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Charlene Carruthers is a black queer feminist activist and organizer. Her work aims to create young leaders in marginalized communities to fight for community interests and liberation. She is a founder and the national coordinator for the Black Youth Project 100.

Developing Leadership

Much of Carruthers' work in social activism centers on developing broad based political participation and leadership for marginalized communities. Several political organizations including [Wellstone Action] and the [NAACP] have called upon her energy and expertise in helping to develop their own trainings.[] Along with her position in the Black Youth Project 100, Charlene is a leadership fellow for the [Arcus Foundation][] and a board member for Sistersong, an organization promoting reproductive rights and unity for women of color.[] She cites her studies in South Africa as the moment of her political awakening. Her work has a powerful recurring theme of building coalitions between groups with very different experiences of marginalization, united under the banner of undoing the power structure that underpin each of their oppressions. As a queer black woman, Carruthers' experiences uniquely equip her to bind together the often-disjointed currents of feminist, LGBTQ, and racial justice activism. Her work has also consistently involved transnational collaborations and bridge building, including her work with immigrant advocacy groups and her participation in the historic [] to foster personal and organizational ties between Palestinian and African American justice advocates.

BYP100

In []2013 Carruthers and 99 other leading black youth activists from across the country gathered in Chicago to witness the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The jury found Zimmerman’s pursuit, assault, and fatal shooting of an unarmed minor to be his rights as protected by the State of Florida. This verdict galvanized Carruthers and the other activists into the formation of the Black Youth Project 100 to organize young black activism in resistance to structural oppressions.

Though initially hesitant to assume the role of national coordinator herself, Carruthers ultimately came to realize the rare opportunity the erupting turmoil brought with it. [] The BYP100 invests heavily in the training of leaders and the teaching of reformers, empowering a generation of black activism. In public actions and in the press Carruthers has emphasized that oppressive structures like race, gender, sexuality, and economic status overlap with one another in such a way that prohibits the resistance to any one structure at a time. Rather, they demand united action by marginalized action to overturn the whole system together. [] BYP100’s initiatives embody this outlook of overlapping oppressions by targeting issues that tie into multiple systemic oppressions. For instance, their publication “The Agenda to Keep us Alive” identifies economic justice and the development of local economic power as essential tools to achieve gender and racial justice. [] Carruthers has been a particularly vocal critic of how the prison-industrial-complex and the school-to-prison pipeline play a huge role in shaping the experiences of oppression for people and communities of color, transgender & non-binary people, and the poor. []

Police Brutality

Carruthers is a prominent and outspoken critic of unchecked police brutality, inadequate government responsiveness to major brutality cases, and the American criminal justice system’s fundamental motivations and mechanisms.[] Her work has brought her to the epicenters of several prominent cases in the mid-2010s movement for black public safety. In [] she went to Ferguson as the city reeled from the brutal killing of 18-year-old Mike Brown at the hands of Officer Darren Wilson.[] Herself a native resident of south side Chicago, Carruthers has become especially visible as a critic of the city’s disastrous response to multiple recent brutality cases. She’s worked to organize major public demonstrations over the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd. While off duty and without identifying himself as a police officer, Dante Servin of the CPD shot Boyd in the back of the head, firing over his shoulder from inside the vehicle at Antonio Cross, whose cell phone Servin claims to have mistaken for a gun. [Something tying back to Charlene, maybe describe the killing, then the action, then segue to Laquan] Carruthers has also been closely involved with the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Dashboard cam footage shows McDonald fall to the ground after being shot once by CPD officer Jason Van Dyke, who then empties the remaining 15 shots into McDonald’s crumpled and bleeding frame. Carruthers has vigorously condemned the city's handling of the event, especially the