User:Searui/sandbox

Johnetta Elzie

There are two “Pillars” of Johnetta Elzie wikipedia article I really want to expand on

1. Her role in the the movement for black lives,
2. Her role as a black feminist

The current wikipedia article doesn’t do Elzie enough justice for her role in the larger movement for black lives. She has done tremendous work as a community organizer, writer, and activist on social media. Her “best friend” in the movement DeRay Mckesson has a better wiki article with more sources cited towards him. (This may be because he is a much more “traditional activist, there may be also a gender bias which I elaborated more below)

I really think that the black feminist aspect of Johnetta Eliza’s story is extremely important. There have been many articles talking about how BLM is struggling to include black women in their movement (both internally with BLM leaders and externally with news media organizations ignoring women activists). For example, Johnetta was shunned to three paragraphs in a NYT piece on the contemporary civil rights movement while her male “counterpart” DeRay Mckesson had nearly 7,000 words dedicated to his story. Johnetta has emphasized repeatedly the importance of black women in the larger movement for black lives and this wikipedia article should dedicate more time talking about her work in that sub field. (with proper sources)

These are the initial sources that I will be using when talking about this issue:

http://www.essence.com/2016/01/06/how-activist-and-essence-cover-star-johnetta-netta-elzie-speaks-her-truth-and-what-its (intro)

http://www.complex.com/life/2016/03/johnetta-elzie-profile (Role as a women)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/08/10/ferguson-activists-deray-mckesson-johnetta-elzie-among-those-arrested-in-st-louis/?utm_term=.d5631edbe51f (getting arrested)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deray-mckesson/an-open-letter-from-fergu_b_6174602.html (writing from her)

http://csc.sagepub.com/content/16/3/253.full.pdf (#blacklivesmatter and her role)

Black Feminism

Wikipedia has a very large page (in terms of words) on Black Feminism but I feel like it’s missing some components

1. The role of White Feminism, Intersectionality and Dichotomies
2. Black Lives Matter and Black Feminism
3. Social Media’s role in Black Feminism

There’s been more discussion of the separations between white feminism and black feminism, a rejection of “respectability politics” when creating political change, and a stronger push of intersectionality of other marginal groups (such LGBTQ members) in the black feminist movement. This wikipedia article doesn’t really go into these changes as it relates to the 21st century (especially with millennials and social media) and I would like to explore this further.

There’s also been literature about how while BLM was created by black female activists the movement itself may be “shunning away” larger struggles that black women face and instead focusing on black males. Some of these black feminist writers talk about the way black women are profiled and targeted by police can be incredibly gendered. (Sexual violence and sexual intimidation are part of how black women experience policing.)

All of these components could be added in the “21st century portion” of the article or could be interweaved in the page. I will go on the talk page since this is a larger article and see what the larger consensus is.

These are the initial sources that I will be using when talking about this issue:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/women-black-lives-matter-interview-marcia-chatelain

https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/163126/versions/1/carby%2520white%2520woman%2520listen.pdf

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02703149.2016.1116311

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07491409.2016.1226654

http://www.irss.uoguelph.ca/index.php/footnotes/article/viewFile/3645/3678

Mass Incarceration

So this article doesn’t really have any direction (and is very similar to two other articles , “United States incarceration rate” and “Incarceration in the United States”) so I rewrote the intro blurb for this article to focus on the larger social movement against Mass Incarceration.

“Mass Incarceration is a term used by social activists to describe the substantial increase in the number of incarcerated people in United States’ prisons over the past forty years, the incarcerated predominately being Black, Latino, and/or living in poverty. ”

I plan on going into the history (policies that people in this movement argue help created mass incarceration, current efforts including legislation being used to combat this issue, and specific people involved in the movement). There seems to be a confusion on where to put all the specific literature on incarceration increases in Wikipedia but my brand new article will focus more on the movement itself and where it right now.

These are the initial sources that I will be using when talking about this issue:

Alexander, Michelle (January 16, 2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press. ISBN 1595586431.

http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Ending-Mass-Incarceration-Charting-a-New-Justice-Reinvestment.pdf

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/military-police-and-arms/police-and-human-rights/mass-incarceration-in-the-usa

https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/