Background

WSMV 7 News Blast

WSMV News 7 issues a news alert on television after Anthony Crum fraudulently reports Khaila to the Child Abduction Unit.

Police Alert on “Kidnapping”

Rutherford County Sheriff Office bulletin for Missing Children “Endangered Children” showing images of Iris Crum and Khaila.

Iris testifies about abuse

In a 2023 video recorded by Iris’ maternal grandmother. Iris talks about the scars on her body and how she got them.

• Khaila had sole permanent custody of daughter Iris Crum in 2020.
• On a visit with father, Anthony Crum, in 2020, Anthony took Iris and never returned her.
• From 2020-2021 (8 months), Khaila sought help to get her daughter back without success.
• From 2021-2023, Anthony moved Iris to various states, resulting in legal issues in each state.
• In May 2023, Iris’ school contacts Christina, Iris’ grandmother, to say Iris had been abandoned.
• This is the first time they had any news of Iris since 2021.
• Anthony eventually picks up his daughter and reaches out to Christina, telling her that he cannot take care of Iris because he does not have any money or resources.
• Anthony returns Iris to her grandmother, Christina, with significant signs of abuse: cigarette burns, hair missing and frail.
• Christina records Iris revealing that Anthony gave her those scars.
• Khaila calls CPS in California to report Anthony.
• The California courts ignore the evidence of abuse.
• Khaila also calls DCS in Tennessee, where she had been living at the time. DCS did not show up to an evidentiary hearing. Tennessee also ignores evidence of abuse.
• Anthony retaliates by calling the Child Abduction Unit (CAU) on Khaila, saying she kidnapped her child and brought her to Tennessee.
• The system ignores evidence of violence. Instead of protecting Iris, they take Anthony’s side. He is white.
• Tennessee and California issues warrants for Khaila’s arrest.
• Several news and police agencies blasts out a kidnapping alert and mugshot of Khaila; winning support from some people on social media to talk about the case.
• The media has shown that it will bend over backward to depict white men as heroes and Black women as villains.
• Khaila who was 5 months pregnant was arrested, extradited to California and held for 5 months on a $1.1 million bail.
• Iris is returned to Anthony Crum. Her location is unknown.
• Khaila and her mother, Christina, hired attorneys, spending over $50,000, to no avail.
• January 2024, Anthony Crum and Iris, are in a motor vehicle accident. Anthony Crum dies on the scene. Iris is taken to Anthony Crum’s father.
• California Family Code 3010 (b) states that upon death, the child must go to the other parent.
• Khaila immediately goes to Family court and is awarded custody.
• Khaila and ANWO members go directly to the home of Dale Crum, Anthony’s father. He is not there. Iris is not there.
• Khaila calls the Sheriff’s office for help, as directed to do when she was awarded custody. However, the Deputy did not help.
• When Khaila asked the Deputy to do a welfare check, he refused.
• Iris is still missing. Possibly hurt from the motor vehicle accident. Neither Khaila nor Christina have seen Iris since 2023.

ANWO Gets Involved

ANWO got involved in 2024 at the family’s behest. We attended criminal and custody hearings for Khaila and Iris. All down the line we have seen the demonization and criminalization of Khaila Czereda Wilks without cause.

The ONLY reason Khaila is still dealing with a criminal case and does not have custody of her child is because the colonial state sided with Anthony Crum, a known criminal in several states, who abused Iris and admitted his ineptitude.

Meanwhile, Khaila, a married mother of three, is prevented from caring for her daughter even after his death. California Family Code 3010 (b) is clear that when one parent dies, custody automatically goes to the other parent. However, the state still will not return Iris to her African mother.

Family Support

Khaila’s family at a criminal court hearing in 2024 to free a pregnant Khaila from prison on false allegations of kidnapping and child endangerment.

We have decided to stand with Khaila and Christina and demand that Iris be returned to her mother. This case is not purely custodial, this is clear bias where an African woman caught a felony kidnapping case and is currently labeled a threat to her daughter, at the behest of a white man.

Take Action

Use the letter linked below to demand justice for Khaila and Iris. Or send personalized statements to:

Attorney General Rob Bonta  openjustice@doj.ca.gov
cc: Public Inquiry Unit piu@doj.ca.gov
cc: mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov
Call: (916) 210-6276
For TTY/TDD, call (800) 735-2929 

San Diego County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit 
CASRU@sdcda.org
cc: SanDiegoDA@sdcda.org
cc: mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov
Call: (619) 531-4040

Take Action

More ways to Help

1. Share the hashtag #WhereIsIrisCrum #ReuniteIrisCrum #JusticeForKhaila #ProtectBlackFamilies on social media.
2. Email and call the key officials demanding immediate action.
3. Engage with media outlets to amplify this issue.
4. Participate in Twitter storms and rallies

This fight is not just for Khaila and Iris—it is for all African mothers and families facing the colonial state. Take action today!

Assets

Short email to key officials :

Subject: Urgent Action Needed – Justice for Khaila Wilks and Iris Crum

Dear Attorney General Bonta and District Attorney Stephan,

I urge your immediate intervention in the wrongful prosecution of Khaila Wilks Czereda, a mother unjustly charged with child abduction due to fraudulent legal actions, perjury, and prosecutorial misconduct in San Diego. Despite holding sole legal and physical custody of her daughter, Iris Crum, Khaila has been criminalized through the misuse of outdated court orders and suppression of exculpatory evidence. I am requesting the immediate dismissal of all charges, a full investigation into Attorney Nancy Wilson and the Crum family for fraud, accountability for judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, and the swift return of Iris to her mother as required under California law. This gross injustice must be corrected immediately—I look forward to your urgent response.

Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Organization, if applicable]
[Your Contact Information]

Respectfully,
<signed>

Check back for additional assets.

Sonya Massey, along with Alberta Spruill,  Eleanor Bumpurs,  7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, Deborah Danner,  Aaliyah Anders, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor were all murdered by the colonial state; and these women are only a few named. 

The police are a violent occupying force in the African community.  They do not come to protect and serve, they come to dominate and occupy. It should come as no surprise that African women, who are part of the colonized African masses along with the rest of 
African people experience the same violence from the state that often leads to injury or death. 

African women have been beaten, sexually assaulted, profiled, harassed, and murdered by the colonial police who, nine times out of ten, aren’t held accountable for their crimes. This treatment is a continuation of the initial attack on Africa that rendered African people property and made the special oppression of African women the norm. These heinous interactions have not changed as African women of all ages, economic status, hues, with mental issues or without continue to suffer at the hands of the police.

African women are tired of our people being killed and are screaming for police reform.  However, reform does not end police killings or ensure our freedom. Instead, it puts us in negotiation with a state apparatus that exists only to maintain power over us. 

It begs the question, how much longer then, should we wait for the oppressor to criminalize itself? When will African women or our whole people, for that matter, gain freedom in “the land of the free and  home of the brave?” 

The truth is that we will never be free or safe under U.S. domestic colonial terror. One cannot wear enough chucks or pearls, or be the black face of U.S. imperialism, or be a basketball playing negro President and think that these things will bring us freedom. 

Freedom is won through the blood, sweat, and struggles of the people fed up with an oppressor that constantly takes from us – our lives, our money, our labor and so much more.

The solution is to do as our ancestors have done in every generation since Africa was attacked and its people became the perpetual victims of colonialism. That is to fight, organize , and  fight some more, but this time we don’t stop until this monster is slain.   

The African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is an organization of African women who understand the treatment of African women everywhere is a direct result of colonialism, which is the antithesis of human development and self-sufficiency. 

The police are not killing African women because of racism – the ideas of superiority in white people’s heads.  We are being killed because of the colonial mode of production, which requires the violence and occupation of the struggling oppressed masses.

Colonialism reinforces imperialism,  feudalism, slavery, and patriarchy therefore it is necessary to destroy the colonial mode of production. In other words, we need to create spaces for us, by us to fight for freedom and liberation in the name of Sonya Massey and so many others who’ve been martyred by the colonial state. 

We must commit to end the political and social oppression and economic exploitation of African women and all African people.

Ajike’s life was stolen like the lives of so many other African people domestically colonized within the borders of the U.S Colony-at the hands of White Vigilantes and colonial police.  

African and Native people, indigenous to this land, have been suffering from colonial oppression and domination since the U.S. Colony was created. The list of Africans we have lost since this violent occupation continues to grow and the time for justice is now.

Nothing this colonial “justice system” will do, will bring Ajike back.  Nor will it stop other Ajike’s from dying in the future.  Ajike will never get to hold her children, laugh, cry, or feel anything ever again.  

Stand your ground laws rooted in settler colonialism

Susan Lorincz appears in court after killing Ajike

As Ajike bled out in front of Lorincz’s door; her baby crying over her body, Lorincz had already developed a defense under the Florida law of Stand Your Ground.   

We were introduced to this law in February 2012 when a 17-year-old African teenager, Trayvon Martin, was killed by white vigilante George Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense after stalking and harassing Trayvon as he walked home after purchasing candy from the store. 

Zimmerman was ultimately acquitted, by a 6-woman jury who accepted self-defense as justification for murdering Trayvon. 

Marissa Alexander during her trial

However, when Marissa Alexander, an African woman living in Jacksonville, FL,  attempted to use this as a defense when protecting herself from abuse,  she was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison, despite not having killed anyone.

The violence we are experiencing today is the same violence that stripped African people from our homeland to slave for white colonizers as part of their process of colonizing this land, robbing native indigenous peoples of their homeland. 

The same patriotic Americans who so vehemently proclaim allegiance to the colonial U.S. flag are defending their rights to stolen land,  the foundation of the stand-your-ground laws that allow the colonizers to go free while African and other colonized people are trapped by it.  

It’s not meant for us.  The slave master makes freedom illegal for the slave. The trail of African bodies is evidence of this.  The problem does not lie with this specific law or with the violent actions of white vigilantes, or the colonial police. 

The problem is that, even though African people in the U.S. have fought to chisel out human rights concessions,  we still live under colonial capitalism. We will not find peace or freedom until we destroy the pedestal of power that places white power colonial policy over the lives of the colonized.  For us, it’s not enough for our lives to matter, we must have the power to prevent harm and exact justice if we are harmed. 

Unfortunately, we do not have that power any place on the planet, but it is possible to build it.   We are building it. 

We must Organize and Replace the colonial mode of production with a system that ushers in Black Power.  The time to protect and defend the lives of African and other colonized people is NOW or, we will keep experiencing this violence.

The African National Women’s Organization is an international membership-based organization for African women, formed by the African People’s Socialist Party as a part of our revolutionary strategy to occupy all spaces of resistance.  The Party recognizes that African women are specially oppressed under colonialism and that we have an interest in resisting that oppression through organization.  

Comrades in San Diego hold protest in support of Uhuru 3 comrades.

How can we expect justice for Ajike under colonialism, when organizing for African freedom has been criminalized? The U.S. State Department has indicted the Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party Omali Yeshitela and two other leaders of the Uhuru Movement, Jesse Nevel Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, and Penny Hess, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, for promoting this freedom.  

Chairman Omali Yeshitela has dedicated over 52 years to building the Uhuru Movement,  which boasts African members and supporters from all over the globe.  He also organized white solidarity with the African revolution, which calls on white people like Chairs Jesse Nevel and Penny Hess to organize white people to defend our struggle for self-determination and win reparations for the African community.  

So there is a stance the colonizer can take to reject their position on the pedestal and to work side-by-side with African people fighting for liberation.  This is the future.  To not take that stand, sitting on the sidelines acting as if Susan Lorincz is a bad apple, is to maintain your position on the necks of African and other colonized people. 

We call on African women in particular to not accept this!  You must support your interest by joining ANWO and getting involved with creating a world where colonialism will no longer exist because you had a hand in destroying it. The time has come that we take control of the means of production so that we can live in true Freedom and Prosperity.  Not for a few of us, but for “All of Us”. 

At our March 2023 Black women’s convention, ANWO established leadership for our safety and security program.  We are building our capacity to defend ourselves as the crisis of imperialism deepens and the level of white vigilantism escalates.  You can expect future opportunities with ANWO to participate in creating safe communities, protecting ourselves from harm, and training to protect others.  

Sign up for our newsletter  to learn about us, the African People’s Socialist Party, and our Solidarity Movement.

Once again we express our deepest sympathies to the family of Ajike Owens.  Ajike’s death will not be in vain.  Long Live Ajike Owens.  Rest in Power, sis.

On December 31, 2018 white male, Daniel Taylor, attacked African woman, Yasmine James; a worker at a McDonald’s on the South side of St. Petersburg, Florida.  

In a video posted on the internet, Daniel Taylor can be seen arguing with Yasmine James before lunging across the counter grabbing her by the collar and pulling her toward him.  

James responded quickly to free herself from his grasp; by punching Taylor in his head and face, until he loosened his grip.  After Taylor was pushed back, he proceeds to snap his fingers and bark orders at the mostly African staff, demanding a refund and the firing of James, while also calling her names.  

He is eventually escorted out of the store, but then returns to yell at the workers before kicking another African woman worker.

He was eventually arrested and charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault and held on $1000 bond.   

He couldn’t control the African working class

At one point during the attack, Daniel Taylor yells, “I couldn’t control you” to explain why he resorted to violence after a defiant Yasmine James refused to serve him.  

This is the culture of violence that define the white oppressor nation.

After all, it was the control of and violence against the African working class that established the hoarded wealth of the white world and impoverishment of the African nation, resulting  in the worldwide system of parasitic capitalism and colonialism, as explained by Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party:

“It was this savage aggression against Africa, Asia and the Americas that raised Europe from a disease-ridden habitat of warring tribes to a dominant force in the world.”

“Europe is today inhabited by a people whose sense of sameness is both defined and challenged by the unifying parasitic capitalist economy that puts them in opposition to the rest of the world upon which their economic lifeline depends.”

It was the four hundred years of forced labor and the unfettered access to African resources that created the pedestal of oppression upon which Europe and the rest of the white world sit, which is proven by asking the following question posed by Yeshitela:

“Would capitalism and the resultant European wealth and African impoverishment have occurred without the European attack on Africa, its division, African slavery and dispersal, colonialism and neocolonialism? The answer is No! No! No!”

The white world is shaking in their bootstraps, as their future is increasingly threatened by Africans and other oppressed people resisting the imposed conditions that define our current conditions as dominated people.

Yasmine James’  resistance to being controlled is representative of the same resistance that defines the African working class who are punching the face of capitalist exploitation and colonialism.  

It is part of an ongoing culture of resistance by African people that has loosened the controlled grip which has defined our lives for hundreds of years.

Colonial violence plain and simple

This attack has raised questions about the protection of women, in general, as if this was just a question of James being a woman. As materialist we have determined that there is no such thing as women in general; the idea that all women have a common oppressor and that oppression is gendered.

The reality is that there are two groups of people; those people who belong to the oppressor colonizer nation and those who belong to the oppressed colonized nation.  The oppressor nation is parasitic, forcefully extracting the labor and resources of the oppressed nation to maintain itself.

Which means that even the women of the oppressor nation benefit from the oppression  and exploitation of the men and women of the oppressed nation. This includes oppressor nation women who experience violence at the hands of oppressor nation men.  

While James happens to be a women, it is clear that this incident represents the dichotomy of the oppressor versus the oppressed, the colonizer versus the colonized.

The attack on Yasmine James by Daniel Taylor is part of the long history of  violence against the colonized and oppressed African working class, by the white oppressor nation.

It cannot be separated from the sexual violence, beatings, experimentation,  murders of African women and men that define the parasitic relationship that the white nation has had with us since Africa was first attacked.

From police and vigilante violence to state sponsored kidnapping of African children, the African poor and working class are most often confronted by of this colonial relationship.

African women

African women are integral to African resistance. Not only in the physical momentary fight, but in the ongoing struggle to free ourselves from the grips of a colonial oppression.

Who better than us to help define what a free and liberated African people can look like? We are confronted with the specific oppression that comes from both the oppressor white nation and from within the colonized nation.

Therefore, we have the most to gain from destroying the oppressive conditions that come from capitalist colonial domination of our entire people.

We call on Yasmine and other African women to join the revolution; to join the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) in order to really fight for ourselves and the women of the class.

The African National Women’s Organization is a membership-based mass organization created by the African People’s Socialist Party and is part of the overall Uhuru Movement; which was created to address the special oppression of African women.

We exist to build the revolutionary capacity of African women, with a focus on the poor working class. We do this with the understanding that for African women and people to be free we need to have a world-wide revolution led by African poor working class.

As the only anti-imperialist, anti-colonial revolutionary African women’s organization, ANWO is leading on the everyday issues that impact the lives of African women.

Join our action on Saturday, January 5, 2019 at 3pm in front of the McDonald’s at 4595 34th Street South in St. Petersburg, Florida.  To get additional details contact our local organizers at 727-914-3617.

We are winning!

Power to the African working class!