00:08the status quo is we do nothing when a black woman is harmed this March and
00:15this press conference are so vital because we are centering the voices and
00:19experiences of black women and girls
00:23we don't speak when something happens to a black woman
00:28often when we engage in conversation about sexual assault we center survivors
00:33who are white and cisgender this happens despite the fact that 60% of black
00:38girls are sexually abused prior to the age of 18 many of us are testament to
00:43that we live that story we walk in that skin
00:48we want freedom we want liberation we want justice
00:56we want reparations we won't stop just it's ours it's our duty to win we're the ones that we've been
01:06waiting for it's our time to leave
01:24my name is farah tanis and i am one of the co-founders and executive director of black women's blueprint
01:31i'm also the national organizer and one of the co-chairs for the march for black women
01:40i was born in haiti in port-au-prince
01:45i didn't realize that you could make activism your life's work
01:52i envisioned myself helping people i didn't know how i was going to do that but eventually i made the
02:01decision that i was going to become a social worker and that i was going to start with families
02:09hi mom
02:14let's get you back
02:18the belief for me was that if only we could fix our families we would be okay
02:25this is my father
02:28i never thought he would raise his hand and strike you i never thought that when i came here i
02:36didn't
02:36have the green card i had to stay with them i had to say them because he applied for the
02:42kids but not for
02:43me because of that a lot of violence he did i accept them because of them i'm waiting for them
02:52to be
02:53you know older and then for us to move and that's what i did so these are the women
02:59that i do this work for including myself and my mother these are my aunties and cousins
03:07and they've experienced a tremendous amount of violence you know anything ranging from incest to
03:15outright rape so it's interesting you know you look at people's eyes and you look at the picture you
03:22don't realize that there is so much violence there was so much violence then and you don't know that
03:29every single day there was injustice in my home but i think what activism opened up for me is that
03:38fixing the family is not enough if the family is in an environment that is suffering then the
03:47family will always be in pain upon discovering that my mother had been a victim of rape was one time
04:01where i knew that i needed to do something there was no other option but to start an organization
04:10this ground floor of black women's blueprint is the museum of women's resistance it was born out of
04:18this need to remember our histories and just remember our identities and our legacies our girls can also
04:26understand that we didn't just begin to be activists we've always been revolutionaries and we've always
04:33been resistors and builders of movements when they hear it their eyes just widen at first it was just
04:42a group it was just groups of women meeting you know in their living rooms in their backyards in their
04:47kitchens and cooking and sitting and talking about what their lives have been like women have to worry
04:53about sexual assault women have to live in terror women have to think about walking down we started
04:58having our first meetings um and this was in the midst of the 2008 2009 elections on the issue of
05:07jobs i watched you the other day with your economic blueprint and in wisconsin saying this is my plan
05:13hold me accountable there were these conversations i have a blueprint for fixing the economy i have a
05:18blueprint for fixing health care i have a blueprint for fixing education i have a blueprint for fixing
05:23this fixing that we said what about a black women's blueprint the last time i felt a moment of
05:33discouragement was directly after the election we ask ourselves every day whether or not the current
05:40administration poses a threat to our work to ourselves there is a heightened sense of urgency
05:53when i think about just the state of things and the lives we live in our communities we're all
06:02survivors we're not just survivors today but our mothers and our fathers are survivors our grandmothers
06:12our great grandmothers are survivors we do this work that we do when we think about marching
06:18we do it for our future generations so that they don't have to be survivors like we are they don't
06:26have to experience the abuses that we experience
06:42we want for the black women who work too many hours for two little wages y'all black women are
06:47making 64 cents on a dollar you know that right do you know in the united states of america that
06:53black
06:53women are dying in a way four times higher than white women in childbirth you all that is a real
06:59statistic it's not something i'm making up our present may be what it is but we can create the
07:05future and that's what the march for black women said to me it said that everyone believes that they
07:10can step into a new possibility and that they can write a new script of what our future could look
07:17like
07:17and that they could act on that
07:47and that's what we're going to do
07:47to do
07:47to do
