Off-Brand Emergency Edition

Tanika Stewart's story is ours to finish

Hello! If you’ve stumbled upon this post looking for Tanika’s GoFundMe page, it’s right here. Please donate to her advocacy fund. She also has a CashApp handle: $FreeTanika. To learn her whole story, see below.

Just to completely switch gears here, I’m looking for help on a new project that has nothing to do with branding, strategy, or creative process. I should probably kick it off with a trigger warning, but that feels kind of cheap and sensational. On the other hand, you probably didn’t subscribe to this email for Dateline NBC-caliber stories, so a warning is polite.

I’ll do it this way: if you’re triggered by mentions of sexual assault and/or you’re only looking for this newsletter’s usual fare of startup drama and brand-shaming, please return next week for my thoughtful thoughts on the future of remote work and the return of The Wing.

Now, for the rest of us: This week’s story is about a woman who has suffered the kind of bad luck most women could relate to, only to a biblical extreme. Plus, she faced the odds of a racist and sexist system stacked against her, and got buried under the bricks.

During the early morning hours of October 25, 2019, as a house party in Evansville, IN was winding down and most of the guests had cleared out of a residence on South Morton Ave., Tanika Stewart was approached by Antonio Bushrod Jr. and three of his friends. Tanika knew Antonio to be a violent gang member based on videos she'd seen of him on social media and local news stories.

Earlier that night, Tanika had declined Antonio's sexual advances. He continued to harass her and other women at the party both verbally and physically.

At the end of the night, Bushrod cornered Tanika against the railing of the house's elevated porch. He and his friends took turns pushing her, grabbing her buttocks and breasts and hitting her on the head. She yelled at the men to “respect her personal space,” and tried to fight them off with her arms and legs.

Antonio punched her in the face, and when he pulled his hand back to punch her once more, Tanika retrieved her concealed handgun—a firearm that she was legally permitted to carry in the state of Indiana. She fired one shot at Antonio's chest. He later died at a hospital.

Even though Indiana is a "stand your ground" state and it was within Tanika's rights to defend herself, she was subsequently charged with murder and sentenced to 55 years in a state prison.

Tanika and I share a nephew: my sister Olivia has a son with Tanika’s brother, and Olivia has been coordinating with Tanika’s lawyers and trying to get her story told since last year.

I’ve recently joined Olivia in her advocacy work and we’re doing a few things to help Tanika with her next appeal, including:

• Reaching out to journalists who would be interested in covering this story

• Reaching out to organizations and advocacy groups who could offer pro-bono services for Tanika and her family

• Raising funds for Tanika’s legal defense

Tanika's original defense attorney did very little to get her acquitted. He told the Evansville Courier & Press after her sentencing: "In light of the fact that she’s going to get a horrible sentence, I thought it went OK. There was no alternative other than just lock her up for years."

This was someone who Olivia and Tanika paid to fight for her (Olivia sold Tanika’s house on her behalf to cover legal fees) and that was the defense lawyer’s statement to the press after she was essentially given a life sentence for defending herself.

Here are the unreported facts of Tanika’s case that you won’t find anywhere but here. In total, they illustrate the defects of her first trial and a miscarriage of justice by the the Vanderburgh County Court:

• Tanika didn't know Antonio personally, but a few weeks before the October house party, she had seen a video on social media of him and his friends beating another man to the ground and kicking him in the head repeatedly, so she knew him to be a violent criminal.

• Tanika is a single mother of two and a homeowner who worked in a nursing home at the time of this incident. For six years prior, she maintained a legal license to carry a concealed weapon for personal protection. The gun she used was registered to her as the owner, and she stayed at the scene of the shooting until law enforcement arrived. She told the police officers what happened without a lawyer present. She did this because there was not a doubt in her mind that she acted in self defense and did so legally.

• When the police took Tanika in for questioning, they tried to get her to blame somebody else at the party, telling her, "C'mon, you didn't really shoot him. Tell us who did."

• Even though Indiana is a "stand your ground" state that removes the duty to retreat before using force in self-defense, the judge added a 5-year enhancement to her sentence because she used a gun.

• The prosecution called 18 witnesses, Tanika's defense called one, who was Tanika herself.

• The only "proof" to rebut Tanika's claim of self-defense is a grainy and blurry video from a home security camera of a nearby house. In this video, someone is seen retrieving something from a car, supposedly before the shooting occurred. The prosecution fabricated a story around this video, speculating that someone in the video is Tanika, the car is hers, and the item must be her gun, therefore proving the dangerous situation Antonio had created had already been deescalated and Tanika had an opportunity to leave.

• The only person to corroborate this story was one witness, whose word goes against Tanika's. Tanika maintains the person in the video is not her and she did not retrieve her gun from her car so she could go back and shoot Antonio. It was on her person all night, and she did not use it until she believed it was absolutely necessary to prevent further injury to her body.

• Tanika's new lawyer was denied a mistrial when it was discovered that one of the jurors who convicted her knew Antonio Bushrod Jr.'s father, Antonio Bushrod Sr. They attended the same church and were friends on Facebook.

Tanika should not spend the rest of her life in prison—and her two children should not go motherless—because she refused to be a victim. 

It cannot be that we both blame black women for their victimization, and then punish them when they refuse to be victimized. 

If George Zimmerman's acquittal for murdering Trayvon Martin highlighted the racist use of Stand Your Ground laws to brutalize people of color without consequence, Tanika Stewart's life sentence for shooting her attacker in self defense reveal these laws to be doubly racist. Persons of color are victimized by Stand Your Ground laws, and then denied the right to self-defense these laws purport to advance.

Here are a few different ways you can help us reverse this miscarriage of justice and #FreeTanika

1. Forward this email to any and everyone you think should hear this story. The more people who are watching and following, the more pressure there is on everyone involved in the case to act justly and responsibly from now on.

2. If you know any journalists or advocates who would be interested in Tanika’s story, please forward this email to them. Even the NRA or other second amendment orgs should be interested defending Tanika’s rights as a gun owner.

3. Donate to Tanika’s advocacy fund, either through GoFundMe or to $FreeTanika on CashApp:

   

   4. Follow @FreeTanika on IG for news, updates, and sharing.

And finally, upgrading your subscription to this newsletter also helps with the #FreeTanika project, as I’ll be donating at least a 1/3 of subscription proceeds as well.

If you haven’t bounced yet, thank you for your time and attention. I’ll be back next week with regular programming!

Tanika and her two daughters.