Andrea J. Ritchie is a writer, lawyer, and activist for women of color, especially LGBTQ women of color, who have been victims of police violence.[1][2] An abolitionist, her activism consists of demand for the elimination of police and prisons.[3] She is the author of Invisible No More, a history of state violence against women of color, and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition with Mariame Kaba.

Andrea Ritchie
Ritchie in 2018
Alma materCornell University
Howard University (JD)
Occupation(s)Author, lawyer, activist
Notable workInvisible No More

Education edit

Ritchie attended Cornell University and Howard University School of Law.[4] She clerked for Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.[5]

Career edit

Ritchie is a Researcher-in-Residence at the Social Justice Institute at the Barnard Center for Research on Women.[6] Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, and Essence.[7][8][9] In 2018, Ritchie co-authored the report SayHerName: Police Violence against Black Women and Women of Color with Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum (Haymarket 2016).[10] In 2022 she published No More Police: A Case for Abolition which she co-authored with Mariame Kaba. In No More Police she provides some details on events in her life that made her a prison and police abolitionist, lays out arguments for why policing should be abolished, and discusses methods of creating safety without police.[11]

Invisible No More edit

In 2017, Ritchie published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color.[1][12] In it, she gives a history of often-obscured state violence against women of color in the United States, beginning in the colonial period and continuing through the present, discussing how the historical precedent established current conditions.[13] She ties practices in colonialism, slavery and Jim Crow to contemporary policing frameworks including broken windows policing and the wars on drugs, immigration, and terror.[14] In a review for Policing and Society, Robert Nicewarner found four major contributions Ritchie made with the book: demonstrating the historically contingent and structural nature of police violence against women of color; the development of “mixed” methodology interweaving statistics and personal stories; demonstrating the insufficiency of police response to violence against women of color; and demonstrating the “dire need to resist and reform” these issues.[14]

Bibliography edit

  • No More Police: A Case of Abolition, co-authored with Mariame Kaba, The New Press, 2022. ISBN 9781620977323
  • Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, Beacon Press, 2017. ISBN 9780807088982
  • Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, co-authored with Joey Mogul and Kay Whitlock, Beacon Press, 2012. ISBN 9780807051153

References edit

  1. ^ a b Corley, Cheryl (2017-11-05). "'Invisible No More' Examines Police Violence Against Minority Women". NPR.org. Retrieved 2017-11-17.
  2. ^ Ritchie, Andrea J.; Maynard, Robyn (2020-04-09). "Black Communities Need Support, Not a Coronavirus Police State". Vice. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
  3. ^ "'No More Police' Shows Abolitionists Are the Actual Realists". Teen Vogue. 2023-01-13. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
  4. ^ "Andrea Ritchie". Open Society Foundations. Retrieved 2017-11-17.
  5. ^ "Andrea Ritchie: Policing Gender, Policing Sex, Policing RaceEvents". www.scrippscollege.edu. 30 October 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  6. ^ "2018 Women's History Month Keynote Lecture presented by Andrea J. Ritchie | Institute for Women's Studies". iws.uga.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
  7. ^ Ritchie, Andrea J. (19 June 2018). "How a Violent, Viral Arrest Changed Dajerria Becton's Life". Teen Vogue. Retrieved 2020-07-21.
  8. ^ Ritchie, Andrea J. (2017-07-21). "Opinion | A Warrant to Search Your Vagina". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-07-21.
  9. ^ Kaba, Mariame; Ritchie, Andrea J. (July 16, 2020). "We Want More Justice For Breonna Taylor Than The System That Killed Her Can Deliver". Essence. Retrieved 2020-07-21.
  10. ^ Crenshaw, Kimberle (2018-06-20). "SAY HER NAME: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women". aapf.org/. Retrieved 2018-06-20.
  11. ^ Kaba, Mariame; Ritchie, Andrea (2022). No More Police: A Case for Abolition. The New Press. ISBN 9781620977323.
  12. ^ Haynes, Christina S. (2019-09-01). "Andrea J. Ritchie, Invisible No More: Policing Violence against Black Women and Women of Color". The Journal of African American History. 104 (4): 714–717. doi:10.1086/705274. ISSN 1548-1867. S2CID 210549437.
  13. ^ Tensley, Brandon (6 September 2017). "'Invisible No More' Is a Chilling History of Police Violence Against Women of Color". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  14. ^ a b Nicewarner, Robert L. (2019-09-02). "Invisible no more: police violence against Black women and women of color". Policing and Society. 29 (7): 869–871. doi:10.1080/10439463.2019.1650746. ISSN 1043-9463. S2CID 201393713.