When the NYPD Rioted

In New York in 1992, about 4000 off-duty police officers and their supporters rioted against then-mayor David Dinkins (who is Black) for his advocacy of an all-civilian review board to monitor police misconduct. Rioting police broke down police barricades, damaged vehicles, and blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for an

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Recent Anti-Police Brutality Protests Since George Floyd’s Death are Far Larger than Previous Black Lives Matter Protest Waves

Much excellent work has been written about the need for systemic reform of policing in the US, the discrimination and inequalities faced by Black Americans, and the brave struggles of anti-racist protesters amidst the ongoing police repression and the unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic. As social movements go, the ongoing mobilizations

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The Importance of Demonstrating that Communities Can Police Themselves

Chloe Haimson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, haimson@wisc.edu Note: This piece is based on research collected for a forthcoming paper in Mobilization.  In recent weeks, heated interactions nationwide between protesters and police, were sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American, by a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin.

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The Top Social Justice Stories of 2017 that will Define 2018

2017 was a tumultuous year. In many ways, the country moved backwards on some issues of social justice that many believed had begun to move forward. The Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, which President Obama had previously put the kibosh on due to environmental concerns and the protests of

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Victim or villain? Racial/ethnic differences in the portrayal of individuals with mental illness killed by police

News reports about individuals killed by police have dominated the news cycle in the past few years. But how are individuals killed by police portrayed in the media? Are there racial/ethnic differences in media portrayals? If there are differences, what are the implications for public perceptions of these killings? In

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