Melina Abdullah on BLM, motherhood, and abolition – Los Angeles Times

This story is part of Parents Are Cool!, the third issue of Image, which explores the myriad ways in which L.A. parents practice the craft of care. See the full package here.

When Melina Abdullah mentions a forebear in the struggle for civil rights and freedom in this country, she often applies a familial honorific Mama Harriet Tubman or Mama Sojourner Truth. This feels apt, given that Abdullah, who was part of the original group that convened to form Black Lives Matter, serves as a kind of matriarch for the current movement in Los Angeles. She is frequently pictured with a microphone in hand, leading crowds in their demand for justice for a victim of police violence or for accountability from elected officials. At the start of these protests shes known to call on her ancestors for guidance and protection, extolling those gathered to claim a lineage that is broader than their own direct bloodlines.

In addition to her organizing work with BLM-LA, Abdullah is a scholar. She works across platforms the way an artist works across disciplines. Shes currently a professor and the former chair of Pan-African studies at Cal State L.A. She also hosts or cohosts three (yes, three) local radio shows: Move the Crowd and Beautiful Struggle on KPFK-FM and This Is Not a Drill on KBLA-AM. She does all of this while single-mothering three children, which is not to say that she raises them alone. In a 2012 essay on womanist mothering, Abdullah ascribes to a style of parenting that challenges the confines of the nuclear family, embracing extended familial and communal bonds, an approach that enables mothers to develop as full and complete human beings.

I caught up with Abdullah to talk about this approach, her intellectual journey and her efforts to challenge the status quo in Los Angeles.

Angela Flournoy: So Im really excited Im able to talk to you. Ive been thinking about finding a reason to speak to you for several years now, probably since I first learned about the Jackie Lacey must go rallies. One thing Im really excited to talk to you about is motherhood. Ive been thinking particularly about my own mothers work and how she described that work to me throughout her life. How do you describe the work that you do to your children?

Melina Abdullah: You know, I dont describe it to my children. Im a single mom. Me and my kids are a team. Were tight. My kids are involved in everything I do. Sometimes Ill say Im one of the original members of Black Lives Matter and theyre like, We are too. And they are they were there from the beginning. Theres not a lot of describing, theyre just present. Who I am as an organizer is also part of who we are as a family of organizers.

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: Thats wonderful. Not just sort of witnessing you and your activism but being a part of it. How do you think that impacts the way that you think about hope and optimism?

MA: I have a lot of hope because of the kids. The kids are much more courageous than adults are. Kids are born into the world, anything is possible. Thats the way that they talk and think. They are audacious and visionary and courageous. And theyre not invested in the system at all. It gives me tremendous faith that they can do anything. The one thing that they my oldest daughter in particular warn me about is that we have faith in them, but they dont want us to give it all to them. They dont want us to offload the movement say, You got it. They want us in the struggle too.

AF: That really seems to be sort of a central kind of tenet of the way you live your life. The concept of Ujamaa everybody in the community sort of having a part.

MA: We talk about it as having a leader-full movement, and that really comes from Mama Ella Bakers concept of groups and leadership. To be a part of the movement, to be an activist or to be an organizer, doesnt mean you have to be the one speaking on the megaphone. It means whatever your gift is, you bring that to the movement. I think its really important that we reconceptualize what movement is so that every talent and gift and resource and passion can be part of movement building. You dont have to develop skill sets that are outside of your comfort zone or interest area, you can bring your passion and thats whats most important.

AF: In the past year, it seems as if a lot of people are using phrases that I never really heard in common parlance before. One of them is the Black Radical Tradition. How would you define the Black Radical Tradition, and how has it influenced your own life?

MA: When we think about the Black Radical Tradition, we traditionally go back to the 60s. But I think that we actually want to go back further we want to go back to the moment that we were stolen from Africa. If we think about the freedom struggle from chattel slavery, Mama Harriet [Tubman] wasnt saying, Just end slavery, she was saying, Lets get to freedom. Thats the Black Radical Tradition, not just freeing ourselves from conditions but freeing ourselves from an entire system thats built on our exploitation and our un-freedom. When you talk about the anti-lynching movement, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, they were intent not just on ending lynching but also building a world where Black people could grow and prosper. The Black Radical Tradition is abolitionist. Its about upending unjust systems. But also, theres another side. Angela Davis reminds us you have to upend unjust systems and you have to envision and build towards new ones. You have to have the vision to build towards a new world.

AF: That is a much more useful framework being accountable to that future we cant yet see.

MA: I also think that when we talk about the Black Radical Tradition, theres an urgency to it. It is thinking about future generations, but its also wanting it now. Im not talking about freedom for my children once Im dead. Im talking about freedom for my children now. Im not talking about abolishing jails, prisons and police in 50 years or 100 years. Im talking about next year.

Angela Flournoy

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: I want to turn toward your scholarly work which, since you have such a large presence here as an activist, people dont really talk about as much. What were some of the seminal texts that shaped you as a scholar?

MA: All of Angela Davis work, especially Women, Race & Class. Robin Kellys work. Freedom Dreams completely transformed me. When we talk about what it is to be an abolitionist and see the world you want to live in and work towards it, Freedom Dreams was really pivotal. The first book I have any student read is Black Power by Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton. I always warn them, Do not start highlighting because the whole book will be yellow. I love Kimberl Crenshaw, Derrick Bell. My mentor, Michael Preston. He wrote the book The New Black Politics. That was really important for me. I know Im forgetting people who are really important to my work. bell hooks.

AF: Paula Giddings

MA: I love Paula Giddings. When and Where I Enter. There are texts like theory, but theres also the awakenings. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Octavia Butler are my three favorite authors.

Embedded in the Black Radical Tradition is the Black radical imagination. Whats in Kindred the text is Black radical imagination. What art has a capacity to do, what fiction has a capacity to do, is bypass. It doesnt start with the intellect; youre drawn in from your soul. You experience it rather than just thinking about it.

AF: Im curious about other formative experiences. How has maturing as an activist in L.A. shaped you?

MA: Ive always had a kind of radical leaning thats core to who I am. When I moved here for my PhD, I was also being groomed by the Black political establishment. I think stepping fully into who I am as a radical organizer made me realize I cant have both. I dont really want both. I think that question is being posed to a lot of Angelenos now. Like, what side are you on? I want to make sure we dont lose the moment. Because it seems as if people are being lured back into finding a comfortable place in oppression. Its important that we realize that. We always say, When we fight, we win. We need everybody in the fight.

There was a moment in 2015. We were protesting outside of Garcettis house for Ezell Ford. And I remember thinking to myself, Well, I guess youll never run for office now! I remember feeling like, thats OK. Because this is my calling. I thought about how Im a completely single mom. I have three kids who are only dependent on my salary. I do have tenure but I also know that its not foolproof. So I said, Well, what if you get fired from your job? That came up. And as quickly as I had that anxiety, God said: So what. Your mama has a couch. We need people to recognize that your mama has a couch. There are some sacrifices that are worth it.

AF: Do you think that comfortability in oppression is a particular temptation in this city? Or do you think that it is just part of being a person trying to navigate capitalism in this country?

MA: I think its everywhere. But I think its more intense here. L.A. is the place where you see everything. You see fancy things, and theyre not that far from reach, just on the other side of the freeway or whatever. If you saw a Lamborghini in Oakland, youd think about it for a year. Here, youre used to seeing celebrities. I dont really know anybody who hasnt ever been on TV. Every other person has been an extra on a show.

AF: That sort of relates to another thing. You do have celebrities who want to be involved in the movement. They know what it is to have the material comfort. How has it been working with them?

MA: Im encouraged by the way in which a lot of celebrities have engaged. Last summer, we had tons of artists at all our stuff. There are artists who are coming out because they feel pulled, but also because it becomes acceptable. There was a time, in 2013 when we were born, nobody would even say Black lives matter. They thought it was too radical to say Black lives matter. But now everybodys like, of course, were gonna say Black lives matter. There are artists who did that. Many of them also gave money. Many of them will post on their platforms. But then theres also the people who were in it before, and who continue to be in it now.

I wanted to say something else about L.A. I think that theres the glamour that, you know, is the lure into comfort. But also, I think theres tremendous potential in L.A. for mass uprising, and thats what you saw in 65 and 92. And this year. Its the reason Black Lives Matter was birthed here. Theres a tremendous potential in Los Angeles because we see the contrast constantly. So in 65, you got the Voting Rights Act passed. Now Black folks are free. But then you got Marquette Frye and his mama and his brother getting beaten in Watts by the police. In 92, you have [the popularity of] Bill Cosby, with all that comes with it, right? But then you have the beating of Rodney King, right after the murder of Latasha Harlins. So these uprisings are always just beneath the surface, because we know that that veneer is also not true.

Melina Abdullah and Angela Flournoy.

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: I wanted to get back to this idea of womanist mothering. Weve covered some of this already: birthing hope, birthing possibility, birthing the promise of revolution. I wonder if youll just let me read a paragraph from this essay you wrote in 2012.

In my moments of exhaustion, overwhelmed by work, home, marriage, and motherhood, I sometimes fantasize of a life of greater freedom. I imagine the world of a public intellectual, who churns out book after book each more brilliant than the last, attends lectures and workshops almost nightly, and appears regularly as a talking-head on television newscasts. I think of how I would indulge my insatiable desire to read ... staying up until the wee hours of the morning devouring each text at the moment of its release. If I werent the mother of three, my strong brown legs (toned from my nightly African dance class) would carry me across the sunlit campus of the most esteemed Historically Black University in the nation, where I was the campus star. Colleagues and students would stop and nod, admiring my meticulously coifed hair and the exquisite jewelry (that I picked up during my seventeenth trip to Ghana, where I was conducting my most recent research). I would spend my weekends running a community program for Black girls, attending concerts, practicing martial arts, and tending my garden where Id grow mangos, tomatoes and avocados ...

MA: Why does that still sound good to me?

AF: Nine years later, Im wondering if a life of greater freedom still sounds like this to you? Or if it sounds different now.

MA: So Im not married anymore. I have greater freedom because of it. After I got divorced, there was one moment when I took my kids out after school on a school night; we went to the Grove. There used to be this Mexican spot on the Farmers Market side: Lotera. They had the best quesadillas. We were there till like 9 oclock. When we got home, it was like 10 oclock on a school night. [I had one of] these moments of revelation. I was like, I get to raise my kids how I want to raise my kids. Theres nobody there to get mad. I think a lot of times like were fed this idea that thats sad. Its not; it was really great.

I have been to Ghana not 17 times but once. Ive been to South Africa. Ive been to Morocco. Ive been to all of these places. Ive had lots of experiences. I dont get nods on campus all the time. But the Black folks love me. Im not in an HBCU because Im not going to leave L.A. right now. But the beauty of it is embracing my kids as my partners. And the point of the essay was also figuring out how to bring in community and make real that African teaching of it takes a village.

I do remember the part in the essay where I talked about Alice Walker and her saying, You should have kids, but just one. More than that and youre a sitting duck. I think that when you raise your kids to be your comrades, to be your crew, you got an army. Youre not a sitting duck. If somebody comes for me, they come for us. And if somebody comes for them, they come for us.

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: What do you want now?

MA: Freedom for my people. But for me, I want a clean house. I havent gotten my hair done since before the pandemic. Little stuff. I love my life. Theres nothing I really want. I feel very fulfilled, like very fulfilled. The movement fulfills me, my kids fulfill me. I have great people around me who I love. I have a lot of laughter. You know? I dont really want anything for me.

Continued here:

Melina Abdullah on BLM, motherhood, and abolition - Los Angeles Times