The Unseen Siege: Eviction as State Violence Against Black Women and Families

The images from the Ruben Peeler case are burned into our collective consciousness, a Black man in mental health crisis, an eviction notice as a trigger, a wellness check that quickly turned into a hyper-militarized police siege. The community has rightly rallied around Ruben. We see the visible, acute violence of the state’s response, the SWAT team, the armed jurisdictions, the snipers in the church across the street, the immediate threat to his life. 

But there is another, quieter siege happening every day. Eviction. Kellie, a Black mother of four, is not facing police in tactical gear, instead, she and her children are facing the slow, grinding violence of displacement, the violence of instability, hunger, and exhaustion. After being evicted, her family’s crisis is one of basic survival, finding stable housing, securing consistent food, having gas to get from one place to another, and even accessing something as fundamental as clean laundry. This is what state-sanctioned violence looks like. An eviction is the state’s ultimate enforcement of property value over human value. A court order that empowers armed sheriffs to physically remove a family from their home creates destabilizing and life altering trauma. One that is statistically more likely to target people like Kellie and target Ruben. While we must continue our unwavering support for Ruben, we must also understand that Kellie’s struggle is worth fighting for. Ruben’s crisis was made visible by police militarism, while Kellie’s is invisibilized by bureaucratic procedure, yet both are rooted in a system that devalues Black life and Black stability. 

“Our fight for Black lives must be fought at the police line and at the landlord’s door…

[Kellie] too is under siege.”

Black women face eviction rates disproportionately higher than any other demographic. This is not about individual failure, this is the culmination of historic injustices such as the racial wealth gap, employment discrimination, predatory lending, and the gendered burden of caregiving in a society with no safety net. To be a Black woman facing eviction is to confront a legacy of state violence that began with chattel slavery, continued through Jim Crow housing policies, and is maintained today through underfunded social services, stagnant wages, and a profit-driven housing market. An eviction notice is a document that inflicts psychological terror, financial ruin, and physical displacement that destabilizes families, disrupts children’s education, and launches people into deeper poverty. As we just witnessed with Ruben Peeler, the notice comes with the state’s full power readily available to enforce it. 

Kellie’s crisis is the predictable outcome of this system. Her struggle for basic needs is a direct indictment of a structure designed to keep her on the brink. The stress of eviction is a heavy weight, carried while trying to be the sole caregiver for four children, including a toddler who needs consistent breathing treatments. The choice between gas for the car or food for the table is a cruel debate that no parent should ever have to make. Kellie doesn’t need charity, she needs a village. The village she seeks is a necessary strategy for survival in the face of state violence. Where the state sees a disposable tenant, the village must see a mother, a neighbor, a human being deserving of dignity and stability.

Our compassion cannot be limited. The solidarity extended to Ruben, rooted in the understanding that he needs care and not cages, must also flow to Kellie. She too is under siege. She needs material support such as housing leads, laundry assistance, emotional support, financial help that can go towards a deposit, grocery and doordash giftcards, and gas. And with that, she needs us to name her struggle for what it is, a form of state violence against Black women. Let us not allow Kellie’s crisis to be invisibilized until it potentially escalates into something even more catastrophic. The village must mobilize now, not just for Kellie, but in recognition of the countless Black mothers facing this same violent displacement every single day. Our fight for Black lives must be fought at the police line and at the landlord’s door. It must see the acute crisis and the chronic one, understanding they are both caused by the same system. Kellie and her children need the village to show up, now. 

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