A Pregnant Black Activist Is in Prison for Talking Back to Police, and Her Body Is Suffering


Earlier this year, activist Brittany Martin was sentenced to four years in prison in South Carolina over comments she made to police during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. Video footage from the protest shows the mother of four telling police officers, “Some of us gon’ be hurting. And some of y’all gon’ be hurting. We ready to die for this. We tired of it. You better be ready to die for the blue. I’m ready to die for the Black.”

Martin, a racial justice activist who co-founded Mixed Sistaz United to serve unhoused people and register voters, has currently served almost four months in prison since May. She’s due to give birth in November. Advocates and Martin’s legal team are currently fighting for her to be released, or at least receive a lesser sentence, citing the toll of prison on her pregnancy and the fact that she shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place.


“Some of us gon’ be hurting. And some of y’all gon’ be hurting. We ready to die for this. We tired of it. You better be ready to die for the blue. I’m ready to die for the Black.”


“She’s in jail because she talked in America,” Sybil Dione Rosado, Martin’s trial attorney, told the AP. “She’s a dark-skinned Black woman who is unapologetically Black and radical.”

As of July, Martin has reportedly lost 12 pounds while incarcerated; she’s been taken to the hospital eight times due to complications with her pregnancy, twice transported via ambulance. Martin told the AP her body just “can’t get comfortable with the baby” while in prison, where she’s also faced regular threats to her physical safety and wellness. Martin told the outlet she’s been harassed by prison guards and physically attacked by other incarcerated people—Rosado said she saw Martin with scratches on her face and a bloody eye during a recent visit. Martin’s also repeatedly been put in solitary confinement and sent to detention over alleged disobedience to prison guards, and once for not cutting her dreadlocks, which Rosado points out stems from a “racially biased” grooming policy.
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Despite reporting that Martin faced criminal charges for hitting her teenage son with her car in 2019 in Iowa, Rosado pointed out that the South Carolina judge didn’t mention the Iowa incident at all. (Martin’s son died in January this year, and her family is still grieving the loss.) Rosado argues Martin is imprisoned and separated from her young children solely over comments to police.
https://jezebel.com/a-pregnant-black...ack-1849500832