[I]t’s like every time we need something as a community… if our community is a food desert, and we want grocery stores, what do we get? Policing. Surveillance. We need housing. We need places to live. And all this gentrification. What do we get? Policing and surveillance in some type of way is woven into whatever the solution is. We want safer streets? What we get? Police and surveillance. —Odessa Kelly
Our Data Bodies (ODB) is excited to present a series of oral histories from organizers, writers, and cultural workers whose work has been steeped in resisting discriminatory surveillance technology and racialized surveillance capitalism, and has illuminated strategies for abolition and abolitionist reform. This oral history features Odessa Kelly, Executive Director at Stand Up Nashville, a grassroots organization of union and community organizers and every-day citizens committed to fulfilling racial justice from an economic standpoint. The transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity, follows below.
Blu: Can you tell me about the current work you are in?
Odessa Kelly: I’m now the executive director of Stand Up Nashville. And that was basically me moving out of reactionary activist work, you know, where we react to things that have already happened and, you know, trying to be solutionary. So that moves me to really build a collaboration, and I would just my friends, you know, from the hood of TSU [Tennessee State University], but with like, the institutions, you know, who can actually move stuff. So, our organization built with churches, other grassroot groups, and like labor unions, you know, all the pieces that we can try to weave together to try to turn some of the things that we talked about into tangible pieces.
At Stand Up Nashville, basically, what we do is kind of a watchdog for public policy, in economic sustainability. So anytime that we can try to remove barriers. And so that’s how we do social and racial justice work. From my end, it is trying to take away every, you know, racist ass excuse to put in a way of saying why we can’t advance. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a little bit of my background.
Blu: And can you tell us about your first encounters with civilians and your community?
Odessa Kelly: I’m gonna say had my first encounter was, again, as an adult, or at least it I realized, and I realized it. And that was because, you know, I was working in a neighboring community center, when I think the summer of 2015. A little girl got raped in the projects. [Then] projects had another kid that got killed by two kids actually, [one]… got killed by gang members trying to steal something, and another kid who was gang affiliated, just got beat down or whatever. So it was, like, really bad.
So this lady who I see around—she come into community center all the time—she came up to me one day. I thought she was a parent or something, you know, why she was coming in? And after a long time just saying hello and stuff with a couple of parents and community, everything they were talking about was that they were sick and tired of all these type of things happening in their community and all this type of stuff. So they were, like, “We’re going to try to do things to you know, protect our community.” I was, you know, like, “Yeah, I agree.” I’m always on board.
A couple of days later, she came back with me with this petition to be signed. And I read through the whole petition. But it was talking about doing this whole community watch and all this stuff. Six months later, all of a sudden, I just started noticing all these handyman come coming through putting up like all these cameras and stuff everywhere, through the hood, the kids about it and everything, and nobody’s like home. I just started putting up all these cameras. I mean, every corner, you know, putting up cameras everywhere.
Then fast forward–that was around August—to Christmas. I was having the Christmas party at the community center. That same lady I told you be coming in. She came back into the community center. And the Christmas party is big. Everyone in the ‘hood comes out to it because we’re giving away gifts and, you know,
Blu: How can I have me some gifts, some food and chill…
Odessa Kelly: Yo, yeah. So that’s when she was giving away some gifts or whatever but she was talking to someone and she introduced herself that she was part of the housing authority… the ones who run the actual the projects. And I start talking a couple parents, they’re like, “Yes. She the lady over all of the housing and stuff.” They didn’t want to say that she’s the one who kicks you out. I was like, “Really? Didn’t know that.”
After inquiring into the petition that she had me and several of the parents sign… [it] was so they could put cameras up everywhere in the projects! And that was my first encounter with surveillance.
We had several community meetings about this, you know, because it’s like, this isn’t working to what it was intended to do. What they did is they sent all the information to this new gang youth gang unit that they had created for a precinct that just opened up… about six months before. So it’s a lot of complaining and a lot of reusing political will to get people to understand. I tell the Councilman, “We will not vote you back in unless we can get something done about this.”
It was really hard, though, because you had other people—residents and constituents—who wanted to keep the cameras there, because they truly thought it was deterring crime. So trying to get people to see the differences between//// the same mechanism that you think is deterring crime is the same one that is setting kids up to be surveilled and put on list. And that was my very first encounter with surveillance.
It didn’t come back into my purview until… I’m gonna say about two years ago. And that was with [Amazon] Ring. And all the information me being on the economic side of it, and studying contracts, you know, and looking at money and where it goes to, you know, so it’s funny because of George Floyd and everything that’s happened this year Defund the Police has been a conversation that has boomed, you know, it was really talked about as a invest/ divest type of, you know, yeah, especially all my activist friends in Oakland and other places. But, um, it was something I was looking at, like, damn. We give this much contractually? Our public dollars go this far in making sure that our police are militarized? Or like something you see in the movies? …All the data that is collected and… they get to make these assumptions and that… carries over to the psyche of this hunter mentality of… [the] police.
Blu: That’s fine… but that resonates with me. For me, the conversation is usually around surveillance equals safety. And folks sell that right day–to–day. We see normal signs… that allow our psyches to be desensitized to the idea of surveillance. Like—when you walk into the store, and this store is being monitored. Or, you see blue light cameras all over. Right? My experience here in Charlotte, the west side of Charlotte is where Black and poor people are. And it wasn’t until I did my research that I really, like understood the like, the threshold, right? Like, you go down, Beatties Ford, and it is blue light cameras… storefront cameras. The police come, and they knock and talk to folks. And they’re like, “You should just let us get your footage.” It’s kind of like mafia style, right? Like you pay me in footage, and we’re going to show up if somebody rob you. Because the owners of these shops are not Black. They’re not from the community. They’re not there to really build with folks. They’re opting in to like protect my property, right? Because I don’t actually belong here.
Charlotte, I think, was one of the first centers for like how we militarize and move digital surveillance because of big events, right? So when the DNC [Democratic National Convention] came here, the first one we got all this technology… I was like, this is problematic, but good intention.
I was [with a youth group]… and so we get to go into the command center of CMPD [Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department]. You see all of the screen of all of the cameras and a couple of people that are monitoring… but just the audacity to be like, “Here come in. Let us show you how we keep your city safe... How are we surveilling your community. How… here’s this ‘See something, say something.’” Who made that up? Because I think that people of color, poor people did not make that up… So just thinking about the cultural ways in which folks push surveillance and that just becomes “It’s keeping us safe.” But.. homies still get shot. What’s different? You know? But I digress.
Odessa Kelly: No, that’s, that’s a good point. I’m thinking back—it’s interesting now to understand how much we’re under surveillance. Even all the way just going and walking out high school, to the middle school. I went to predominantly all Black areas. The high school that I went to? There’s cameras everywhere. At one point, they were talking about putting in the metal detectors and all this stuff. And just, depending on who you talk to… I got a cousin now. She like, “Fuck Defund the police.” Because of the trauma we experienced. It’s a real thing coming up in the ‘hood. That’s because we all know the craziness that can happen. The system is doing well. She’d love for there to be, you know, metal detectors in there in the school, because there were instances that popped off all the time. [It’s like] my mom would say, “Well, if you ain’t doing nothing wrong, you won’t mind the camera.”
Blu: Oh, gotta be.
Odessa Kelly: Yeah, not understanding that we’re literally building the systems, that those things—that creates the behaviors… even act in an animalistic way to break all of that.
That has been difficult to deal with. How do you want there [to be] balance? They want their peace of mind. Reimagining community safety? I completely get it. I am understanding how that happens. But trying to get the greater public of our communities to understand that… it’s hard.
It just really is. And it’s, and there’s like, a generational difference in it. Some of the groups out here who one hundred percent push the protection of our communities and are leading the defund-the-police charge and all those things. It has been hard because, again, it’s two different classes of people. You know, those who come to our worker organizing meetings are… not thinking about surveillance from Ring and what that looks like, or having any police technologists thinking about it from a worker standpoint.
So we’ve been thinking about how do we really bridge the breach between those two… So we have literally taken what is the best approach, and that is building a toolbox. And in the toolbox, we’ve just literally gone out to what we usually do: we hit churches. If you’re in the Black, if you’re in the South, and you’re not hitting churches, then like, what do you you know? Rethink about how you organize it. So we tried to hit up a lot of the churches, just to make them aware of what surveillance is and how it is happening, you know, and we did, we’ve done that for 10 weeks now. So when we’ve come out with this public conversation op ed about challenging our new police chief on not contracting with Ring or Vigilant–the company that is trying to give the police [license plate] readers… they given the equipment for free!
Blu: Oh, yeah?
Odessa Kelly: It’s like this odd thing where these—do y’all call ’em P3’s? Public private partnerships. We have these private entities that we let come in, which means that there’s no accountability. There’s no public due process for us, because it’s a privatized company that is doing work on behalf of our government as a public service, a good. So that is always problematic. But when we came up with the public statement of that, people understood what we were pushing for… We’re also working at it from a grass tops level and deterring any public policy that will allow a loophole for that [more surveillance] to happen.
Blu: People have been able to actually understand what you’re talking about and rally behind y’all?
Odessa Kelly: Yeah, and the weakness in there, too, is there’s another group that we try to organize typically: elected officials? …[If] you’re going to defund the police, you gotta talk to the people and make some type of connection with the people who can actually execute the will of the people. You know you can’t just write them off… disregard them. We’ve tried to step into that space as well. Unfortunately, I have a lot of conversations with people I do not care for. And I think that’s because I have a responsibility to my community to make tangible things happen. So the base that we organize is elected officials. There’s power in knowing that we represent 40,000 voting people…
Blu: Voting record is 99% talking about it.
Odessa Kelly: Like that is the language gap… you have to understand this will elect officials here… Yeah. So we try to organize them, and move them, you know, in a way that is more progressive. And it’s worked well. We have people in office who were from a progressive base.
Now, it’s just the education part, because a lot of them do things out of sheer ignornace. Blu, they literally have no idea what they’re doing. So part of surveillance education in Nashville is literally breaking the bad habits… A lot of our elected officials… [are] allowing resolutions to get dropped off to you twenty-four hours before your council meeting. And you supposed to have your first read on it! It’s ridiculous. Say that you have to have at least 72 hours to get the information… if even want to have it introduced. You know, that gives you time, but you’re lazy-ass to read something, because nine times out of 10, you ain’t gonna? When I get it. They’re like, “I don’t have time to read this.” I’m like, “It’s 14 pages. You have a PhD!”
Blu: Yeah. Yeah… well, can I give you my resolution, and you will not read it and vote to pass it? Because that will not happen.
Odessa Kelly: Right? You know, but a part of this is like getting them to understand like, saying “I didn’t know anymore” is unacceptable. Like we’re gonna hold you accountable. Like having the knowledge of knowing this, you know, what this means. And what all it entails before you even vote on it.
Oh, that’s the base that we’ve been organizing.
Blu: Yeah… The last question. If you had a song to describe the vision that your communities are working towards, what would that be? It could be already song, or you can make one, drop some lyrics. I can get your hot beat real quick if you need it.
Odessa Kelly: Let me see. You know what? Our community is in an awakening stage? Not like it won’t ship. But seriously understanding the reality of the moves that we might have to make or do to really understand what liberation will look like, and how to get there. So I would say, This is America, by Childish Gambino is probably a good one, because we’re still in this state of shock. Everything is hitting us, and we’re actively trying to deal with how that trauma is coming out. And all these different ways and pipelines, and how to move that into one cohesive way and that we move right, which is hard. So that’s why I pick This is America. And part of the crux of that song was in the showing the insanity you go through as a Black man is trying to move forward in life.
