Urgent Safety Funds for Black Lesbian Activist

Hi beautiful people. My name is Klover, I was born in Trinidad and raised in Brooklyn and Queens. I’m the first generation in my family to complete high school and college, and currently a full time student majoring in Architecture Engineering. I’m an artist and writer, and above all I am an activist for the oppressed humans on this earth. Since I was 16 years old, I’ve been fighting against police brutality and injustice within a system that is broken at the core.

 

I am asking you – the people who hold more power than what we are made to believe – to help me raise the money needed to survive in this unjust world and protect myself and family.

On July 15, 2020, police officers attacked community members on the Brooklyn Bridge. I tried to defend people from being further physically injured, and defend myself, and was arrested. As we’ve seen and know, NYPD employees have pepper sprayed, beat with batons, and brutally arrested community members for peacefully protesting against police brutality and against systemic racism.

I now need help to defend myself from this broken and unjust system.

 

Around 4:30 AM, on a day I’ll never forget, I was in my car on my way to pick up breakfast for community members at Occupy City Hall demanding the NYC City Council vote to defund the NYPD and invest those funds what we know keeps communities safe - shelter, healthcare, food, education, libraries, and more. As I was driving, I saw that several NYPD police cars were following me. Within moments of attempting to park my car, roughly 10 NYPD officers surrounded me with guns drawn, tasers pointed at my chest, their fingers on the trigger, ready to shoot at any moment.

Coldness struck my body like a blizzard storm, and I knew my life was on the line.

 

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I’m putting the car in park!” I cried.

 

NYPD officers screamed at me, over and over again, “Get the fuck out the car!”

 

As I stepped out of the car, shoeless, a group of male NYPD officers grabbed and pushed me. As a victim of sexual assault, I began screaming and shouting, “I want a female officer present.” The officers actively ignored my requests, refused to tell me why I was being arrested, and tightened the cuffs they placed on my wrist each time I cried out - I still had marks on my wrists three weeks later.

 

Knowing how many Black people have been targeted by unjust arrests, have been murdered by police officers throughout the United States, I was alarmed, scared. A NYPD officer in the van kept caressing my right thigh over and over again. Another officer holding me from behind intentionally pulled my shirt up to expose my bra strap. I was violated, and triggered by traumatic memories of my past.

In the precinct, I was isolated and cold.

I was denied phone calls, had to beg them for my medically prescribed asthma pump so I could breathe.

I was locked in a cell by myself for 30 hours. As the time went on, I felt everything around and inside of me going dark. I started contemplating how I could kill myself with the string in my pants. I had been kidnapped, sexually harassed, and put in a cage.

No one knew where I was. When friends and family finally located me, they were told that there was no bail that could be paid. The NYPD took my car, my living space and livelihood to get by. I worked in delivery services and couldn’t make any sort of income without my car. Sentimental objects, valuables, and artwork were all stolen from me by the NYPD, and to this day I haven’t been able to get them back.

I received a letter of harassment from the KKK.

The continued advocacy and activism of community members demanding an end to police brutality, an end to carceral systems & structures, an end to racist systems and structures, an end to the anti-Blackness the United States was founded on - is working. Our community care, our shared power, our refusal to accept oppression and injustice - is working.

For defending community members from NYPD officer brutality, for defending myself from NYPD officer brutality, I was assigned a 6-month prison sentence to Riker’s, a known death camp, increasing the possibility of deportation from my home, my friends and family.

 

Here’s to a brighter future where We the People Will Be Emancipated.

Love always.

PLEASE SEND FUNDS THROUGH VENMO: @kkfnowornever