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 moreWhen 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
Read moreRecent 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
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreDismantling the Minneapolis Police Department
Note: This post originally featured on scatterplot. Over the past 4 years, I’ve studied community perceptions of the Minneapolis Police Department. With a team of students, we conducted qualitative interviews with over 100 residents and 20 leaders of police reform/transformation/abolition groups; tracked reform efforts by the MPD; and attended city
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Black Men and the Politics of Redemption
This is a long review of a book I highly recommend, Nikki Jones‘s The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption University of California Press (2018) so let me begin by highlighting the material that struck me most vividly. This is the first piece I have read that
Read moreThe 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
Read moreThe Harmful Effects of Implicit Racial Bias in the Police
In a study of police body camera footage recently undergone by researchers at Stanford University, it was found that police officers on average spoke less respectfully to black residents than their white counterparts. This meant that black community members were less likely to be addressed with a formal greeting, titles
Read moreVictim 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
Read moreSome thoughts about building community trust of police
A local reporter sent me an email asking my opinion of proposals to increase community trust of police. My “some general comments” turned out to be really long, so I decided to put them in a blog post. Then I edited it a bit more. As I write, this has
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