nature

continuing to live and learn

| Sheree
Studio Practice Journal, 2023-4

“On the afternoon of May 16, 2020, about a week before George Floyd was killed by the police, twenty-one-year-old Tye Anders was accused by the Midland, Texas, police of running a stop sign. He pulled over in front of his ninety-year-old grandmother’s house.”

Excerpt From
We Refuse
Kellie Carter Jackson

There’s Anders pleading for his life. There’s many policemen with guns drawn pointed at him and there’s bystanders filming it all. One woman who’s filming this is also pleading for the police to not shot Anders saying he’s scared. Hasn’t there been enough killing of unarmed black people, killed just because of the colour of their skin?

Still no guns are lowered and Anders is on the ground clearly empty handed but the situation is just escalating as the police continue to train their guns on his body.

Anders’ ninety-years-old grandmother steps out of her house praying. With cane in hand she walks towards her grandson even though guns are trained in her direction.

There was still panic still bystanders screaming for the police to put their guns up. Some do but still one cop is walking towards Anders with his gun raised. Trying to move and push her out of the way, his grandmother doesn’t believe that her grandson won’t still be shot so she falls onto her grandson, protecting his body with her own body. Not longer after this with the police and crowd pushing and pulsating around her , she loses consciousness.

Anders is arrested for fleeing the police. His grandmother is taken to hospital.

Reading this story this morning made me cry. Not because of the police brutality or the disregard for human life, black life. But because of what the grandmother in the story did. She’s ninety-years-old, frail and only has her prays and body, but used both in protection, in an act of love.

“Her collapse was not a coincidence. Protection is powerful, beautiful, and sacrificial because protection is love. But she should not have needed to put her body between the police and her grandson to protect him.”

Excerpt From
We Refuse
Kellie Carter Jackson.

Protection. She should not have needed to, but she did put her body between the police and grandson to protect him. This act of courage broke my heart this morning. Had me weeping. Maybe it was the last straw that pushed me over the edge into the breakdown. Maybe it was my imagination seeing this playing out.

Maybe I’m just sick and tired of living in a world where white violence is justified and black violence is really self-defence but is never judged that way.

I’ve always been a supporter of care work but even more so now. As care work, along with rest are forms of protection. Through the way I {BE} with myself and others, and the work that I do for self and others, I’m tending daily to the mental, emotional, and physical needs and health of black people, so we are better equipped to survive and thrive within a hostile, brutal, grinning world.

Still healing

| Sheree

Woman got herself dry socket. Exposed bone and nerves after a tooth extraction happens when the blood clot for Porte took doesn’t form properly or get dislodged.

It’s painful and can lead to infection. Guess I’m one of the lucky ones. As mine is infected.

I thought the pain and bad taste and breath were part of the healing process. No pain no gain right?! Seems this level of pain and the foulness is a sign of dry socket and infection. Go figure.

Thank goodness for saltwater washes, walking and self-care. Looking out for myself has become a priority in a world that just doesn’t care.

A Summer of Reading – a refusal of productivity

| Sheree

With the warmer weather and the slower pace, I’m so ready to lean into the lazy, easy, light and breezy days of summer.

My six weeks off the clock summer holidays are just around the corner. I can taste the sweet sweet honey of rest. But I’m not quite there yet. Still things to complete, anniversaries to celebrate and forms to send off.

But it’s close. I can smell the cut grass and strawberries and syrup already. The long drawn out of days of doing fuck all. Hell to the yes!

Reading is top of the agenda. Summer self-study of topics and issues that are making me buzz. I’ve already started my crime fiction reading as I get back into the DCI Ryan Mysteries Series from L J Ross, all set in the north east.

And now tonight, with an hour to spare before pick up I dive into We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson. This is just what I need coming off the back of completing my black mothering and fugitivity chapter. But it also is adding fuel to my fire of refusal and divesting from racial capitalism.

I’m only a few pages in and my heart is singing and I’m thumping with energy in the recognition of finding my space, my safe place where my desires and wants for freedom on my own terms is not weird or unachievable. But is very much necessary.

#onwards

who has #womensrights?

| Sheree
Neil Kenlock, 1970, Resistence Exhibition, Steve McQueen, 2025

In March the United Nations issued a report about Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinian women since October 2023.

Those who shout long and hard about #womensrights have said fuck all about this abuse.

Perpetuating a system of oppression through gender-based violence and undermining self-determination is not coincidental.

But those who profess to be standing up for #womensrights say nothing.

Sexual and gender-based violence perpetuated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a strategy of war by Israel to demoralise and destroy Palestinians.

Those who shout long and hard about #womensrights have said fuck all about this abuse.

Israeli forces have destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza. Medical support and equipment for safe pregnancies, postnatal care and neonatal care are decimated.

But those who profess to be standing up for #womensrights say nothing.

Women’s and girl’s reproductive right and autonomy as well as their right to life, health and dignity have been erased.

And yet these people, mostly white women, such as JK Rowling, who harp on about #womensrights and the so called threats posed by transgender people, say nothing about the Palestinian women and girls who are subjected to violence right now.

The deliberate starvation by Israel of Palestinian people has a devastating effect on pregnant women resulting in anaemia, malnutrition, miscarriages, stillbirths and undernourished newborns as lactating women cannot produce enough milk.

And yet these people here for #womensrights say nothing.

It would seem that those who claim to be champions of #womenrights pick and choose who has rights as women, fuck it, as human beings.

Where to start …

| Sheree

At the same time as trying to break free, create and embody a life of my own making, on my own terms, I’m still embroiled within this insidious society called white supremacy culture/ racial capitalism.

At the same time as trying to get free, and so spend my time doing what I want to do rather than what I’m expected/supposed to do/be, I waste energy in pulling away which I’d rather spend in pushing forward, pushing on.

At the same time as trying to be free, breathing deeply, resting and dreaming of other possibilities, I’m still meshed into the lives of other people, who are not interested is taking flight or even dropping the protective cloak of scoring victim.

At the same time as I take flight into the unknown, I realise my resolve and reserves have been depleted in the fight, in the pleasing of others, in trying to fit in, in trying to be loved on my own terms.

At the same time as trying to save myself, I know now that I have to let go of my hold of you. The hold on what could have been instead of what is that is crying through my bones and blood’s knowing.

Confronting Fascism

| Sheree

What are you most worried about for the future?

Resistance, Steve McQueen, National Galleries of Scotland, 2025

the undercurrent has always been present, simmering like lava just below the surface ready to rise up at weak points, at moment of disarray and hopelessness. hate shimmers like jewels to those who have little but promised more. clinging to the sharp edges of hate because it’s something to feel, to use as a weapon against others instead of the self. hate with fear, a lethal concoction corroding within as well as without.

1936. October. With a chill in the air, the blackshirts ruffled through the East End of London, snaking their territory, their Ayran rights. With Police fronting, they still couldn’t take the streets. Jews, Irish, Communists, Blacks, Labour activists, workers unite. Stand firm. Shoulder to shoulder, they shall not pass. Blackshirts, angry scrunched up faces, hearts riddled with hate and fear, shall not pass.