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 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 moreWhen the NYPD Rioted
(updated March 4, 2024 to include quotations from Black newspapers) In New York in 1992, about 10,000 off-duty police officers and their supporters protested and about 4,000 of them rioted against then-mayor David Dinkins (who is Black) for his advocacy of an all-civilian review board to monitor police misconduct. Rioting
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
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