For the past sixteen years, I have been documenting freedom struggles in Chicago. I call my work Love & Struggle Photos because, for me, both love and struggle are very much intertwined in the countless stories of resistance that I have had the honor of capturing through my lens. Whether it was the fight for a south-side trauma center, parents, students, teachers, and community members fighting school closures, We Charge Genocide’s muti-faceted organizing around police violence, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project's fight for an ordinance to provide reparations for survivors of police torture, or the campaign to end cash bail in Illinois, what I witnessed was an abundance of love as the foundation for these struggles. 

Black people and people of color as well as those who are LGBTQIA+, disabled, poor, immigrant, and/or undocumented have long lived under multiple oppressive systems in this country, which was built upon genocide, enslavement, and exploitation. And yet, these communities have also been resisting oppression for just as long, and those signs of resistance are very much present today in the city of Chicago, which has a rich history of protest and grassroots movement building. I am fortunate to be a part of and witness to the organizing community in Chicago, where art is central to the work, whether in the form of visual art, poetry, theater, or music.  

In addition to being a movement photographer, I am also an abolitionist. I believe that documenting freedom struggles is my contribution to building a vastly different world, one in which prisons, police, and the surveillance state are not needed, the kind of world that I want to leave for my daughter and all young people, a world that nurtures relationships and connections and healing, the kind that addresses the root causes of oppression and violence, the kind in which resources are allocated so that all our basic needs are met. As I document the freedom struggles in Chicago, I am continually encouraged because so many of the current struggles are rooted in abolition, from the fight for quality neighborhood schools, to healthcare and housing for all, to defunding and demilitarizing the police, or closing prisons. 

Our communities are currently facing extreme forms of oppression and violence, whether from overt white nationalists and fascists or institutionalized forms of white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy. For those of us who love justice and believe in freedom, doing nothing is not an option. As my long-time touchstone Mariame Kaba said, "To transform the conditions of our oppression(s), we can only do what we can today, where we are, in the best way that we know how." And so I will continue to document the beautiful resistance of the people of Chicago, so that we never forget our stories of love and struggle towards collective liberation. This is how I resist.