Andrea J. Ritchie
Through research, writing, legal services, and organizing, Andrea J. Ritchie has dedicated the past two decades to challenging abusive and discriminatory policing against women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of color. Ritchie was appointed a Researcher-in-Residence in BCRW’s Social Justice Institute in our inaugural year, and reappointed in 2018. Previously, Ritchie was a Soros Justice Fellow at the Open Society Foundations, where she documented policy reforms and litigation strategies that address the specific ways in which discriminatory policing impacts women of color.
As a Researcher-in-Residence focusing on race, gender, sexuality, and criminalization, Ritchie has made significant contributions to expanding and deepening conversations and movements around policing and mass incarceration. In 2017 she partnered with a number of funders including the Ford Foundation, and esteemed scholar-activist Beth E. Richie, to convene a group of over 100 organizers, advocates, and philanthropic partners to map out a strategy for challenging criminalization through an intersectional lens in the current political climate, culminating in the publication of “The Crisis of Criminalization: A Call for a Comprehensive Philanthropic Response,” the 9th publication in BCRW’s New Feminist Solutions series. Also in 2017, she published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (Beacon Press), the first full-length publication to tackle issues of profiling, policing, and criminalization of communities of color through the lens of women’s experiences, and to uplift over two decades of resistance to police violence centering women, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people of color. Since then,she published a study and discussion guide for Invisible No More for use by educators, organizers, book clubs, and individual readers, and hosted three conferences focused on the themes explored in Invisible No More at Barnard College, University of Illinois Chicago, and U.C. Berkeley. Videos from each of the conferences are available on the BCRW website, and a special issue of Scholar and Feminist Online featuring contributors who participated in the BCRW conference is scheduled for publication in the Summer of 2019.
Ritchie has written a number opinion pieces making critical interventions in current debates around the war on drugs, police sexual violence, immigration enforcement, policing of young women, prostitution enforcement, responses to mental health crises, policing of motherhood, and more. She has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Essence, Teen Vogue, Think Progress, and The Root, and on HBO, NPR, Yahoo News, and the Laura Flanders Show, and has traveled the country to speak on campuses and at national conferences about issues of policing and criminalization. Ritchie recently published “Expanding Our Frame, Deepening Our Demands for Healing and Safety for Black Survivors of Sexual Violence” in partnership with the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and the Ms. Foundation, and co-authored two policy reports on responses to increasing criminalization and intensifying immigration enforcement, “Centering Black Women, Girls and Fem(me)s in Campaigns for Expanded Sanctuary and Freedom Cities,” and “The Impact of the Trump Administration’s Federal Criminal Justice Initiatives on LGBTQ People & Communities and Opportunities for Local Resistance.” As attention to police sexual misconduct has grown in the wake of several high profile incidents and in the midst of a national conversation about sexual assault under the #MeToo hashtag and “me, too.” movement, Ritchie has served as a resource to advocates, legislators and policymakers, gathering existing research and identifying potential interventions to prevent and address this systemic form of police violence.
In the fall of 2018, Ritchie joined with long-time colleague and 2018-2020 Researcher-in-Residence Mariame Kaba to launch Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action, a new initiative housed at BCRW. Combining participatory research, data analysis, and systemic advocacy, Ritchie and Kaba, in partnership with Researcher Woods Ervin, will work with national and local campaigns to identify primary pathways, policing practices, charges, and points of intervention to address the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for public order, survival, drug, child welfare and self-defense related offenses. Research will be disseminated in accessible formats for use by organizers, advocates, policymakers, media makers, and philanthropic partners working to interrupt criminalization at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. This initiative will also host convenings of researchers, organizers, advocates, policymakers, and funders on key topics relating to violence and criminalization, and support partners in developing and implementing campaigns designed to interrupt criminalization of women, girls, trans and GNC people of color. To date, Interrupting Criminalization has gathered experts from across the country to develop an overarching strategy to document, interrupt and end criminalization, mass incarceration and deportation of women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people of color, and has organized critical conversations on criminalization of survivors of violence, comprehensive responses to police sexual violence, creating accountable communities, criminalization of reproductive autonomy in the current political climate, diversion programs, and ending police violence against Black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people.
Video
The Laura Flanders Show: Andrea Ritchie on the Policing of Black Women and Women of Color
January 30, 2018
Andrea Ritchie: Invisible No More Lecture
May 2016
Andrea Ritchie: Invisible No More Lecture (preview)
May 2016
Conference Video Playlist from Invisible No More: Resisting Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color in Troubled Times
Berkeley, CA, March 2018
Conference Video Playlist from Invisible No More: Resisting Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color in Troubled Times
NYC, November 2017
Invisible No More: Chicago Event
October 18, 2017
Panel featuring: Beth Richie, Cynthia Blair, Nadine Naber, Barbara Ransby, Deana Lewis, Janaé Bonsu, Page May, Sangeetha Ravichandran, Alexis Pegues, and LaSaia Wade.
This event took place on October 18, 2017 at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Sponsored by the Department of Criminology, Law & Justice and the Department of African American Studies.
Video by Tom Callahan.
Publications
S
tudy Guide:
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Andrea J. Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color. Boston: Beacon Press, 2017.
Andrea J. Ritchie and Beth E. Richie. “The Crisis of Criminalization: A Call for a Comprehensive Philanthropic Response,” New Feminist Solutions: Volume 9. Fall 2017.
Andrea J. Ritchie and Monique W. Morris, Ed.D., Centering Black Women, Girls, Gender Nonconforming People, and Fem(me)s: In Campaigns for Expanded Sanctuary and Freedom Cities. National Black Women’s Justice Institute and the Ms. Foundation for Women. September 2017.
Richard Saenz, Lambda Legal, Kara Ingelhart, Lambda Legal, and Andrea J. Ritchie, Barnard Center for Research on Women, “The Impact of the Trump Administration’s Federal Criminal Justice Initiatives on LGBTQ People & Communities and Opportunities for Local Resistance,” A Report by the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group, Lambda Legal.
Related Events
CONFERENCE
Invisible No More: Resisting Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color in Troubled Times
November 3-4, 2017