. Lawlessness is the state. This is the only way to get the mass of population behind a fascist society. Fear, threats and intimidation.

Check the historical playbook.

The reality though, the truth that has to be stated otherwise I’d be silenced through fear and intimidation, is that #SayHerNane centred black women, centred blackness. But using it here in this instance for the murder of a white woman, this is just another thing that is whitewashed and co-opted by white people.

I’m thinking this and berating myself for thinking this. Condemning myself for seeing this play out in reality. I had to go online and check myself. Check that I’m not being unreasonable, or hateful or wrong. But I’m not alone in seeing this reality.

This truth.

( And do you also notice how much and often I’m couching my opinion in diplomatic ways, highlighting my intentions not to cause harm. Obviously needed as far too often people choose to see only part of the argument. Take issue with what isn’t the real issue as a means of not listening and not addressing the real issue! Kill the messenger and all that!)

I also have to ask ( myself, anybody else) if the woman who was killed by ICE was black or brown would there be such media attention, protests, calls for justice? Would her unlawful killing/ murder be used as a touchstone, as a moment that changes American history moving forward? Or would that be another case of #SayHerName?

I say this not to distract from the horrendous crime that has been committed by the state against a white woman. I say this because it’s all part of the same system that has been operating for centuries and it is just now, in this moment, that more people, white people are seeing that this shit is killing them too. It has been all along but just slower than black people (Fred Moten).

These are strange times (white) people are arguing. Democracy is being eroded. Violence is no longer buried and concealed. Violence is (now) at their (white) doors.

AfroSurreal. This has always been the reality of blackness. The violence. The absurdity of it all. No rhyme or reason except profits and power.

Now white people are waking up to seeing on their feeds people who look like them being murdered by the state. Unlawfully murdered by the state for demanding justice and fairness.

It’s awful that some (white) people are just starting to experience the dangers of oppression right now.

This is nothing new for / to black people. And saying this isn’t to wish ill will on anyone else or to take glee or satisfaction in violence inflicted on anybody.

Just speaking truth to reality.

An Archives of Memories, Feelings and Skyr

| Sheree

This is one of my favourite images from my extensive collection.

I know exactly when and where it was taken. Westfjords Residency, Iceland, Feb/March 2017.

This was my go to breakfast. Coffee, cornflakes and Skyr, Icelandic protein enriched yogurt. I love the colours, the composition. The items included. But most of all, I love the memories and feelings just looking at this image evokes.

It takes me back to that time of wonder and discovery during my second time to Iceland. A residency I gifted to myself, writing the application while teaching temporally; frustrated, longing to get out and create.

I stayed for two weeks in the shadows of the mountains, knee deep in snow most days until the thaw came with some greening of the landscape.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing there back then. I just knew in my body that I needed to get away, gain inspiration from the landscape and {BE}.

I might not have completed much when I was out there, but I know when I returned the experience shifted my creativity and how I saw myself as a creative.

I saw glimmers of the Northern Lights during this retreat. Pale creamy wisps and trails in a dark navy sky. It was magical and a mystery.

This makes me think about my art-making practice and how most of the time I’m working in the dark, moving out of my comfort zone into the unknown, looking and listening hoping to catch a glimpses of magic and mystery in the process.

What’s created on the page, like this photography, is an archive, a record which when looked upon brings to the surface all the memories and feelings of the process, the experience once again experienced to the full with wonder and a smile.

A Creative Sketchbook, Dec 2025

| Sheree
My creative sketchbook
My creative sketchbook rules

I’m not sure how my creative sketchbook differs from my visual journal. Intention maybe.

Perhaps, I think , I’m attempting to develop my art practice within a designated space. A study maybe.

I haven’t really been in the thick of my art making practice since the preparation for my Baltic exhibition back in 2022-3.

This was quickly followed with the writings and (re)drafts of Darkling, my poetry/hybrid collection published in October 2024.

After this 2025 has been a period of extended rest and refusal.

But something has been niggling me. The desire to create with paint again. the desire to play without expectations and outcomes/ products.

I’ve just scratched the itch through scrolling through Pinterest. Adding another abstract or landscape painting to a board that I’ll probably not look at again.

But it satisfied this niggling feeling. Until it didn’t.

It was going back into the classroom. Completing a few days of supply that pushed me over the edge.

The time I gave away for money. The time I’d lost pursuing my own pursuits. And realising that I wasn’t pursuing all the pursuits I wanted to pursue in the time I had/have.

So out came a creative sketchbook, inspired by the 30 days sketchbook challenge created by Cheryl Taves over at Insight Creative.

This is as much as I’m willing to share for now about the challenge, my creative sketchbook, processes and insights.

One of my rules is that it’s just for my eyes only. I want to see how this rule changes my practice. I want to create without fear but with curiosity. I want to give myself all the freedom without worrying about what others will think or say or comment on.

It’s not like I’m hanging on other people’s responses and reactions but I have gotten into a habit of just sharing anything and everything on my blog and I’m curious to see what happens when I keep things to myself.

Just for my eyes, heart, and soul only.

So far I’m enjoying the process of the challenge and I’m reflecting and paying attention to what makes my heart sing, what’s my creative vocabulary, what pushes my energies.

Do doubt whatever I explore within my creative sketchbook will be showing up in everything that I create. In everything who I {BE}. For sure.

Over Here Zine Festival 2025

| Sheree

Today, Dal and I were in Manchester as the Over Here Zine Festival again. I think is out third year there together, sharing a table of our creations and laughing far too loud for such a small room in People’s Museum in Manchester.

It was good to be in a space that was created for people of the global majority to share their zines. It’s usually a safe and supportive space. And it still is in some respects. But what is worrying is that more and more white people are infiltrating our safe spaces. I know that white people come in to see and buy our creations. I can this is who we are selling to, while we swap with each other. But at the same time, I noticed white people behind the curtain, on the wrong side of the tables selling zines. But I could be wrong?

An article I read the other year, titled ‘Ontological Expansiveness’ by Chris Corces-Zimmerman, Devon Thomas, Elizabeth A. Collins and Nolan L. Cabrera, where I learnt the language I needed to call out this sense of expansionof white people into black and brown spaces where maybe the ethos and intention is exclusivity.

Ontological Expansiveness is a theoretical framework used under the umbrella of Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) that was conceptualized by Sullivan (2006) to describe the complex and nuanced relationships that exist among race, Whiteness, and space. Sullivan (2006) argues, “As ontologically expansive, white people tend to act and think as if all spaces – whether geographical, psychical, linguistic, economic, or otherwise – are or should be available to them to move in and out as they wish” (p. 10).

Corces-Zimmerman, Chris & Thomas, Devon & Collins, Elizabeth. (2021). Ontological Expansiveness. 10.1163/9789004444836_058.

I could be wrong, but how is feels to me, and how I’ve been experiencing things, is that white people think and act and move as if they have a right to be in any and all spaces. Sullivan suggests that White people tend to think of themselves as though they are the only people to exist or have worth in the world. Black and brown people just don’t come into the equation. Colonialism is the epitome of ontological expansiveness.

In this example as the zine festival, I’m talking about taking up physical space, but ontological expansiveness also applies to language and who white people claim ownership, through creating definition of what is proper English for example. What’s acceptable is the language and tone and style of whiteness, any other forms of communications are wrong. Yet that doesn’t stop white people wanting to use Ebonics or use the ‘N’ word. And then there’s the appropriate of our cultural practices .

As Sullivan (2006) states, White people frequently act as if, “The appropriate relationship is one of appropriation: taking land, people, and the fruit of others’ labor and creativity as one’s own” (p. 122). Frequently, instances of White people engaging in acts of cultural appropriation represent a fetishizing and exploitation of the language, customs, or practices
of Communities of Color.

Corces-Zimmerman, Chris & Thomas, Devon & Collins, Elizabeth. (2021). Ontological Expansiveness. 10.1163/9789004444836_058.

Of course white privilege is wrapped up in this but it’s not enough to say this privilege needs to be given up or shared. Before anything changes white people need to acknowledge what they are actually doing, but how are they going to do this if they are oblivious to what they are doing?

I invite white people to recognise that they will feel uncomfortable when they do enter spaces that are predominantly non-white and get used to it. As in that discomfort is the seed of change.

Outdoor First Aid Training

| Sheree

For the last two days I’ve been completing my refresher course in Outdoor First Aid Training.

First completed during the pandemic, my certificate had run out and I needed to retake the course.

It’s simple, First Aid saves lives.

Basic first aid can mean the difference between life and death. A Red Cross survey showed a staggering 59% of deaths from injuries would have beenpreventable had first aid been given before the emergency services arrived.

Sources

Only about 4-5% of the population in the UK are First Aid trained. This for me is not enough people taking responsibility. This for me is not enough people l caring about other people’s well-being. This for me is not enough people demonstrating care in community.

What maddens me further is that women are more likely to not receive life saving first aid because people, usually men, are uncomfortable about exposing women’s breasts in conducting life saving CPR. So more women are dying without receiving first aid because of other people’s embarrassment. Fucking hell. I’m telling you now, if it’s the difference between showing my boobs and being able to live for another day, fucking get my top and bra off as soon as possible and start saving my life. You have my consent now.

I’m now trained up for another 3 years. But I won’t be leaving it there. I’ll make sure I’m refreshing my skills more frequently as well as moving onto an advanced first aid skills training course. I don’t think you can ever be prepared enough for saving a life , as who knows what scenarios will present themselves in real life, but at least I will have the confidence and the know how to try and save a life.

My bedtime lover(s)

| Sheree

A book is much more faithful than a lover I think.

A book can open you up to so many different experiences at the same time as reaffirming everything you’ve been feeling and thinking and struggling with.

I’m not sure a lover can do all that for me. But many more than one lover could?

Hence spending copious amounts of time in bed with books.

Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within by Alisha McCullough is one of my current reads.

I used to be of the persuasion to read one book at a time. Devote all my time, focus and attention to one book in order to reap the glory/ knowledge/ whatever!

But these past few years, as I’ve become thirsty for stimulation and attempting to find like-minded people/ theories/ lovers, I’m moved into reading multiple books simultaneously, also known as “syntopical reading”.

And these books are not on the same topic either. They range from poetry around grief, non-fiction on gardening, personal essays around deep time, romantic and crime novels and short stories about myths and history. The list goes on!

I’m so enjoying this eclectic and multiple reading practice as it’s keeping me engaged, creating unique and original connections and it’s keeping me feeling loved.

By me.

So one of my current squeezes is Reclaiming the Black Body and I’m devouring it in small digestible bites because it is speaking to my soul.

This book is calling to attention the deep-seated, long-time, disproportionate amount of trauma, violence, marginalisation, discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences of Black women and femmes, and confounded by misognoir and racism, how we have learned to cope with it all through increased imbalanced eating behaviours.

Usually called “eating disorders” but even using that language implies that the individual is to blame and implying that some of us are just not equipped to nourish our bodies and do not know how to look after ourselves.

‘Disorder’ implies stigma and comes from the Western health ‘care’ system which from time has excluded and harmed Black people.

So this book is a balm for the wounds of silent struggles Black women and femmes have been going through around eating imbalances including myself. And is a vindication that we’re not fucked up and broken and just beasts, being less than human but that we are doing our best with the tools that we have to strive and thrive within a system that is hell-bent, historically and now, to demonise the Black body.

I will continue to cosy up with this book and others in bed, night and day, as reading is hitting the spot!

The Black Feminist Reader

| Sheree

I’ve got time on my hands to read. A reading week as we used to say at Uni. Why? Well that’s another story, I’ll tell you at another time, maybe.

For now, I’m getting my teeth into something that will make me feel better, or feel as if I’m getting somewhere with my self-study/permaculture diploma design/ ways of being.

I’m reading The Black Feminist Reader edited by Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting. And I’m heartened to read in the first essay in the collection by Barbara Christian, ‘The Race for Theory’, that along with her Black sisters, Christian has not rushed to create abstract theories around how to read Black women writers/ Black women’s literature. The argument goes that there are countless Black women around the world, women colour around the world, and one single set of ideas cannot be applied to such diversity.

As Christian goes on to argue, “There is, therefore, a caution we feel about pronouncing black feminist theory that might be seen as a decisive statement about third world women. This is not to say we are not theorizing. Certainly our literature is an indication of the ways in which our theorizing, of necessity, is based on our multiplicity of experiences.” ( p.20)

Instead of being seduced into the academy, being at the centre, desiring/ claiming what might seem like power within the hierarchy of old traditional departments of knowledge, where the Black female experience is subordinate to others, ” We can pursue ourselves as subjects”. ( p.21)

This is music to my ears as I have always found it difficult to pin down what is Black Feminist Theory. What does it entail? What are the tools of engagement? What methods should be employed to reading Black women writers?

But that’s where I’ve been going wrong, thinking about theory. As for me theory was legitimisation. Writing dies if it’s not being talking about, theorised. But now I understand that :

  1. Theory has been their way, their terms, their approaches ( p. 16)
  2. Theory has been more about how clever the theorist is than about the writing or writer
  3. Theory is prescriptive and it ought to have something to do with practice (p.13)
  4. Theory is about those masters who have long gone and not about the here and now.

And as Christian states, and I totally agree, “But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And for me I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/ know is.”(p. 21)

So I’m following Christian in my pursuit of what Black Feminism(s) is by having no fixed method of enquiry or even results. My method relates to what I read and the historical context of the writers I read and “to the many critical activities in which I am engaged, which may or not involve writing.” ( p.22)

So there is no set method within Black Feminist Theory and is influenced by practice, no prerequisite of a new theory as every work suggests a new approach, forcing me to think differently.

“As risky as that might seem, it is, I believe, what intelligent means – a tuned sensitivity to that which is alive and therefore cannot be known until it is known.”( p. 22)