Description
Since Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, discourse about racially targeted policing and imprisonment in the US has proliferated. This course will put current debates in context by exploring interdisciplinary materials that provide critical perspectives on policing, imprisonment and proposals for reform. We will examine policing and imprisonment in criminal punishment systems, immigration systems and psychiatric and medical systems, looking for overlaps and distinctions between how these systems implement policing and imprisonment. We will draw from intersectional feminist scholarship, critical disability studies, anti-colonial scholarship, critical ethnic studies, critical legal studies, and queer and trans studies. We will examine contemporary debates about approaches to reforming policing and imprisonment and the role of grassroots social movements in analyzing these systems, building pressure for change, and developing alternatives.
Required Readings
The required books for this class are Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (2017), Walidah Imarisha, Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption (2016), Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (eds. Ben-Moshe, Chapman and Carey) (2014), Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016), Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (eds. Heatherton and Camp) (2017). All other readings will be posted to Canvas.
Schedule
Week 1
September 20
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric, pp. 5-18, 23-37, 41-55, 77-79, 105-109, 131-135, 151, 156.
Optional:
Read all of Citizen.
Anjali Kamat, The Baltimore Uprising, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 73-82.
Week 2
September 25
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016), 21-74.
September 27
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016), 135-190.
Optional:
Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Heeding the Call: Black Women Fighting for Black Lives That Matter, in Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (eds. Schenwar, Macaré and Price) (2016), 125-131.
Week 3
October 2
Robin D. G. Kelley, Thug Nation: On State Violence and Disposability, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp) 15-33.
Justin Hansford, Community Policing Reconsidered, From Ferguson to Baltimore, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, 215-225.
Critical Resistance, “Policing in the United States, 1845-Present” timeline, available at http://criticalresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/policing_timelinenew.pdf
October 4
Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, 19-43.
Policing the Crisis of Indigenous Lives: An Interview with Red Nation, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, 109-119.
Optional:
Kelly Hayes, Our History and Our Dreams: Building Black and Native Solidarity, in Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (eds. Schenwar, Macaré and Price) (2016), 133-146.
Policy Platform, Movement for Black Lives (2016), https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/.
Week 4
October 9
Guest Speaker: Dan Berger
Angela Davis, “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation,” (1971) http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davispoprprblli.html
Optional:
Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, Chapter 7, “Secret Police, Red Squads, and the Strategy of Permanent Repression,” 239-287.
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers (Chapter 5 on the Black Liberation Movement, Chapter 7 on the American Indian Movement), available at https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20Power!/SugahData/Government/COINTELPRO.S.pdf
October 11
Guest Speaker: Amanda Schemkes
Amanda Schemkes, “Resisting the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act”
Kris Hermes, “Did the FBI Use Occupy Cleveland to Equate Activism with Terrorism?” December 9, 2012 http://www.alternet.org/did-fbi-use-occupy-cleveland-case-equate-activism-terrorism
Will Potter, “The Green Scare,” 33 Vermont L. Rev. 691 (2009), pp. 1-14 only.
Week 5
October 16
George Lipsitz, Policing Place and Taxing Time on Skid Row, Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 123-140.
Asset Stripping and Broken Windows Policing on LA’s Skid Row: An Interview with Becky Dennison and Pete White, Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp) 141-149.
Broken Windows, Surveillance, and the New Urban Counterinsurgency: An Interview with Hamid Khan, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 151-156.
October 18
Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore, Beyond Bratton, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 173-200.
Ending Broken Windows Policing in New York City: An Interview with Joo-Hyun Kang, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 63-71.
Optional:
Alex S. Vitale and Brian Jordan Jefferson, The Emergence of Command and Control Policing in Neoliberal New York, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 157-172.
Week 6
October 23
Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, 104-143
October 25
Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, 144-202
Optional:
Victoria Law, Your Pregnancy May Subject You To Even More Law Enforcement Violence, in Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect? (Eds. Schenwar, Macaré, and Price) (2016) 91-102.
Emi Koyama, State Violence, Sex Trade and the Failure of Anti-Trafficking Policies, buy this $5 zine here: http://store.eminism.org/state-violence-sex-trade-and-the-failure-of-anti-trafficking-policies.html, Read it here: http://eminism.org/store/pdf-zn/complexities2.pdf
Everyday Abolition, “On running a community-based murder investigation, resisting violence against Indigenous women, atomic bombs and burnout: An interview with Indigenous feminist Audrey Huntley,” 2014, https://everydayabolition.com/2014/01/21/on-grassroots-resistance-to-violence-against-indigenous-women-independent-murder-investigations-atomic-bombs-and-burnout-an-interview-with-indigenous-feminist-revolutionary-audrey-huntley/
Week 7
October 30
Julia Sudbury, A World Without Prisons: Resisting Militarism, Globalized Punishment and Empire, Social Justice; 2004; 31, ½, 9-30; https://inside.mills.edu/academics/faculty/eths/jcoparah/sudbury_world.pdf
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Khaki and Blue: A Killer Combination, Read Intro Page here: http://www.incite-national.org/page/khaki-and-blue-killer-combination; and Fact Sheet: http://www.incite-national.org/sites/default/files/incite_files/resource_docs/9988_toolkitrev-khakiblue.pdf
Jewish Voice for Peace, “Deadly Exchange” Campaign Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txN6WZsZB7E
November 1
Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, 88-103.
Chris Chapman, Five Centuries’ Material Reforms and Ethical Reformulations of Social Elimination, in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (eds. Ben-Moshe, Chapman and Carey), 25-44.
Harriett Tubman Collective, “Solidarity: Completing the ‘Vision for Black Lives,’” (2016) https://harriettubmancollective.tumblr.com/post/150072319030/htcvision4blacklives.
Optional:
Nirmala Erevelles, Crippin’ Jim Crow: Disability, Dis-Location and the School-to-Prison Pipeline, in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (eds. Ben-Moshe, Chapman and Carey), 81-99.
Chris Chapman, Allison C. Carey and Liat Ben-Moshe, Reconsidering Confinement: Interlocking Locations and Logics of Incarceration, in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (eds. Ben-Moshe, Chapman and Carey), 3-24.
Week 8
November 6
Rachel Seevers Guest Speaker
David Feige, “When Junk Science about Sex Offenders Infects the Supreme Court,” New York Times, September 12, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/opinion/when-junk-science-about-sex-offenders-infects-the-supreme-court.html
Mark Friedman and Ruthie-Marie Beckwith, Self-Advocacy: The Emancipation Movement Led by People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (eds. Ben-Moshe, Chapman and Carey), 235-254.
Optional:
Rosalind Adams, “Locked on the Psych Ward,” BuzzFeed, December 7, 2016, https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosalindadams/intake?utm_term=.lmj3QV3dR#.dn8BWDBdz
Watch: Frontline, “Solitary Nation,” PBS, April 22, 2014, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/solitary-nation/
November 8
The Hunger Strikers’ Handbook, 2017, http://www.hungerstrikershandbook.org/download.html.
Sarah Lazare, “What a Brutally Violent ICE Raid Can Tell Us about Trump’s Creeping Police State,” Alternet, March 29, 2017, http://www.alternet.org/immigration/immigration-and-customs-enforcement-just-another-name-trumps-federal-cops
Resisting State Violence in the Era of Mass Deportation: An Interview with Mizue Aizeki, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 207-211.
Garrett M. Graff, “The Green Monster: How the Border Patrol Became America’s Most Out-of-Control Law Enforcement Agency,” Politico, November/December 2014, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/border-patrol-the-green-monster-112220.
Week 9
November 13
Guest Speaker, Martina Kartman
BYP 100, “Summary Statement: Re: Community Accountability,” March 2017, http://transformharm.tumblr.com/post/158171267676/summary-statement-re-community-accountability
Danielle Sered, “Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration,” New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017.
Optional:
Walidah Imarisha, Angels with Dirty Faces, Introduction (p. 1-18) and “Walidah” (p. 78-138).
November 15
Liat Ben-Moshe, Alternatives to (Disability) Incarceration, in Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (eds. Ben-Moshe, Chapman and Carey), 256-272.
Week 10
November 20
Mariame Kaba, “Navigating Call-Out Culture”
Bench Ansfield and Jenna Peters-Golden, “Not Succeeding in Transformative Justice”
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, “Pods and Podmapping Worksheet,” https://batjc.wordpress.com/pods-and-pod-mapping-worksheet/
How Liberals Legitimate Broken Windows: An Interview with Naomi Murakawa, in Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, (eds. Heatherton and Camp), 227-236.
Andrea Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color 203-232.
Mariame Kaba, “Police Reforms You Should Always Oppose,” Prison Culture (2014), http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2014/12/01/police-reforms-you-should-always-oppose/
Optional:
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “The Worrying State of the Anti-Prison Movement,” Social Justice, February 23, 2015, http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/the-worrying-state-of-the-anti-prison-movement/
Stevie Peace and the Team Colors Collective, “The Desire to Heal: Harm Intervention in a Landscape of Restorative Justice and Critical Resistance,” in Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Moments and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, AK Press 2010.
INCITE!, “Community Accountability Working Document,” http://www.incite-national.org/page/community-accountability-working-document
Cheyenne Neckmonster, “What to do when you’ve been called out: A brief guide,” https://archive.org/stream/what-to-do-when-youve-been-called-out#page/n1/mode/2up
wispy cockles, “Taking the First Step: Suggestions to People Called Out for Abusive Behavior,” http://soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=613
Week 11
November 27
“What To Do Instead of Calling the Police: A Guide, A Syllabus, A Conversation, A Processs,” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Y0LwX0uOz-P63FVhV0OFkDObbBXcy16YPOcsqnBqto/edit
GenerationFIVE, “Ending Child Sexual Abuse: A Transformative Justice Handbook,” at http://www.generationfive.org/the-issue/transformative-justice/
November 29
Shannon Perez-Darby, “The Secret Joy of Self-Accountability,” in The Revolution Starts at Home, (eds. Chen, Dulani and Piepzna-Samarasinha)