EP. 026 - JAZMINE

PROTECTOR. SERVANT. MOTHER.

JAZMINE WILLIAMS

'BLACK IMAGINATION'

Age: 26

Location: Los Angeles

Jazmine is a manager at the Hip Hop Caucus and an entrepreneur who works to create safe spaces for America’s most vulnerable citizens.

I believe fiercely in protecting people. Being unprotected has been a theme in my life from as early as I can remember. I remember the adoption process. The foster care process. I remember constantly being in a state of vulnerability through it all. Especially when the people who became my protectors, my brothers and cousins, were imprisoned.

When I was younger, LAPD targeted my mom for being a grassroots activist. In that process, they illegally deployed Child Protective Services to take me and my brother away from her. I thought for sure she was going to get us that night.When she arrived at the office, it was the first time I had ever seen her cry. Seeing her tears let me know we weren’t going home. We were going into the system.

Another time I felt unprotected is when I was in 6th grade. I was home alone one day after school and the LAPD had chased down someone who broke his way onto our property. I looked up from my couch and saw snipers in every window of my house. I ran into the closet and hid because I knew the police would shoot first and ask questions later. The wait felt like a lifetime.

I work in the organizing field to show people how to find strength when they’re exposed. When they feel most powerless. When no one is there to protect them. I live to cultivate strategy and strengthen the Black imagination to rise out of vulnerability and into power.