plaintiff: shranda from milwaukee, wisconsin. i do not know how to describe this look, but i’m an old lady. okay let’s start at the top: her hair is royal blue and she’s wearing a blue tie-dye (airbrushed??) hoodie and matching pants under a denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up, i’m assuming to show off her forearm tattoos. there is a lot going on here! she has an accordion of truth™ and is clearly trying not to burst out laughing!
defendant: calvina and tu’mira from milwaukee, wisconsin. goddesses, truly. wearing long weaves and coordinated black shirts and patterned black-and-white pant combinations, these two are also moisturized to the gods!
the complaint: shranda and calvina used to be friends, and after calvina moved out of shranda’s house without notice, they came back and jumped her. oh my stars, this is gonna be good.
what does she want: $3000 for fight damages? i think??? it’s unclear. calvina and tu’mira are countersuing, of course, “for the assault.”
how it went down: before the case gets started greg gives a shoutout to himself (lmao) and a group of men who helped send 100,000 cases of water to flint, michigan. the men are in the audience and they’re all black and wearing fezes and dark sunglasses, and seeing them immediately brought to mind this time i went on a date with this dude i didn’t know was one of these black separatist moors until he showed up at the brunch spot in a fez loudly exclaiming that he doesn’t believe in united states’ currency and is sovereign from its laws before passionately explaining to me that he was currently locked in a legal battle with the government in an attempt to sue them so that he could be released from the bonds of his social security number. look, do whatever you want who cares, but: if you have a totally normal okcupid profile that doesn’t so much as hint at the fact that you are going to accost a woman whose heavily filtered photos and carefully curated profile were okay enough to make you want to leave your mother’s basement in the middle of the day on a tuesday and berate her to join you in a class action lawsuit against fucking united states treasury while you wait in line for a plate of overpriced french toast at orange? ELECTRIC CHAIR.
omg okay so shranda and calvina met at a homeless shelter and became really, really good friends. they left the shelter and kept in touch, remaining close. that’s nice! in june calvina and her three youngest daughters went to stay with shranda. at first everything was cool and they didn’t have any problems. but then calvina worked third shift and often wouldn’t come home until three in the afternoon rather than at seven when she got off work, leaving her kids in shranda’s care, and that’s not how that was supposed to go down. shranda says that calvina’s oldest daughter was 12 and that she could watch the others when someone was home but shranda didn’t feel safe leaving them alone, so it got in the way of her doctor’s appointments and errands and shit. there also was the issue of calvina’s children being loud and not cleaning up after themselves, which shranda says is the least they could do.
tu’mira, calvina’s daughter, has a son around the same age as shranda’s. tu’mira’s son would hit hers when they came over to visit, and when shranda brought it up neither calvina or tu’mira did anything about it. shranda even went so far as to message tu’mira on facebook (yessss black auntie facebook mess!) about it but says she didn’t respond, and that’s what led to “the incident.”
calvina says that yes she met shranda (whose nickname is “red”) in the shelter and yes they hit it off and she thought of her as a little sister. calvina left a domestic violence situation and did bring her kids to live with red. within two weeks of their staying with her, the children reported that red would be doing “petty things” to them when she would leave for work and calvina confronted her. red refused to talk to her about their issues, so calvina decided they needed to move out.
red says they moved out in july. calvina and tu’mira were in the living room while red was in her bedroom with her son and her niece, asleep. red woke up from her nap and walked out of her room to discover that not only were they and all their belongings gone, but they had raided her cabinets and emptied her refrigerator as well. calvina hadn’t given her any notice, but red says she texted her “i’m not trippin, that’s cool, just bring me my spare key.” august 1 red is coming back from the gas station and sees calvina parked in front of her house. she asked if she could get her kids’ coats from inside and red ran upstairs to get them and bring them down. when she opened the door to go out and hand them the coats red discovered calvina and tu’mira on the porch, about to bum rush her.
red says as soon as they rushed her tu’mira put her in a headlock, but red was able to grab tu’mira’s “really long weave” and wrap it around her neck. i’m sorry, what? you were able to what?? calvina is like “ooh, you’re a liar!” and then red pulls some printed out photos from her accordion of truth™ that show her with a hugely swollen black eye and a large section of hair ripped out of her bloody scalp. tu’mira is shouting “you tried to mace me! you deserved it!” while red shouts incoherently at the judge. after part 1 of the fight calvina then apparently put a coat between the door and the frame to keep it from locking while she ran to the car to retrieve her phone so she could record part 2.
calvina says “how dare this girl stand in your face and lie like this” and i love the way black people revere judge mathis. it’s like when a reverend walks in the room and you automatically sit up straight and start calling everybody “sir.” she is absolutely offended that red would disgrace this honorable man’s courtroom with these lies and slander. so am i, hmph. calvina asks if she can show the judge a video of the fight and you already know what he’s gonna say! okay so it looks like tu’mira does indeed have red in a headlock and that red is gripping tu’mira’s long braids, all while calvina is calling out stage directions from behind the camera (“beat her ass, tu’mira!”) while keeping the phone carefully level. tu’mira isn’t wearing shoes, a distinct disadvantage if you ask me, then red starts biting her i think? but in red’s defense tu’mira has her arm around her head and is slow-motion punching her in the face! you always think you want to see a real fight until you’re actually watching one, when it’s all awkward movements and blows that sound like two hot water bottles slamming into each other. gross!
the ruling: the video ends and greg is pissed because calvina kept encouraging the assault instead of breaking it up, and calvina revealed her motive in the video, saying they were beating red up for something she’d said to her on the phone. (commercial break: should i order a my pillow? looks like i need one) greg heard calvina say, “yeah! yeah! beat her ass for what she said on the phone! beat her ass!” calvina and tu’mira look chastened and greg continues, “so now you beat it, your claim is dismissed! beat it! beat it!!!” judgment for the plaintiff!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “ARE YOU SURE?? THIS IS UNBE-WEAVE-ABLE!!!”
*bangs gavel*