A line of protestors march holding a sign that says "Black women's lives matter."

Reproductive Justice & BLM Movements Partner to Fight for Black Women’s Lives

Yesterday, Trust Black Women, New Voices for Reproductive Freedom and Black Lives Matter launched a partnership to fight for freedom and justice for Black women. Leaders from the three groups participated in a discussion about the intersection of their movements, and why anti-abortion legislators and violently racist police forces are part of the same system oppressing Black women across the country. 

La’Tasha D. Mayes, founder and Executive Director of New Voices for Reproductive Justice comes at this partnership through a deep faith in Black women’s ability to make change. “I believe in the infinite power and potential of Black women and girls, and through the movement for reproductive justice and in alliance with the Black Lives Matter movement we can tap into that infinite potential and unleash it.”

The three movement leaders connected issues affecting Black women from all angles, from environmental justice and the water crisis in Flint, to politicians appropriating BLM language to decrease access to abortion services, to state violence against Black women in all its permutations.

For Trust Black Women’s Director Monica Raye Simpson, this partnership is crucial to the success of both movements. “Whether we are talking about Black women being denied reproductive healthcare or police violence, our lives are at stake,” Simpson said in the conference.

Read the rest of Trust Black Women’s Solidarity Statement and learn more about the Black women who are leading today’s march towards justice.

Header image credit: Jama Abdirahman

Bay Area, California

Juliana is a digital storyteller for social change. As a writer at Feministing since 2013, her work has focused on women's movements throughout the Americas for environmental justice, immigrant rights, and reproductive justice. In addition to her writing, Juliana is a Senior Campaigner at Change.org, where she works to close the gap between the powerful and everyone else by supporting people from across the country to launch, escalate and win their campaigns for justice.

Juliana is a Latina feminist writer and campaigner based in the Bay Area.

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