Weaponizing Memory: Reclaiming the Past, Preserving Black Voices, Reshaping the Future

Author: Elizabeth Porter
​Learner | Deliberative | Restorative | Includer | Relator 

Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, as the oldest of five children, my identity has always been shaped by a legacy larger than myself. My family’s history is rooted in community — in feeding it, serving it, and standing with it. My father owned Porters Place BBQ, a beacon in Tacoma until 2012. It wasn’t just a restaurant; it was a place where generations gathered, where people found comfort in food and in the warmth of our family. It was Black-owned, Black-built, and deeply rooted in the belief that community care is radical and revolutionary.

After my father passed, I returned from college to a Tacoma that had changed in many ways — gentrified, more polished on the surface, but still carrying the same spirit I knew as a child. It looked different, but it still felt like home. The echoes of my family’s legacy lived on, and I felt a responsibility to honor that legacy — not through BBQ, but through social work.

Today, I stand not behind a counter, but in community clinics, churches, meetings, and advocacy spaces — doing the same work my family taught me to do: to serve, to fight, to heal. I am a Black social worker, and I carry my parent’s voice in everything I do. They taught me that dignity matters. That showing up for people is the work. That feeding bodies and feeding souls are not so different after all.

But my path has not been easy. Being Black in the social work field — especially as a Black woman who also lives with a disability — has meant navigating a system that often tries to define me by what it misunderstands. During the height of COVID-19, I experienced racism in its most raw and violent forms: I had objects thrown at me. The police were called on me — not because I posed a threat, but because my presence in certain spaces as a disabled Black woman disrupted the narrow boxes people expect us to fit into.

It was dehumanizing. It was terrifying. But it was not the end of my story.

​Instead, it became the fuel for a new chapter — one where I use my lived experience as expertise. Where I speak up for others who’ve been silenced or stereotyped. Where I create space for disabled, Black, educated professionals who are not anomalies, but part of a rich legacy of resilience. I do this work in a city that raised me, in memory of a father who poured love into ribs and cornbread, and in defiance of systems that once tried to erase me.
Now, I work for an agency that not only sees me but amplifies me. I'm part of programmatic and policy efforts that seek equity, not as a buzzword but as a practice. I get to help shape services that center clients' lived realities, advocate for anti-racist healthcare, and mentor the next generation of social workers — particularly those who’ve never seen themselves reflected in power before.

Now, I work for an agency that not only sees me but amplifies me. I'm part of programmatic and policy efforts that seek equity, not as a buzzword but as a practice. I get to help shape services that center clients' lived realities, advocate for anti-racist healthcare, and mentor the next generation of social workers — particularly those who’ve never seen themselves reflected in power before.
In many ways, I’ve learned that weaponizing memory is about more than remembering; it’s about using memory to build. It’s about reclaiming our family stories as roadmaps for the future. It’s about holding space for Black voices — past and present — so that we don’t just survive but lead.

I am my father’s daughter. I am my community’s hope. I am a Black, disabled, educated woman — and I am exactly who I was meant to be.

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