Building the World We Want to See: A Herstory of Sista II Sista and the Struggle against State and Interpersonal Violence

Abstract

In the wake of the Movement for Black Lives, activists, artists, and scholars have highlighted the need to connect issues of state-sanctioned violence, the historical lack of protection offered to Black women, and experiences of gendered intraracial violence, arguing that these issues are inseparable. Sistas Liberated Ground, a Brooklyn-based campaign in the early 2000s, was an embodied example of this intervention. Sista II Sista (SIIS), founded in 1996, led this initiative. Black and Latinax women organized together to challenge systems that marginalized us and devalued our lives. In this current political moment, the herstory of SIIS demonstrates the power of a politics that creates new cultures, models the world we want to see, builds solidarity across communities, and does the work of Ella Baker–style radical democracy.