interventions
The President and the Police
A second Trump presidency may render police accountability elusive. But, as before, people and communities can and will fight back.
police violence
24 posts in ‘police violence’
A closer look
Whitewashing Police Violence
'Excited delirium syndrome' is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.
In Their Words
Poems on Policing
Poetry has the power to help us grow past the stale and rote ways of thinking about safety that tend to characterize policy discussions.
A closer look
A Pattern of Injustice
The Ferguson report was a landmark. But the Department of Justice needs to do much more to empower communities in the fight to end police abuse.
Essay
The Ferguson Decade
A decade on, Ferguson remains central for those working toward a world free from the harms of policing and prisons.
abolition
Community Is a Verb
Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.
Policing
Safety Without Police
Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis, communities have been radically reimagining a world that doesn’t depend on policing.
Beyond Reform
Disability Justice Demands Abolition
When people need care, then the solution should be to get them care, not increase the risk of police violence.
Policing
‘I’m Just Different, That’s All’
We embrace nonconformity in principle—but not for Black men, whose quirks can provoke fear, policing, and punishment.
excerpt
Dare to Report
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
public history
The Promise of Marronage
Stories of Black flight from enslavement continue to offer lessons for radically rethinking public safety beyond policing.
campaigns
Do You Know Their Names?
When slain by police, Black women and girls rarely garner the same communal outcry or political response as their fallen Black brothers.
book review
What the Rebellion Taught Us
For a moment, the George Floyd uprising made the white supremacist power structure tremble. Let's hold on to that and carry it forward.
Policing
Making Cops Pay
Ending qualified immunity won’t solve police violence. But making officers feel the sting of their actions in court can get us a step closer to ending it.
In Depth
Criminalizing Survival
The criminal legal system heaps more violence on victims of gender-based violence. Abolishing these structures is the only way to protect them.
activism
Black Power Meets Police Power
The experiences of Michael and Zoharah Simmons show that the fight against the carceral state is embedded in a larger project of building a just world.
legal history
Blood in the Borderlands
Mexicans and Mexican Americans have long been targets of legal and extralegal violence by the police. Learning this history is a step toward ending abuses that persist to this day.
Media
Justice and Journalism
How we're helping journalists report more deeply, more precisely, and more carefully on the law, on the criminal system, and towards justice.
Photo Essay
Archives of Resistance
The movement to end police violence has a rich visual history. In Brooklyn, a collective of volunteers is doing its part to preserve it.
interventions
A Secret Stash of Power
Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.
excerpt
Repression and Backlash
The tangle of policy responses following the 2020 uprisings over police violence shows that both Republicans and Democrats failed to meet the moment.
democracy & power
Culture Wars and Criminalization
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Safety
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
excerpt
Sexual Policing
Law enforcement of women’s bodies is a structural and systematic form of police violence. All of us are less safe if we don’t end this brutal expression of state-sanctioned power.