my why

I’m in a class called movement lawyering—which is an approach to lawyering that supports movements such as the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, the Black Panther Party, etc. In class I was tasked with writing a “Political Autobiography”, explaining how I approach my work as a future attorney. After writing the piece, I felt it was blog worthy. I hope you enjoy.

I never imagined I would be in law school—ever . My paternal grandparents and my maternal great-grandparents all journeyed to Detroit to find a better life. My great grandmother’s name was Mildred Jones. On one faithful day her uncle came home from working in a mill in Louisiana and said, “my friend has a nephew who also wants to go up to Detroit.” I imagine him saying, “He a nice man Milly and he got family up there.” I imagine it didn’t take her much to be convinced. At 17 her and her new stranger of a husband traveled from Meridian, Louisiana to Detroit, Michigan to work in the factory. Black people in Detroit hustle different, because we have this generational belief in a better life. The same hope that put my grandmother on a segregated train car, leaving everything she knows, still lives in me. 

My grandparents, their children, spent a lot of time just doing the best they could. My grandfather will tell anyone who listens about how he spent his young adulthood, “running from the draft.” Only to be drafted anyway. He talks about how Motown was what got him through his time serving a country who hates him. Then he tells the story of how his big brother came home one day and said, “I’m going to go take some city test.” Well, next thing you know they were firefighters and my grandfather retired Chief of the Detroit Fire Department. 

I like to say I was raised by the hip hop generation, also the generation that voted the first Black President. I say that because although my grandparents are the generation of riots, sit-ins and protest. My parents took all that pain and screamed songs like “F**k tha Police” by NWA. My grandparents were just trying to get in the game, by any means. Even if that meant conforming to societal pressures and being mild mannered. My parents just didn’t give a f**k. They quit jobs they were unhappy with, pursued passions and did what they felt like—the older I get the more I see these things as such a radical act. I also wonder what our generation will be known for? Our elders call us the social media age, but I just think we have access to so much information. I’ve done things in my 24 years of life my grandparents can’t even comprehend. Every time I facetime my grandmother, she reminds me that this was something she watched on the Jetsons.

Following my parents lead, I followed my dreams of diving into my art head first. What else would you expect from the products of the hip hop generation? In high school I wanted to be an acting major in college. I toured the country auditioning for conservatory style programs. But I felt like I was living a double life. As much as I loved the theatre. It felt like it began to consume me. So much so I didn’t live a regular life anymore and I began to resent it for that. Finally, for my senior year spring break, my friend Fatou convinced me to go on the Capstone trip. This trip was a week at Howard University (HU) sponsored by HU’s Michigan Club. It didn’t take long before I simply fell in love. Looking back on my Howard experience I say it opened my entire world and I didn’t even know the week I spent there was only a glimpse. 

I came home and instantly told my parents, “It’s Howard for me.” When I got there I was challenged in every way, socially, academically, emotionally, spiritually, I felt myself maturing every day. It was at Howard I realized my BLACK experience growing up in the Blackest city in America was an anomaly. I mean growing up I didn’t have any White friends. Of course, some of my teachers were White, I would see them when we went to grocery stores or parks, etc. But it is almost like they didn’t participate in my world. I had never, still haven’t, spent the night at a White person’s house. Racism is deeply systematic, and I felt that as I went away to summer camps and had to defend my origin. “Is it scary in Detroit?” “Do you see a lot of guns?” “Have you ever been shot?” Were the questions the ignorant White campers actually asked me. But I never hated where I was from, I loved it. I was proud to say I was from Detroit, regardless of the audience. When I got to Howard, it was no different. 

My political view is communal. I believe no one is free until we are all free. I subscribe to the ideas of the Black Panther Party, that we have to learn their system in order to fight them. I believe in their passion about self-defense. However, like Angela Davis, I never agreed with the subjugation and the subservient role of women. My intersectionality of my Blackness and womanness is a huge part of me. At Howard University I took a class that was specifically covering Black women through movements. We talked about the Women’s Suffrage March and how White women threw Black women under the bus the minute they didn’t serve their interest anymore. We talked about the Womanist movement that was specifically created by and for Black women. I never identified with something more in my whole life.

Although I see my life’s work being to free my people. My means of getting there is untraditional. I believe in protecting both Black art and Black artist. Mostly because I see them as a group that has been taken advantage of through history. I see the art of Africa and native people, and the way that art changed through slavery and colonization and how it manifests today through oppression through global systems. Like I said before I was, and still am, an artist. I take theatre very seriously because I see it as a form of memorializing the Black experience. Growing up that’s what hip hop was to me. You can turn on Dougie Fresh, SWV, Brandi, Toni Braxton and instantly see the picture of Black life in that era. Hip hop wasn’t just music though, it was, and is, visual. Hip Hop is just as much Friday, Belly, Boyz in the Hood, Juice, Poetic Justice, etc. Black cinema was so and is so important to our stories. That’s why I choose to protect Black film and television with my life. I want to memorialize us, our journey to freedom.

The Black Panther Party defines freedom as the ability to choose the future. Amanda Alexander at the Detroit Justice Center identifies power as getting to make decisions over your own life. I define freedom as being able to choose. The way I make sense of the world is by being radical in the way I have decided to choose my art by choosing to protect the art of my people. I see art as political, it also has been and it always will be. 

Mikaela Amira