"Close Ranks and Fortify”: Black Liberation Scholar Dr. Charity Clay Advises on Memphis Complicity

The professor speaks on what Black women need to understand about non-fatal police violence and the rise of state-sanctioned abductions

Tennessee lawmakers passed a law that makes it illegal to film police within 25 feet,

Chicago resisted. Portland resisted. Memphis folded.

At a time when people with power tell the country a familiar story about crime waves and dangerous cities and the supposed necessity of federal intervention, Memphis stands as a case study in what happens when state and federal authorities work in total alignment, without public resistance from political leaders. Because while cities like Chicago and Portland publicly rejected militarized deployments coming from Washington, Memphis officials have cooperated fully.   

People in Memphis aren’t being arrested; they’re being disappeared. 

This summer Tennessee lawmakers passed a buffer law that makes it illegal to film police within 25 feet, which means civilians are forced to stand back and watch without intervening while people are taken off the street by a patchwork of law enforcement agencies. The public is told it’s about violent crime, yet arrests and detentions are happening for traffic stops and civil infractions and numbers simply don’t match the fear-based narratives circulating nationwide.

What’s happening in Memphis reveals a widening gap between what the federal government promised to accomplish with these deployments and what the data shows is actually occurring and to look too closely at that failure would expose just how inflated the rhetoric about Memphis has been. 

Helping folks understand police violence in the social media era 

Dr. Charity Clay has been paying attention and not from a distance. Dr. Clay is a visiting professor at Rhodes College, a former fellow at Harvard University and a scholar whose work centers Black liberation across historical and contemporary resistance movements. For more than 10 years she has studied non-fatal police violence and developed a framework for understanding systemic police terrorism in the age of social media with a forthcoming article that examines what it means for Black people to survive this violence every day.  

Her recent public thread about the federal deployment in Memphis cut through the noise because it explained what so few outlets were willing to name: People in Memphis aren’t being arrested; they’re being disappeared. And the lack of media coverage isn’t an accident but the outcome of political cooperation narrative control and a federal operation that’s not producing the numbers it promised. In our conversation Dr. Clay lays out what is happening on the ground, why the story is being buried and what Black communities. especially Black women, need to understand about the rise of state-sanctioned abductions in this moment. 

BGX: You have spent more than a decade studying non-fatal police violence. How does what is happening in Memphis fit into the larger framework you call systemic police terrorism? 

Dr. Clay: Systemic police terrorism is about understanding the purpose of policing is not only to kill but to terrorize the living. It is not an isolated event. It is a constant presence that shapes the daily lives of people in Black communities. Memphis is a clear example because the non-fatal violence here is concentrated in traffic stops which have always existed but are now intensified. People survive this terror every day, and that survival is the piece we have been trained not to see. 

BGX: You’ve said Memphis is different from places like Portland or Chicago because local leaders are cooperating fully with federal deployment. How does that cooperation show up on the ground? 

Dr. Clay: The governor and the mayor are aligned with Trump’s framing of public safety. There is no resistance to federal involvement. That means multiple agencies are operating at once with little accountability. You’ll see highway patrol, DEA, FBI, city police, county police and even officers from across the Mississippi and Arkansas borders patrolling one city. When that many agencies overlap it becomes easy for people to be taken with no oversight. It creates the conditions for state sanctioned abductions. 

BGX: You intentionally use the word “abductions” instead of arrests. Why? 

Dr. Clay: Because these are not lawful arrests. People are being taken without due process by recently deputized or undertrained officers, and their families are not notified. They are disappeared. That is an abduction. And we need to name it as such because naming changes how community members understand their role as witnesses or potential intervenors. 

BGX How is the new twenty-five-foot buffer law shaping what people can do or even see? 

Dr. Clay: It limits bystander footage, yes, but it also limits bystander intervention. We have been conditioned to believe the only power we have is to record. But intervention can mean calling community support to the scene or creating enough disruption that an untrained deputized officer gets nervous about going through with an abduction. The law tells people to stand back and stay quiet which is exactly what the state wants. 

BGX: Federal officials said they needed to intervene because Memphis was overrun with violent crime. You argue this deployment is failing on its own terms. How so? 

Dr. Clay: Their whole operation relied on the assumption that Memphis is full of criminals they could easily round up. But Memphis has low population density. People mind their business. They did not find the numbers they expected. So instead of violent offenders they are detaining people for speeding or a broken taillight or other civil infractions just to justify the manpower they brought in. And that mismatch is part of why there is so little national coverage. To cover it honestly would expose their failure. 

BGX: What does the lack of mainstream media attention tell us about how stories of state violence get distributed? 

Dr. Clay: It tells us that stories that expose state failure are not profitable or convenient for mainstream outlets. Paywalls matter. Short form platforms matter. But the biggest factor is that covering this accurately would show that millions of dollars were spent for almost no return. Citizen journalism is happening but intentionally outside mainstream channels because surveillance has made those channels unsafe. 

BGX: How are Memphis residents interpreting the mayor’s cooperation with federal forces? Is there broad support or division? 

Dr. Clay: It’s split. Propaganda has trained people to see policing as the only answer to violence, so some residents believe federal presence equals safety. But policing has never solved violent crime. The mayor should be addressing housing affordability, environmental racism, access to good jobs. Those are the roots. Not this. 

BGX: You’ve emphasized that Black women and queer folks are the most vulnerable in this moment. What makes the risk so high? 

Dr. Clay: Overcrowding in jails affects women first because they lose access to hygiene and menstrual health. Black women, especially those heading households, risk losing custody if they are detained even briefly. Queer and trans folks face increased risk of sexual violence at the hands of the state. And many people cannot afford bail, so detention becomes punishment without conviction. Gender and class shape every part of vulnerability. 

BGX: You’ve described this moment as one in which communities need to “close ranks and fortify.” What does that look like in practice? 

Dr. Clay: It means focusing energy on building new worlds rather than only resisting the old one. We cannot build a future in the image of the world that is collapsing around us. Wealthy communities keep themselves safe through care networks and resources not police. We need to do the same. Community care resource sharing and creating systems that restore the humanity the state tries to take are essential. 

BGX: For  BGX readers especially Black women organizers, mothers caregivers, healers what should they be paying attention to or doing right now? 

Dr. Clay: Pay attention to the language being used. Pay attention to who is being disappeared. Build networks that can mobilize quickly. Support local organizers working outside state surveillance. And remember that liberation work is not only about fighting, it is about creating the conditions where we can live and breathe and imagine ourselves into futures the state is trying to erase.