A SPECIAL TRIBUTE { {BLACK WOMEN ROC} }
TIFFANY PORTER YOU ARE ENOUGH. NICOLE HEROUX WILLIAMS I PHOTOS BY NSP STUDIO BY BY ALLISON GRACE HARPER I PHOTOS BY ALLISON MCDONALD
T I F FA N Y P O RT E R AND HER QUEST FOR RADICAL HONESTY Described as “a tremendous leader, willing to grow and learn,” by one of her nominees, Tiffany is a powerhouse at the intersection of the All Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA and the disabled peoples’ rights movements. “People don’t know that when they look at me that I am disabled. I flair up for days and sometimes I can’t get up. I physically can’t. Other days I feel like I could run a mile.” Tiffany was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when she was pregnant with her first son, and has been dealing with it since. Despite the pain, Tiffany kicked it into overdrive this last year, amplifying Black voices and building anti-racist culture in the suburbs around Rochester. She’s been changing the discourse, for underrepresented groups, but the work she’s been doing has not been without backlash. People and hate groups have been angry enough to send her death threats and post her address online. “It’s disgusting. I’ve been getting attacked regularly. My youngest son has really bad anxiety, he says he’s afraid I’m going to die so I had to get a camera for my doorbell. It’s dangerous.” Despite the personal risks, Tiffany has been calling out racism where she sees it, calling in allies, holding food, clothing and bike drives, and hosting events, panels and organizing protests. She focuses 38
ROCHESTER WOMAN ONLINE : AUGUST EDITION 2021
on mutual aid, food sovereignty, antiracist curriculum, and she advocates for mandatory anti-racist training at all levels of government, education and public facing positions. “She has been a bright light during a very dark year for so many,” said one nominee. “She is an unapologetic Black woman’s voice that is so needed in the suburbs.”
A little over a year ago, her activism shifted into full throttle. “My tipping point was when George Floyd was murdered. My boys were the first who told me about it because my older two are on social media, and they got it on their Snapchat. We were
watching the video together and crying. My youngest son kept asking me ‘Mom, why is he holding his knee on his neck like that? Mom? Why?’ and he had tears coming down his eyes.” Tiffany didn’t have an answer. “They looked completely depleted, they looked soulless, like someone had taken the light from their souls, and all I could see in that video was my brother or sons on that ground. I thought, ‘If I don’t do something, this is going to hit closer to home.’ People don’t care until it happens to them. It’s someone else’s issue, and it will never happen to them, but it can. It will.” Tiffany believes that empathy can be a powerful call to action. “When something shitty happens to someone else, just imagine that it happened to you, and ask yourself what you would need to make yourself whole or closer to whole again.” For Tiffany, that was activism. She started engaging in conversations in Fairport groups, but was censured and muted. “I tried to talk about the realness of structural anti-blackness in other groups, and they would delete my posts and tell me that the topic of race was too political. How is my Black life political?” She decided to create her own groups, founding Being Black in the Burbs and co-founding the Fairport Coalition for Justice and Equity. “I created these groups so I could focus on anti-blackness and focus on education and anything the hell I wanted to and also so I could organize protests.” Organizing
