Andrea Ritchie

Andrea Ritchie is a Black lesbian police misconduct attorney and organizer whose work focuses on profiling, policing, and physical and sexual violence by law enforcement agents against women, girls and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color. Over the past 5 years Andrea helped found and coordinate Streetwise & Safe (SAS), a leadership development initiative aimed at sharing “know your rights” information, strategies for safety and visions for change among LGBT youth of color who experience of ​​​​gender, race, sexuality and poverty-based policing and criminalization, and now serves as the organization’s Senior Policy Counsel. She is co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization ofLGBT People in the United States(Beacon Press 2011). As a member of the national collective of INCITE! 2003 – 2008, she coordinated the development of the INCITE! Women of Color AgainstViolence Organizer’s Toolkit on Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Colorand Transgender People of Color.Her original piece, LawEnforcement Violence Against Women of Color appeared in The Color of Violence: The INCITE! anthology (2006, South End Press). She was recently awarded a Senior Soros Justice Fellowship to study the experiences of women of color – trans and not trans, queer and not queer – with profiling and policing.