Stephanie Younger was 14 when she founded Black Feminist Collective. Now, five years later, her organization has published hundreds of articles from Black liberationists across generations. In this edition of Hello I Am, Stephanie discusses its origin story.
I had the police called on me, once, when I was having a mental health crisis. At that time, I was surrounded by people who labeled me at-risk, and viewed Black kids as disposable. They believed that I deserved to be treated like a thug, and told me to stop acting like a child. I was 12, literally a child.Â
I live in Virginia, a state that has led the US in youth incarceration, especially incarceration of Black disabled youth. Virginia has an incarceration rate of 749 per 100,000 people, which means it has more people in its prison than any other democracy on earth.
Black Feminist Collective (BFC) started with me writing and sharing articles about the things I had learned and experienced as a 14 year old Black girl living in the capital of the confederacy. The more I wrote, the more I became engaged with Black liberationists across generations, many with shared values and experiences. When readers, writers and team members reached out, each with solid commitments to Black liberation offering ways they could contribute, BFC prioritized collectivism by creating a space where we could share and learn from each other.
The BFC community is an intersectional group of Black feminists and womanists who stand up for Black liberation in its entirety. For about five years now, we have been publishing the works of Black liberationists across generations: articles about movements, book/film reviews, interviews, and poetry, including articles that prioritizes the complete abolition of the prison system. We recognize that the sole existence of police and prisons is to protect capital, and to harm and murder Black people, especially Black youth. People who the system had the audacity to label as ’at-risk’, while creating circumstances for Black people to be ‘at-risk’ in a society that responds to its deep seated issues with prisons.
Black Feminist Collective is a reminder that we must see more power in not looking to "a seat at the table" amongst our oppressors, but instead, build our own communities, that prioritizes abolition of the white supremacist capitalist system.
Stephanie is such an inspiration!
Lovely! Such an inspiring woman.