I’ve just submitted the draft of my piece about the Jena 6 that is a substantial extension and revision of the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago. It will need a 20% cut before publication and responses of editors and reviewers may lead me to rethink my
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Black Protests of 1990s and 2000s in Black Newspapers vs Mainstream Newswires
My research team just posted a working paper that compares Black newspapers and mainstream newswires in their coverage of Black American protest events. In this paper we are just trying to lay out the big patterns we see in the data so we can do more work to refine the
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Coverage of Black Anti-Police Protests
I’ve just posted a new working paper to SocArXiv. Current title is “Unarmed Violence, Police Perspectives, Community Struggle: Black- and White-centric news accounts of Black Protests about Policing in the U.S. 1994-2010” although the title will probably evolve as we decide how to shape the discussion. We compare mainstream White-centric
Read moreCincinnati 2001: Police Killing of Timothy Thomas and Insurrection
General Background The events in Cincinnati were often referred to as the largest riot or rebellion since 1992 in Los Angeles and/or the largest riot or rebellion in Cincinnati since the 1960s. On Saturday April 7 2001, 19 year old Timothy Thomas was shot and killed while running away from
Read moreCincinnati 2001 Protests: A First-hand account
A narrative by Carl Sack about his experience during the 2001 Cincinnati protests. Carl wrote this narrative at the request of Pam Oliver, who had heard him describe these incidents. Carl is a White man who is now a PhD Geographer who is on the faculty of a community college. This
Read moreBiggest Black Movement Criminal-Legal News Stories 1994-2010
Our research project is using articles from mainstream newswires (as archived in the Linguistic Data Consortium’s Annotated English Gigaword) and Black newspapers to identify Black protest events in the 1990s and 2000s. This is an under-studied period in Black movement history. In this article we summarize the most newsworthy episodes
Read morePaths for Reducing Mass Incarceration
This paper “What the Numbers Say about How to Reduce Imprisonment: Offenses, Returns, and Turnover” is somewhat out of date as it is based on 2016 data and was published in2020, but a conversation brought it to mind. The paper asks: what would it take to get US imprisonment back
Read moreSchool safety without police: Kaziah’s story
I want to tell you a story that came up at a monthly meeting of folks from different Madison-area groups who get together to talk about how to build support for police-free schools. You may recall that last year there was a big fight at East High where police were
Read moreMillion Youth Marches
Although the “Million Youth March” is often referenced in later years as one of the examples of Black solidarity after the huge and inspiring Million Man and Million Woman marches, the reality was low attendance and a lot of conflict. After the success of the 1997 Million Woman March, older
Read moreThe Jena Six: Of nooses, fights, narratives, and movement building
NOTE: Since writing this blog I have gained more information and have written a longer paper with more details that gives a somewhat different slant on some events. I will link to that paper when I’ve finished revising it. There was a huge wave of Black protests in the wake
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