Andrea
Ritchie
Scheduling Info Upcoming Events

Details

Biography
Topics
African Americans
Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault
Education
Human Rights
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer
Media
Prisons/Prison Industrial Complex/Police
Racism/Racial Justice
U.S. History
Violence Against Women
Women & Feminism

Andrea Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant and a police misconduct attorney and organizer on the front lines of efforts to end profiling, policing, criminalization and mass incarceration of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people of color for over two decades.

She recently published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (Beacon Press 2017), and is the co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (African American Policy Forum 2015) and Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press 2011). Ritchie is currently Researcher-in-Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and was a 2014 Senior Soros Justice Fellow. She regularly gives keynote addresses and serves on plenary panels at conferences and universities across the country.

Ritchie is a nationally-recognized expert and sought-after commentator on policing issues. She has testified before the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the White House Council on Women and Girls, the Prison Rape Elimination Commission, and several United Nations Treaty Bodies. She served as co-chair of the New York City Council Young Women's Initiative Anti-Violence and Criminalization Working Group, is a founding member of the Federal LGBT Criminal Justice Working Group, chairing its policing subgroup, and is a founding member of the Steering Committee of New York City's Communities United for Police Reform.

She appears regularly in the New York Times, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Root, The Lily, Colorlines, Rewire, Cassius Life, and TruthOUT, as well as on MSNBC, C-Span, NBC Nightly News, NPR, HBO, and Al-Jazeera.

Ritchie is co-author of a number of policy and research reports including:
• The Impact of the Trump Administration’s Federal Criminal Justice Initiatives on LGBTQ People & Communities and Opportunities for Local Resistance (Lambda Legal 2018)
• Centering Black Women, Girls and Fem(me)s in Campaigns for Expanded Sanctuary and Freedom Cities (National Black Women's Justice Initiative and Ms Foundation 2017)
• The Crisis of Criminalization: A Call for a Comprehensive Philanthropic Response (Barnard Center for Research on Women 2017)
• Policing Race, Gender, and Sex: A Review of Law Enforcement Policies (Women and Criminal Justice 2017)
• Surviving the Streets of New York: Experiences of LGBT Youth, YMSM and YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex (Urban Institute. 2015)
• A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV, (Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School 2014)
• Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the United States (Amnesty International 2005)

Testimonials

“Invisible No More deserves a standing ovation. It's a passionate, incisive critique of the many ways in which women and girls of color are systematically erased or marginalized in discussions of police violence. The stories told here will haunt, inspire, and challenge you to reimagine justice by moving the experience of Black women and girls from the margins to the center.”
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

"Ritchie moved me from page one with layered, thoughtful, and well-researched storytelling describing the multiple ways women of color are impacted by criminalization, begging the question of how their stories have been neglected and calling on all of us to make them visible. ...if heeded, will undoubtedly transform the course of history.”
—Opal Tometi, cofounder of Black Lives Matter and executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration

"With Invisible No More, Andrea Ritchie has produced a work of great scope and depth, tightly documented and deeply moving. Ritchie spans multiple centuries, nations, issues, and identity lenses to lay bare the effects of violent policing on women of color. She authentically and skillfully centers Black women while seeding the ground for alliances among women of color....Most importantly, she introduces us to a generation of fighters we can follow, support, and lift up.”
—Rinku Sen, former executive director, Race Forward

“Invisible No More is the most recent book by the brilliant Black feminist legal scholar, writer, and activist Andrea Ritchie, in which she maps the brutal history of police violence against Black, Indigenous, and other women of color in what is now the United States....From settler colonial atrocities, to the school-to-prison pipeline, to the experiences of transgender women, Ritchie confronts us with a set of realities too vivid to ignore. ....will anger, educate, and inspire you to act.”
—Barbara Ransby, historian, activist, author of Making All Black Lives Matter

"Thanks to Andrea Ritchie’s thorough research and raw storytelling—capturing both the horrors and the resistance—we can finally begin to #sayhername and end the state’s war on women of color once and for all.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Speeches
Challenging Criminalization in the Trump Era
Criminalization is increasingly being wielded as a weapon to advance right wing agendas in the current political context - from increasingly aggressive policing of Black bodies in public spaces to intensifying criminalization of immigrants, trans and gender nonconforming people, and reproductive rights. How can we resist the rising tide of profiling, police violence, criminalization and mass incarceration at the local, state and national levels - and the narratives that fuel it?  A powerful examination of current patterns of state violence and call to action and resistance.


Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Invisible No More examines issues of racial profiling, police violence, criminalization and mass incarceration through the lens of women's experiences. How do women, trans, and gender nonconforming people experience policing in ways that are similar to other members of communities of color, and how are their experiences unique? What do their experiences teach us about the shape and scope of police violence, and how do they expand our framing of the issues and our demands for justice? How do they call on us to radically reimagine our visions of safety and the means we devote to achieving it? A unique perspective on one of the central issues of our time, rooted in over two decades of experience on the front lines of movements to end police violence.

The Missing Story of #MeToo: Police Sexual Violence - Patterns, Prevention, and Policy Responses
In the midst of a national conversation on sexual harassment and assault, one form of sexual violence remains shrouded in silence: when police officers are the perpetrators. Although studies show that sexual violence is the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct after excessive force, it is not the second most frequently talked about, despite the fact that an officer is caught in the act every 5 days. What does sexual violence by police look like? Who do officers target? Most importantly, how can we put a stop to this systemic problem? No survivor should be left out of the conversation, or the solution, just because the person who sexually assaulted her was a police officer.

Invisible No More Strategy Session
Andrea can host a workshop or training to support your organization or group in centering work around policing and criminalization of Black women and women of color in your organizing, campaign, or advocacy (90 minutes to full day workshop or training, ongoing consulting and technical assistance is also available).

Media