The neglect of Black girls and women

Los Angeles, CA (News4usOnline) – On April 19, the Women’s Leadership Project (WLP) united Black women from across Los Angeles in a powerful rally to raise awareness about the violence and neglect Black women and girls face daily.

The event began near Leimert Park, with demonstrators marching down Crenshaw Boulevard to 57th Street, concluding outside the District 8 office of Marqueece Harris-Dawson, President of the Los Angeles City Council.

Speakers addressed the urgent need for systemic change and laid out clear demands, emphasizing that justice for Black women must become a priority. The rally highlighted how violence against Black women is often ignored and underscored the necessity for community action and institutional accountability.

In January 2022, the body of 16-year-old Tioni Theus was found on the Manchester Avenue on-ramp to the 110 Freeway. Her death prompted calls for a comprehensive examination of violence against Black women and girls in the city. The murder of Tioni Theus remains unsolved.

Though deeply tragic, Tioni’s story is not unique. LA Civil Rights Department states, “Nationally, 2,077 Black women and girls were killed in 2021, a 51% increase over 2019 and the largest jump of any racial or gender group during that period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Concurrently, the number of unsolved homicides of Black women and girls rose by 89% nationwide.”

Addressing this crisis requires a multifaceted approach, including policy reforms, community engagement, and increased support for survivors. By acknowledging and confronting the systemic issues contributing to violence against Black women, Los Angeles can work towards creating a safer and more equitable environment for all its residents.

According to a report by the LA Civil Rights Department, “ Black women made up nearly one-third of all female murder victims in the City of Los Angeles over the past decade, despite accounting for less than five percent of the city’s population. Black women accounted for 28.2% of all women reported missing in the city over the last two years and 32.85% of the female homicides over the last decade.”

Despite these alarming statistics, many protesters expressed outrage that L.A. city’s elected officials, including Mayor Karen Bass—the city’s first African American woman mayor—have done little to address systemic violence against Black women and girls. Two years after these reports, inaction persists, despite the coalition’s community street actions, meetings with city officials, and public comments at LA City Council meetings.

In response to these devastating statistics, the #Standing4BlackGirls coalition is calling on Mayor Bass and the L.A. City Council to allocate funding and support for prevention, mental health, and youth leadership initiatives for Black women and girls across sexualities. In City Council District 8, there are virtually no accessible youth centers that offer targeted wraparound programming for Black girls, women, LGBTQ+, and gender-expansive youth. To date, CD8 has more vacant, boarded-up buildings and empty lots than it does youth-serving facilities.

Lizette Nsilu, an intern for the Women’s Leadership Project, spoke about the importance of being part of this organization.

“I’ve noticed that high school was a very different space for me; I really didn’t feel like I had a community. It kind of felt like a hostile environment, and this kind of gave me a safe space while also fighting for people who look like me,” said Nsilu. “For queer youth, for trans youth, for Black women, for queer women, Black girls—it just gives us an opportunity and the space to spread awareness to difficulties we will come across in our lives and also how we can change that.”

Eclasia Wesley, the project coordinator at WLP, shared her perspective.

“I believe that we will continue to stay rooted in our groundwork, working with high school students and building a curriculum around intimate partner violence and domestic abuse. We’re encouraging our young people to take ownership over advocacy for speaking up for themselves and storytelling and using their voices to stay lifted,” Wesley stated. “I do believe this work will continue because they’re still killing a lot of Black girls out here. The work has to continue because it’s still at a high stake where there’s a war on Black women.”

Sikivu Hutchinson, founder of WLP, and Jessica Robinson, project director of WLP, shared more about their ongoing efforts.

“We have met with the city council, we have done public comments, we’ve met with the mayor’s office, we have obviously done a lot of grassroots organizing, marches, just an array of different interventions, and there’s been no response from the so-called elected officials and leaders on the crisis that is confronting Black women and girls and queer folks,” Hutchinson said. “This has been going on now in terms of the horrendous stats that we’re citing since 2023, so what we have done is we have put together a petition outlining demands.”

These demands include:

• Creating dedicated funding for targeted prevention education programming, mental health supports, and safe spaces for Black girls across sexualities and Black gender-expansive youth.
  
• Establishing youth/teen centers in city council districts heavily impacted by anti-Black domestic and sexual violence (CD8, CD9, CD10).
• Hiring and training culturally responsive community responders to replace police investigators and first responders on domestic violence cases.
  
• Creating a Black women and girls-focused task force with an emphasis on Black women-focused policy development, outreach, mentoring, and job programs.
  
• Expanding the participatory budgeting window and providing targeted technical support workshops for Black women and girl-focused organizations to actively participate in the process of allocating funding for so-called “REPAIR” zones (Reforms for Equity and Public Acknowledgement of Institutional Racism).
  
• Ending the practice of dual arrests, which disproportionately affects Black women and gender-expansive.

 Jessica Robinson added:

“Along with the funding and the amplifying of voices in the stories of those who are missing and murdered in Los Angeles and around the world—when we start asking for buildings, and we start asking for support from the politicians—we start hearing stories about the ‘light in the city.’ We start hearing all kinds of stories that try to deter us from asking for support. So, I would like them to understand that support looks like showing up when it comes to youth-led organizations. Showing up and saying, ‘This is important. Your lives are important. We understand that you are the future.’ And we have yet to get that. So that’s what I’m really hoping some of the leaders in this city will come and say to the world—especially to the youth in Los Angeles: ‘The lives of Black women, children, and queer youth are important, and we want the violence to stop.”

As the chants from the rally echoed through the streets of South Los Angeles, Black women and girls deserve to be seen, heard, and protected. The work of organizations like the Women’s Leadership Project and coalitions like #Standing4BlackGirls is not just about protest—it’s about survival, dignity, and demanding that elected officials treat this crisis with the urgency it requires.

This movement is a call to action. It is also a call for visibility and a call for justice, because until Black women and girls are safe, no community can truly be free.