Today we’d like to introduce you to Shelly Baker.
Hi Shelly, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
I am 29 years old. I grew up in New Orleans and moved to Virginia, 9 months before Hurricane Katrina. I went back to New Orleans a year after Katrina for 4 months to help rebuild our house and assist my family with their rebuilding efforts. I started doing advocacy work for foster youth due to my own experience of entering the foster care system at 17. Most of my advocacy work in Virginia was working with a small community group that implemented holistic services based in one underserved community and serving on a state board to advice on foster care policy. After getting my Master’s degree in Social Work, I moved to Houston in 2019 for a climate justice fellowship with 350 and the Gulf Coast AFL-CIO.
I started organizing around climate justice and helped plan the 2019 Houston Climate Strike in the wake of Tropical Storm Imelda. This was my first experience in Houston organizing in the midst of a natural disaster. After the climate strike, I volunteered with West Street Recovery to help muck houses. During my time with 350, I tried to organize both issue and service based events, for example not just planning protests, but also planning community cleanups with neighborhood based groups in 5th Ward.
Say Her Name TX (formerly Say Her Name Htx) was founded in the summer of 2020. I was still looking for stable employment after working on a U.S. Senate race in March and the world was in the midst of a global pandemic. I noticed many of the local organizers were getting burnt out with the continuous labor of fighting for Black Lives. In the midst of the George Floyd protests in Houston, I realized that there was no Breonna Taylor protest planned. Two days before what would have been Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday, I collaborated with Black Lives Matter Houston, various social justice groups, and community volunteers to plan a protest to demand justice for Breonna Taylor on June 5th, 2020. Attendees were given information on how to support a national ban on no-knock warrants and how to contact their city council members about defunding HPD.
The protest centered Black women and I was purposeful in including our trans Black sisters as well. After the protest people kept asking me what was next. How can we continue to have an inclusive space for Black women organizers that centers the issues that impact Black women?
I was hesitant to make any official group or organization because I did not want to disrupt any of the work already being done and was very aware that at the time, I was still very much a new-comer in the Houston organizing space. I decided to continue to engage in abolition and mutual aid efforts on my own, such as raising money to buy supplies for protestors released from jail after the George Floyd protests and planning a Juneteenth celebration that focused on celebrating unity in the Black community and uplifting Black women and the Black LGBTQIA+ community. I got together various artists to perform in-person and live-streamed the performances to an audience. I wanted to make sure we had a chance to celebrate Black women not just in strife, but in life, so I also used to event to raise funds for Sabrina Lewis, Ms. Black Texas USA and the legendary Black transwoman advocate and journalist, Monica Roberts.
After that event, it became clear that I needed a way to continue to organize outside of my personal channels so I made Say Her Name HTX social media accounts in order to keep my organizing separate from my personal life. But then people continued to ask me how they could get involved and what was next.
I was so against being just another non-profit or organization that it actually took a friend sitting me in their office and surprising me by starting to fill out the articles of incorporation on their computer.
That was in August 2020 and I am shocked on how fast we have grown. Since then we’ve planned voting registration drives and spoke out about voter suppression in Texas, raised awareness about Black maternal mortality, helped distribute masks and COVID-19 resources to 3rd Ward residents, led the launch of the emergency mutual aid efforts in Houston during Winter Storm Uri and raised funds to support recently bailed out Black mothers on Mother’s Day.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Say Her Name Texas is very new but I happened to create an organization that has been extremely effective at the work we set out to do. I think people see the work we have done, and assume that we are a stable, established organization with full-time staff and adequate funds. But most of the work has been accomplished by myself with the help of one or two board members and volunteers. Everyone, including myself, works demanding full-times jobs in addition to the time we give to Say Her Name Texas.
There is a lot of pressure on me as a leader to create a welcoming and inviting space for Black women who want to organize and fight for social justice, however when you are still trying to establish a board and find additional leadership needed to accommodate the needs of an organization like Say Her Name Texas, some things do fall through the cracks…like figuring out how to file the right non-profit tax paperwork or having the time to support other work being done in the community that aligns with our mission.
Another challenge is because we have stepped up in certain situations, there is a constant pressure for Say Her Name Texas to always step up and respond, even when we have communicated that we do not have the capacity. We have often been the “first ask” when needs arise in the community even though there are numerous other well-established organizations with paid staff and funding who are more well equipped to handle the community’s needs.
And lastly one ongoing challenge is being respected as Black women organizers within the non-Black organizer community. We continually deal with situations where Say Her Name Texas has collaborated to serve people and taken on the lion’s share of the labor but then we deal with having our methods questioned by non-Black organizers and we often deal with our work being erased or diminished in the aftermath.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Non-profit organization
How do you define success?
I am definitely celebrating bringing more leaders into Say Her Name Texas. In the last 2 months we have been able to add 5 new board members which has been a relief to myself and my other board member and co-founder, Onjheney Warren. We are also hosting 4 organizing interns this summer who are all Black and Latina young women ranging from ages 16-20, who are being paid a living wage by KIPP.
Success is being able to be a resource and space for all Black women, regardless of age or gender identity, who want to fight for social justice in Texas. Success is the event we had on Juneteenth this year and seeing young Black trans girls celebrated and smiling as they get their makeup done. Success is one day having the money to create a mutual aid fund so we can continue to support Black women and Black non-binary organizers in need. Success is one day not seeing Say Her Name Texas as my organization but as our organization because other Black women will feel comfortable leading and taking owner
Contact Info:
- Email: shelly@sayhernametexas.org
- Website: https://www.sayhernametexas.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sayhernametx/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sayhernametx
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sayhername_tx
Image Credits
I took all the images or they were taken with my personal phone
