"They go right after our children": illnesses and resistance of mothers of police brutality victims in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

This paper addresses the experiences of Black women organized in social activism to fight for justice for the deaths of their children, victims of police brutality. These deaths are analyzed as part of the genocide of Black people and result from the action of a State operating in a necropolitical fashion, in which racism is an ideological tool for the production of disposability of Black bodies. In this work, the stories of four women living in territories dominated by gun violence in Rio de Janeiro reveal how they organize themselves politically to fight for justice, memory and reparation; and their illnesses and individual and collaborative care strategies. We observe the refusal of their demands by the health system and the social assistance policies, while the activism stands out as a producer of care and acceptance.