#HUNGERSTUCK

Shauntrice Martin

Editor’s note: By June, our city’s protestors had been in the streets for weeks demanding justice for Breonna Taylor. Governor Andy Beshear responded to protests by calling in the Kentucky National Guard, which resulted in the shooting and death of David McAtee on June 1st. The next day, citing an “abundance of caution,” Kroger temporarily closed their Russell neighborhood location at 28th and Broadway. To meet the sudden and dire need of the community for fresh, healthy groceries, Shauntrice Martin, founder of Black Market, partnered with Taylor Ryan and her nonprofit, Change Today, Change Tomorrow, to start Feed the West. As she works to open her own grocery store in West Louisville, Shauntrice held a two-week hunger strike to call attention to and demand remedy for what she considers to be racist practices by the grocery retail chain. What follows, is a mostly unedited missive Shauntrice wrote on the 11th day of her hunger strike.

When I sat down to start this piece, it was 11:11 on day 11 of my hunger strike. This morning, my seven year old asked if the hunger strike was over and whether Kroger was still racist. Before I started this, I talked to him candidly about not being able to eat for a while. I can’t pick him up and give him “huggies” the way I usually do. My medic had to remind me to check my vitals a few minutes ago. After the falls and spasms I can’t lie, I’m scared. I have experienced the audacity of white supremacy and I have seen Kroger be careless with my people for decades so I have no doubt they would let me starve the way they have let the food apartheid continue in the West End.

This is not just about Kroger. Kroger and their executives represent the perpetuation of the status quo, but they and Kroger are not the root of all Black suffering. They are just another architect of injustice that must be held accountable. None of their executives have likely ever been inconvenienced by food insecurity. None of them are facing eviction like many Kroger employees here in Louisville. None of them are suffering in 2020 from the inhuman treatment of Blacks who were enslaved, raped, lynched or robbed. 

That’s why power won’t concede anything.

What would be the benefit to giving up privilege? Does Kroger gain anything from admitting to their racist practices? I’m sure in their conversations their legal team has advised them to ignore the poor folks as usual. Eventually we will go away or fade away out of the headlines. Praying and fasting and hoping will never be enough to sway these individuals because our Black lives have no value outside of the cheap labor we sacrifice in order for them to maintain their abundance.

Emails will not work—they will simply dismiss us.

Social media will not work—they will simply block us.

Hunger strikes do not work—they will simply ignore us until we die or give up.

So that leaves me wondering what will work.

What must they lose in order to change? Change is neither comfortable nor cheap. Race and class have been inextricably linked since white babies suckled at the titties of their Black slaves. And as Dr. Cobbs and Grier wrote in the book Black Rage, “slavery was never undone for either the slave or the slave master.” Now, instead of a melanated breast, wealthy white Americans like the executives at Kroger drain our communities and discard us.

These days the overseers smile instead of whip us. The slave catchers wear riot helmets instead of top hats. Rather than white mistresses resented Black girls for being raped by white masters, white teachers are hypersexualizing our students and criminalizing their existence. The system is not broken. The system is fully operational with minimal glitches.

But abolition can be a glitch.

I am an abolitionist. I strive to be a glitch in this intricately weaved matrix. If Ella Baker could manifest Freedom Summer at a time when Black folks were being killed for voting, then surely I can give Kroger a hard time. I remember the burning and choking sensation when I was first tear gassed in May. That was a sensation I had never felt. It felt like a thousand hot needles were stabbing me from the inside of my throat. I was terrified because I could open my eyes to see how I could escape. I was not there to do anything but bring water and food to peaceful protestors, but supporting Black people is tantamount to assault in the eyes of this new generation of slave catchers. And we couldn’t even fully grieve for Breonna before David McAtee was gunned down. His body lay outside like road kill for 12 hours. I was there as we sang and prayed and talked for hours on 26th and W. Broadway waiting for the police to pick his body up. Pastors preached. Politicians spoke. Artists sang. And in response to those displays of love, Kroger closed its doors without warning. Employees were not warned; many of them still showed up for work. Our elders who caught public transportation were not notified; they simply had to wait in the heat for the next bus home. As a result, the parking lot owner where Kroger is located decided to barricade the entire shopping complex, preventing individuals from accessing child care, dialysis, the laundromat, and mental health services. Folks forget about that.

That is why we started Feed The West.

Folks assumed I would condemn the looting that happened shortly after the Kroger was closed, but those individuals don’t know me. Even if we cleared out every grocery store in this country, we will still not have stolen even close to what has been taken from us. We have given out more than 17,000 bags of free groceries in less than 3 months. That includes every type of Black person, even the ones that folks are not willing to march for when police kill them. Because every Black life matters. Poor, trans, those with felonies in their past, strippers, scholars, addicts, activists, elders, and beyond. The status quo is what has tricked us into thinking we some of us can aspire to be good negroes. I promise you that Daniel Cameron is on that vibe. And rather than fight against the status quo, many of us choose to enforce the status quo in order to gain favor with whiteness and therefore offset our melanin. This is precisely why Black folks saw Get Out as a horror film while many whites saw it as a comedy.

But this Black hoodrat has been in boardrooms with billionaires. I’ve watched the n-word roll of the tongues of old white diversity chairs. I’ve watched their white friends make excuses for their racist behavior while labeling anyone who speaks out as difficult. They offer severance for silence. And I have been quiet on more than one occasion.

I know that my power was not gifted to me by whiteness. My power is innate. It is intrinsic. My power is genetic. Either Kroger responds accordingly and grants the 3 basic requests of #HungerStruck or they will have demonstrated the inefficiency of peaceful resistance. 

Even if I lose, I win.