To sisters Salamishah and Scheherazade Tillet, cofounders of the nonprofit A Long Walk Home, the six-part documentary Surviving R.Kelly not only brought much-needed attention to the R&B singer’s alleged crimes; it helped to finally center the voices of sexual-violence survivors of color who have traditionally been left out of mainstream conversations about gender-based violence.
“We provide a space for these girls to be trained as artists and activists and to address how these issues of racial and gender injustice, as well as class and inequality, impact them,” says Salamishah.
Those are questions that Chicagoans, in particular, should be asking themselves, she says.
