When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

by Patrisse Cullors

many jails that makes up the Los Angeles County jail system. It will be years, I will be grown, before she tells me what she saw, the child she bore, the one who loved animals and who once laughed easily, her big six-foot-two son, emaciated, more than 40 pounds gone from his suddenly frail frame. He is bruised and beaten. By who? My mother demands to know, but Monte won’t say. He is too scared to say. Years will pass before I learn that Monte was in a full-blown episode when he was taken to jail. He was hearing voices. His mind had been folded in on itself, and shaken brutally. The jail psychiatrist is the first to provide a diagnosis that explains why Monte has these mood swings, this erratic behavior: he has schizoaffective disorder. But they do not tell us this. We learn it later, much later. After he is in prison. Way after. Like we will learn later that the sheriffs at the LA County Jail were the ones who beat him for his illness. They beat him and they kept water from him and they tied him down, four-point hold, and they drugged him nearly out of existence.