When They Call You a Terrorist

When They Call You a Terrorist Plot Summary

Introduction

In the scorching summer of 2013, as America reeled from the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer, a simple yet profound hashtag appeared on social media: #BlackLivesMatter. Behind those three words stood Patrisse Khan-Cullors, an artist and organizer whose journey from the marginalized neighborhoods of Los Angeles to the forefront of a global movement embodies the transformative power of turning personal pain into collective action. Born into a community ravaged by poverty, police surveillance, and systemic racism, Patrisse's life story is a testament to resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Her activism was shaped not by abstract theories but by lived experiences: watching her brothers harassed by police, visiting family members in dehumanizing prisons, and fighting for dignity in a society designed to deny it to people like her. What makes her journey remarkable is how she channeled these traumas into creating spaces of healing and resistance, developing a vision of justice that encompasses not just police reform but comprehensive community care, affirming the worth of Black lives in all their complexity - including queer, transgender, disabled, and formerly incarcerated people often erased from mainstream narratives.

Chapter 1: Childhood in the Shadow of Systemic Racism

Patrisse Khan-Cullors' childhood unfolded in Van Nuys, California, a barrio neighborhood where poverty and police presence were constants. She lived in a Section 8 apartment with peeling paint and broken gates, sharing the space with her mother Cherice, her older brothers Paul and Monte, and her younger sister Jasmine. Her mother worked multiple jobs, often 16 hours a day, to keep the family afloat after Patrisse's father Alton left the household when she was six years old. The stark inequality of American society became visible to young Patrisse through the contrast between her neighborhood and Sherman Oaks, a wealthy white area less than a mile away. While Sherman Oaks had spacious homes with swimming pools and manicured lawns, Patrisse's community had no green spaces, no community centers, not even a proper grocery store beyond the local 7-Eleven. These disparities weren't accidental but the result of deliberate disinvestment in predominantly Black and Brown communities. Perhaps the most formative experience of Patrisse's childhood came when she was nine years old, witnessing her brothers being harassed by police. From behind their apartment's broken gate, she watched in frozen horror as officers threw her brothers against a wall, searched them roughly, and violated their dignity - all while the boys had merely been talking in an alleyway. Neither Paul nor Monte spoke about this incident afterward, their silence reflecting a traumatic normalization of police violence that was becoming routine in their lives. This pattern of criminalization intensified as her brothers entered adolescence. Monte, who had a gentle heart and loved animals, was repeatedly arrested and cycled through juvenile detention centers for minor infractions like tagging or hanging out with friends who wore similar t-shirts. The "war on drugs" and "war on gangs" served as pretexts for the constant surveillance and harassment of young Black men in their neighborhood. What struck Patrisse was how differently white teenagers in Sherman Oaks were treated when engaging in similar or even more serious behaviors. These early experiences planted the seeds of Patrisse's understanding of systemic racism. She recognized that what was happening to her family wasn't about individual failings but about structures designed to criminalize Blackness itself. The pain of watching her beloved brother Monte repeatedly disappeared by the system would eventually fuel her lifelong commitment to fighting for a world where Black children could exist without being treated as inherent threats.

Chapter 2: Finding Identity Through Activism and Queerness

At the age of twelve, Patrisse experienced a pivotal transition when she entered Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks. This predominantly white, affluent school stood in stark contrast to her impoverished neighborhood. The cultural shock was immediate – arriving in a borrowed car that smelled of urine (belonging to a paralyzed neighbor) made her acutely aware of class differences. She began asking her mother to drop her off blocks away from school, wrestling with a new and encompassing shame about her background. During these formative years, Patrisse discovered both her intellectual gifts and her sense of difference. While she struggled to fit in with either the white students who smoked weed between classes or the few Black girls who aspired to be like Janet Jackson, Patrisse cultivated her own unique identity. She embraced an eclectic style influenced by both Black culture and the Mexican heritage of her neighborhood, wearing MC Hammer pants and creating dances that blended African, Hip Hop and Mariachi influences. Though labeled "weird" by peers, she remained authentically herself. It was also during middle school that Patrisse began to recognize and explore her queer identity. Though she wouldn't fully embrace this aspect of herself until high school, she felt a distinctive disconnect from the heterosexual desires her female friends expressed. This emerging awareness of her sexuality coincided with her intellectual awakening, as teachers introduced her to critical thinkers like bell hooks and Audre Lorde. In Lorde's essays from "Sister Outsider," Patrisse found validation for her experiences as someone existing at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. By high school, Patrisse had found both her voice and her community. At Cleveland High, a social justice-focused charter school, she developed a deeper political consciousness alongside a growing comfort with her queerness. She came out as bisexual to her cousin Naomi, who was also queer, creating a vital support system. Together with friends like Carla, who boldly presented her full queer self in the halls, Patrisse navigated the challenges of being young, Black, and queer in a world that provided few models or safe spaces for such identities. This period of self-discovery was complicated by material instability. After being evicted from their apartment, Patrisse's family moved into a one-bedroom apartment where they slept in sleeping bags on the floor. By her senior year, she was essentially homeless, couch-surfing with her friend Carla. Their salvation came in the form of their art history teacher, Donna Hill, who took them in and became Patrisse's first spiritual guide. Through Donna, Patrisse learned about intentional community building and received a model of unconditional support that would shape her approach to organizing and movement work.

Chapter 3: Family Trauma and the Carceral State

The carceral state's brutal impact on Patrisse's family became devastatingly clear when her brother Monte was arrested at age 19 for attempted burglary. Unknown to the family at the time, Monte was experiencing the early symptoms of schizoaffective disorder, hearing voices that compelled his actions. What followed was a horrifying descent into a system designed not for healing but for punishment and dehumanization. For two agonizing months, Patrisse's mother called jails throughout Los Angeles County, desperately trying to locate her son. When she finally found him in Twin Towers Detention Center, Monte had lost over 40 pounds from his frame. His mental health had deteriorated dramatically under the "care" of jail officials who had beaten him, denied him water, and subjected him to multiple forms of torture. The jail psychiatrist had diagnosed Monte with schizoaffective disorder but failed to provide this crucial information to his family. Instead of receiving treatment, Monte was sentenced to six years in prison. The day Monte appeared in court was seared into Patrisse's memory. Her brother was brought in strapped to a gurney, his face covered with a spit mask, in the midst of a psychotic break. The public defender showed no interest in mounting a genuine defense, casually informing the family that this charge would count as Monte's "third strike" under California law, potentially subjecting him to a life sentence. This callous indifference to her brother's humanity crystallized for Patrisse the disposability of Black lives within the American legal system. Refusing to accept this fate for her brother, Patrisse mobilized her organizing skills. She reached out to friends, family members, and even her mother's estranged relatives to raise $10,000 for a private attorney. Through this collective effort, they managed to get one of Monte's prior "strikes" removed, reducing his sentence to eight years instead of life. Throughout his incarceration, Patrisse visited monthly, maintaining their bond despite the system's attempts to sever it. When Monte was finally released in 2011, the family confronted the harsh reality that incarceration had only exacerbated his mental health struggles. Without proper support for re-entry or consistent treatment, Monte cycled through episodes that once again brought him into contact with police. During one particularly severe episode, officers shot him with rubber bullets and charged him with terrorism after a minor traffic accident. The labeling of a mentally ill Black man as a "terrorist" for behavior stemming from an untreated condition revealed the criminal legal system's fundamental inability to distinguish between illness and criminality when the subject was Black. This painful family journey exposed the interconnection between inadequate mental healthcare, racism, and mass incarceration. For Patrisse, it underscored how the prison system functioned not as a response to genuine public safety concerns but as a warehouse for society's most vulnerable members, particularly Black people with mental illness. Her brother's suffering became a powerful catalyst for her commitment to imagining alternatives to incarceration that centered healing and community support rather than punishment.

Chapter 4: The Birth of Black Lives Matter

On the evening of July 13, 2013, Patrisse was visiting a young man named Richie in Susanville State Prison in California. Richie, a former student she had mentored, was serving a ten-year sentence for robbery despite having physically harmed no one. As they sat in the sterile visitation room, their conversation inevitably turned to the trial verdict everyone was anxiously awaiting - that of Trayvon Martin's killer in Florida. When the acquittal announcement came that night, Patrisse experienced a visceral reaction of shock, grief, and rage. How could a man who had stalked and killed an unarmed Black teenager walk free? The painful contradiction was stark: Richie, a Black youth who had hurt no one, received ten years in prison, while a man who had taken a Black child's life faced no consequences whatsoever. In her motel room that night, devastated by this miscarriage of justice, Patrisse saw a Facebook post by her friend Alicia Garza lamenting how little Black lives seemed to matter in America. Patrisse responded with what would become a historic hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter. In the days that followed, Patrisse and Alicia began intense conversations about turning this moment of shared grief into organized action. They reached out to Opal Tometi, a dedicated organizer with expertise in digital communications, who built the online infrastructure needed to amplify their message. The three women, all experienced organizers, knew they wanted to create more than just a hashtag - they envisioned a decentralized movement that could address the systemic devaluation of Black life in America. Their first organized action was a march in Los Angeles, deliberately routed through Beverly Hills rather than Black neighborhoods. Patrisse understood that Black communities already knew the crisis they faced; the message needed to reach those who could comfortably ignore it. As she led protesters through streets lined with luxury shops, speaking through a bullhorn about the daily reality of police surveillance in Black communities, she asked onlookers to observe a moment of silence for Trayvon. To her surprise, even wealthy white diners put down their champagne glasses and bowed their heads. This initial organizing laid the groundwork for what would soon become a global movement. The three founders established guiding principles that centered the experiences of those most marginalized within Black communities - women, LGBTQ+ individuals, the disabled, and the formerly incarcerated. They emphasized that all Black lives matter, regardless of gender, sexuality, ability, or class. This intersectional approach distinguished Black Lives Matter from earlier civil rights movements that had often sidelined these voices. What truly transformed Black Lives Matter from a powerful concept into a nationwide movement was the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. When Patrisse saw the image of a young Black woman standing before a military tank holding a sign that simply read "Black Lives Matter," she knew their message had taken root. The movement had found its moment, and a generation was being called to action.

Chapter 5: Building a Movement Amid Police Surveillance

As Black Lives Matter grew from a hashtag into a movement with chapters across the country, Patrisse and her co-founders confronted the harsh reality of organizing under surveillance. This became personally evident when police twice raided St. Elmo's Village, the artist community in Los Angeles where Patrisse lived. During the second raid, officers in riot gear surrounded her home with weapons drawn, claiming they were searching for someone who had allegedly "shot at a police station." Despite having no warrant, they forced Patrisse, her friend JT, and his six-year-old daughter out of the house at gunpoint while they searched the premises for hours. This traumatic experience echoed an earlier incident when police had entered Patrisse's home in the middle of the night and dragged her then-husband Mark Anthony Johnson outside in handcuffs, claiming he "fit the description" of a robbery suspect. The message was clear: visibility as a Black organizer challenging police violence carried serious risks. Yet despite these intimidation tactics, Patrisse remained committed to the work, understanding that such surveillance was evidence of the movement's growing power. In the aftermath of Michael Brown's killing, Patrisse helped coordinate a "Freedom Ride" to Ferguson, bringing hundreds of organizers from across the country to stand in solidarity with local protesters. What they encountered resembled a war zone - military tanks on street corners, National Guard troops, and local police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. This militarized response to unarmed protesters demanding justice revealed the lengths to which the state would go to suppress Black resistance. Working closely with local organizers like Johnetta Elzie, Ashley Yates, Brittney Ferrell, and Alexis Templeton, the Freedom Riders created not only spaces for protest but also for healing. In the basement of Reverend Starsky Wilson's church in North St. Louis, they established a healing justice space where traumatized protesters could receive massage, acupuncture, talk therapy, and art therapy. This integration of healing practices into movement work became a hallmark of Black Lives Matter's approach, recognizing that addressing collective trauma was essential to sustaining the struggle. As the movement expanded, so did attempts to discredit it. Conservative media and politicians labeled Black Lives Matter activists as "terrorists" - a term with deadly implications that had never been applied to white supremacist organizations responsible for actual violence. This rhetoric escalated after protests in Dallas where a sniper, unaffiliated with Black Lives Matter, killed five police officers. Despite having no connection to the shooter, the movement was blamed, and organizers received death threats. The surveillance and criminalization of Black Lives Matter activists followed a historical pattern of state repression against Black liberation movements. Just as the FBI's COINTELPRO program had targeted the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 70s, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI monitored Black Lives Matter protests and tracked organizers' social media accounts. Several prominent Ferguson activists later died under suspicious circumstances, including being found shot in burned cars. Despite these challenges, Patrisse and other organizers continued building infrastructure for sustained resistance. They developed rapid response networks, trained new leaders, and created autonomous chapters that could respond to local conditions while remaining connected to the broader movement. Their persistence demonstrated that the criminalization of Black activism was not evidence of its failure but rather of its effectiveness in challenging entrenched power.

Chapter 6: Healing Justice and the Path Forward

The concept of healing justice became central to Patrisse's vision for Black Lives Matter and her broader work. This approach emerged from her personal experiences witnessing her brother Monte's mental health crisis and the system's failure to provide care rather than punishment. As an organizer, she recognized that many activists were working from places of deep trauma, having experienced police violence, incarceration, poverty, and other forms of structural harm. Without addressing this collective trauma, movements risked reproducing the same toxicity they sought to challenge. Through her organization Dignity and Power Now, founded in 2012, Patrisse developed programs focused on ending sheriff violence in Los Angeles County jails while simultaneously providing healing resources for formerly incarcerated people and their families. Her art installation "Stained," which toured for two years, exposed the systematic torture occurring in LA County jails based on an ACLU report documenting beatings, sexual assaults, and psychological abuse of prisoners. This work helped establish the first civilian oversight board of the LA County Sheriff's Department in 2016. Patrisse's approach to healing justice extended beyond individual therapy to addressing the conditions that cause harm in the first place. She advocated for divesting from police and prisons while investing in what actually keeps communities safe: mental health services, housing, education, and economic opportunity. This vision was reflected in the policy demands developed by the Movement for Black Lives, which called for redirecting resources from punishment to prevention and care. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 presented new challenges, as his administration explicitly targeted Black Lives Matter activists and rolled back even modest police reforms. Despite facing lawsuits and increased surveillance, Patrisse remained committed to building Black political power through both protest and electoral strategies. She supported progressive Black candidates like Chokwe Antar Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi, while continuing to develop movement infrastructure that could withstand repression. A significant breakthrough came with the passage of Proposition 64 in California, which Patrisse helped champion. The marijuana legalization measure included provisions to expunge records for marijuana convictions and direct tax revenue toward communities harmed by the drug war. This victory demonstrated how movement organizing could translate into concrete policy changes that repair harm rather than perpetuate it. Throughout this period, Patrisse continued to evolve her understanding of what sustainable movement building requires. She emphasized the importance of joy and rest alongside struggle, incorporating dance, art, and celebration into organizing spaces. She modeled the integration of self-care practices, recognizing that her earlier pattern of neglecting her own health to focus on the work was ultimately counterproductive. By prioritizing her physical and emotional wellbeing through regular exercise, nutrition, and spiritual practice, she demonstrated a different model of leadership than the self-sacrificing burnout that had characterized many earlier movements.

Chapter 7: Creating Black Futures: Motherhood and Resistance

In 2016, amid the intensity of movement building and the looming specter of a Trump presidency, Patrisse discovered she was pregnant. This unexpected development brought both joy and new complexities to her life as an organizer. The journey to motherhood became intertwined with her ongoing work to create a world where Black children could thrive without the constant threat of state violence. The early months of pregnancy coincided with a period of personal transition. Her relationship with JT, the child's father, became strained, and they separated soon after she shared the news of her pregnancy. During this vulnerable time, Patrisse found support in her friendship with Future, a genderqueer organizer from Toronto who had been building the Black Lives Matter chapter there. Their connection deepened rapidly, evolving from friendship to love to engagement within months. Despite immigration challenges that repeatedly separated them, they created a committed partnership based on mutual care and shared political vision. On March 22, 2016, Patrisse gave birth to her son Shine. Becoming a mother intensified her commitment to building a more just world while also forcing her to confront new fears. How could she protect this precious Black child in a country where Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy playing in a park, could be shot by police within seconds of their arrival? The question of what freedom might look like for her son gave new urgency to her organizing work. The election of Donald Trump in November 2016, when Shine was just eight months old, presented a stark challenge. His administration's embrace of white nationalism, anti-immigrant policies, and explicit support for aggressive policing threatened to undo even modest gains toward racial justice. As hate crimes rose sharply following the election, Patrisse and Future seriously considered relocating to Canada. After deep reflection, however, Patrisse chose to remain in the United States, committed to the movement she had helped build and the communities depending on it. Motherhood transformed Patrisse's approach to organizing. She became more intentional about balancing movement work with family time, ensuring that she was present for precious moments in Shine's development. She incorporated joy and play into her routine, roller skating, visiting arcades, and designating park days. This integration of pleasure alongside struggle reflected the Brignac family spirit she had inherited from her father Gabriel, who despite his struggles had always emphasized celebration and connection. For Patrisse, creating Black futures meant not only fighting against oppressive systems but actively cultivating spaces where Black children like Shine could experience freedom, dignity, and the full range of human expression. She reimagined movement spaces to be more child-friendly and intergenerational, recognizing that the liberation they sought had to include the youngest members of their communities. The Black Lives Matter chapters increasingly incorporated childcare, family activities, and youth leadership development into their work. In February 2016, Patrisse and Future married in a ceremony attended by close friends and family, creating the intentional family unit they both desired. Their relationship modeled the possibility of love that transcended borders, binaries, and conventional expectations. Through their commitment to each other and to Shine, they demonstrated that creating Black futures involved not only political resistance but also nurturing relationships that could sustain the long struggle ahead.

Summary

The story of Patrisse Khan-Cullors reveals how profound personal pain, when transformed through community, creativity, and political vision, can spark global movements for justice. From witnessing her brothers brutalized by police to co-founding Black Lives Matter, Patrisse's journey illuminates the direct connections between lived experience and political resistance. Her life's work challenges us to recognize that true justice requires not just reform but reimagination - of policing, of mental healthcare, of family structures, and of how we care for one another. Perhaps the most powerful lesson from Patrisse's story is her insistence that healing must be central to movement building. By incorporating practices that address trauma and nurture joy alongside the difficult work of confronting oppression, she offers a template for sustainable activism that doesn't require martyrdom. For anyone seeking to understand social movements or create change in their communities, her path demonstrates that effectiveness comes not from suppressing vulnerability but from transforming it into a source of connection and power. As she continues to navigate motherhood and movement leadership amid increasing challenges, Patrisse embodies the resilience required to pursue justice across generations, reminding us that the fight for Black lives is ultimately a fight for everyone's humanity.

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Angela Y. Davis

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