Andrea J. Ritchie

Founder

Andrea J. Ritchie (she/her) is a Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past three decades. She has been actively engaged in anti-violence, labor, and LGBTQ organizing, and in movements against state violence and for racial, reproductive, economic, environmental, and gender justice in the U.S., Canada, and internationally since the 1980s. Andrea is the author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, and co-author of No More Police. A Case forAbolition, Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women; and of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. She co-founded Interrupting Criminalization and the In Our Names Network, a network of over 20 organizations working to end police violence against Black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people, and led INCITE!'s work on law enforcement violence. In these capacities and through the Community Resource Hub and National Black Women's Justice Institute she works with dozens of groups across the country organizing to divest from policing and secure deep investments in community-based strategies that will produce greater public safety.

For more information, visit Andrea’s personal site, and Invisible No More. You can follow Andrea on Twitter @dreaNYC123.