If the rising tide of white nationalists holding rallies out in the open, police ramping up attacks on Black communities and allowing Nazis to escape proper prosecution and sentencing weren’t enough clues for people to realize that America hates black people, then I need you to listen up. No, I did not say this began with the election of Donald Trump (although it can be said that his election is a signifier for how fascism is escalating in these United States), and liberals who say they are invested in social justice need to look outside of electoral politics to local issues where real people are living and dying under the heel of the federal government.

Bresha Meadows is a young African-American girl who has grown up in the most toxic of environments, with parents who abused alcohol and drugs, has been sentenced to a year in juvenile detention on top of six months in a mental health facility for the shooting of her father, Jonathan Meadows. Bresha never deserved the level of scrutiny that she had to face (although the case did not go to trial, that her case was so forcefully prosecuted is abominable to me), and Bresha deserves to be viewed in context of the situation she was living in. Domestic violence is an inherently difficult topic to broach in the United States - three women are murdered every day by a current or ex partner, and, according to the American Psychological Association, women with disabilities are 40% more likely to suffer from intimate partner violence. Bresha is not even a grown woman yet and she has encountered violence at the hands of those who were supposed to take care of her. The official reports has conflicting conclusions on this matter: the family disputes whether Bresha was ever physically abused, but this wouldn’t be the first time that abuse was hid or not talked about in communities of color, and the way that kinship relations operate under patriarchy, there is very little support for survivors of domestic violence.

Bresha is a child. I hate that she had to take a plea deal at all, and I’m skeptical as to what extent this mental health treatment will aid her, as the American health care system has not been historically kind to African-Americans, let alone young Black children. Moreover, why has this modified plea deal included juvenile detention? What in the case has shown there is a need to punish this girl for reacting in what is an understandable act of self defense? In older generations of my family, there was horrible physical, verbal, and yes, even sexual abuse. No one cried when my great-grandfather died (of natural causes) and it would be naive of me to think my grandmother never had any kind of parricidal thoughts. Is this the same justice system that allows Darren Wilson to walk free, even when proven he needlessly took the life of Michael Brown? Of course it is. I’ve told you all before, that America, or rather Amerikkka, does not view Black folks as human. No, I do not believe that Bresha Meadows deserves any kind of detention whatsoever, and this is a gross miscarriage of justice. #FreeBreshaMeadows