NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Hi, everybody.
The Center for the Study
of Slavery and Justice
welcomes you to the
series This is America,
a series of conversations
about racial slavery,
its legacies, and
anti-Black racism.
And today, we convene
in a panel of experts--
scholars and activists--
for today's topic,
Breaking the Thin
Blue Line of Bigotry:
How Outcries For
Police Reform Have
Led to the Call for Abolition.
And I'm excited to say we
have about 700 people today
logging on to talk about
this important topic.
My name is Nicole
Gonzalez Van Cleave
and I'm a fellow here at the
Center for Slavery and Justice,
as well as an associate faculty
in the Department of Sociology
at Brown University.
And as you may know, my
research in the book Crow County
examines how overt racism
was culturally practiced
in all facets of the
criminal justice system,
looking most closely at
courts, but looking at jails
and policing.
How mostly white attorneys,
police, and often,
sheriff's officers,
created racist narratives
about black and brown immorality
to streamline convictions
at all costs in Chicago,
the largest unified court
system in the US.
And at the time, people said
Chicago was the only place--
or must be the
worst jurisdiction--
but what we've seen is this
is a nationwide problem.
And police were
omnipresent in the work.
DAs were often admitting
to racist police practices,
planting drugs on defendants,
and in the worst case,
beating or killing suspects.
DAs were expected to comply
with police's stories of events,
and none were charged
for their crimes.
This is what I call the
thin blue line of bigotry,
a code of silence
and violence that
allowed for the harming of
Black and Latino defendants
and the compliance of
law enforcement, and even
attorneys, to sustain
such practices.
But now we fast forward to
the death of George Floyd.
And we see an officer
brazenly looking
at the camera, his
hands in his pockets
as he defiantly
killed Mr. Floyd,
despite the desperate
pleas of onlookers.
This officer knew
what many of us
scholars, as well
as activists, have
researched and experienced--
is that an entire system--
a culture-- would protect
such abuse and even murder.
So today we are
going to go deep.
And we're going to
discuss these dynamics
with this amazing
panel of experts
that I want to introduce to you.
I want to thank them,
first, for coming.
And so we welcome and thank
Professor Monica Bell.
She's an associate professor
of law at Yale Law School
and an associate professor of
sociology at Yale University.
Her areas of expertise include
criminal justice; welfare law;
housing, race, and the law;
qualitative research methods;
and law and sociology.
Some of her recent
work has been published
in Yale Law Review, Law and
Society Review, and the Annual
Review of Law and
Social Science.
She is a prolific
public scholar,
with her writing featured in
the Washington Post and the LA
Review of Books, to name a few.
She holds degrees from Furman
University, University College
Dublin, Yale Law School,
and Harvard University.
Professor Brittany Friedman
is an assistant professor
of sociology at
Rutgers University.
She is the author of the
forthcoming book Born in Blood:
Death, Work, White Power, and
the Rise of the Black Guerrilla
Family, which is under contract
with the University of North
Carolina Press in the special
series Justice, Power,
and Politics.
Her book examines the
institutional practices
of white supremacy
within prison,
resulting strategies to
eradicate Black protest,
and the racially
violent consequences
for prison social systems.
Professor Friedman
holds a PhD in Sociology
from Northwestern University.
Marco A. McWilliams is a
public historian, a published
writer, and activist
with nearly two decades
of engaged scholarship work
in convening diverse learning
communities.
He was the founding instructor
for the influential Black
studies program at DARE--
Direct Action for
Rights and Equality.
His research focuses
on Black history
through the framework of Black
radical tradition of thought.
Mr. McWilliams has
taught and workshopped
broadly in colleges, middle
schools, high schools,
organization, and
interfaith communities.
He's currently a program
director and educator
at Brown University
Swearer Center,
where he was the 2017
junior fellow practitioner
in residence.
Mr. McWilliams has a BA in
Africana Studies from Rhode
Island College, and in 2020,
he begins graduate school
in the Department of American
Studies at Brown University.
Dr. Chris Roberts has
earned his PhD in Africology
and African-American studies
from Temple University
and an MA in Ethnic Studies from
San Francisco State University.
He is a current Center
for Social Equity
and Inclusion research fellow.
He examines Black geographies
of memory and forgetting,
with an emphasis on
port cities in the US
that anchored the transatlantic
and domestic slave trade.
Prior to teaching
at RISD, he's taught
at Brown University, where he
was an Artemis AW and a Martha
Joukowsky Postdoctoral
Fellow at the Pembroke
Center for Teaching
and Research on Women.
Before that, he taught
at Rutgers University
in Camden, New Jersey and Temple
University in Philadelphia.
So I want to extend a warm
welcome to everyone here.
It's really an honor
to be on this panel.
And I think, right now,
it is such a tough time.
And I wanted to start the
panel where we often don't go.
And as you segue into
telling us a little bit
about your research--
but if we could
start with Professor Bell,
we'll go down the entire line.
If you can introduce
yourself to the listeners who
are Zooming in and tell
us about your research.
But also, tell us emotionally
how this time has been for you
and what your visceral reaction
has been to the current events.
So Professor Bell.
MONICA BELL: Sure.
Thank you so much.
I'm really happy to be here and
share space with all of you.
So I think the main point I
would like to talk about is--
and then maybe
I'll actually start
with the end of your question,
the kind of emotional part.
Which is that it's been
a really difficult time
on multiple levels,
mostly having
to do in part with the fact
that people are just realizing
the depth of the racism that is
endemic to a lot of what police
do.
And that, like I've actually
been taken aback and surprised
by how many people I've had
conversations with who seemed
surprised.
Like there was nothing--
there's been nothing about this
that is surprising to me.
That relates a lot
to the research
I've been doing for the
past nearly a decade,
that I've organized more
recently around the concept
of legal estrangement.
And essentially,
what that idea is
is that instead of looking
at communities of color
and thinking, why don't
they trust the police
and how do we build the trust
between Black communities
and the police.
Instead, the framework
has to examine
how various institutions of the
state, with the police being
often the front face of the
state in Black communities,
especially in
urban communities--
examining how those
institutions engage
in processes of exclusion
that are subjectively
felt by people in
those communities,
and in those places.
And that change
of lens is really
important for thinking about
the types of interventions
you might do.
So for many decades,
we have been--
and I don't know who the we is--
it doesn't really include me,
but OK.
But someone has been
trying to engage
in certain processes
of police reform
that really focus on individual
interactions between the police
and singular individuals, with
this idea that if you make
those fair and just, that
individual fairness will bleed
out into structural fairness.
But it's really clear
that that's not the case
because the function of policing
is fundamentally flawed in such
a way that the racial control
and the various structures
and ideological
positionalities of policing
make it impossible to
reform in that way.
You need much more
fundamental transformation.
One of the things that's been
really exciting to me-- so now,
I'm not just alarmed by how
new racism is to people.
But I'm also hopeful.
In part, because
for the first time,
we've really started
to see conversations
that take into account
the deep rootedness of--
and it kind of the possibility
of bifurcating the ideas
of public safety from policing.
That there has
been this narrative
in which they flow together.
And I think we're
finally starting
to have really hard
conversations about what
public safety looks like without
relying on the police to do it.
So I'll stop there
but I'll look forward
to continuing the conversation.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE: Wow,
that's great Thank you so much.
And we'll turn-- I
was going to say,
we should go a little casually.
We'll refer to Professor
Friedman and everybody else,
too.
We'll go by first names.
So Brittany, if you
can please talk to us
a little bit about the
emotions, as well as the segue
into your research.
BRITTANY FRIEDMAN: Thank you
so much, Nicole, for having me.
Yeah, I also-- I
need to echo Monica.
I would say that the amount
of people surprised by bigotry
in law enforcement
has been off-putting
because it is no secret
the function of policing
is racist at its core
and its objective.
And so for me, in reflecting,
especially for our discipline,
in thinking about these
ongoing struggles for freedom,
I want us as sociologists
to not shy away
from intent in our
theorizing and in our praxis.
And what I mean by this
is as sociologists,
we talk a lot about
structural racism.
We talked about
its consequences.
But we should also be talking
about intent and instrumental
violence that serves law
enforcement as white supremacy.
And for example, why
don't more scholars speak
on the racist code in
the context of prisons,
which is where my research is--
the racist code
correctional officers
follow as social control.
To sort of-- to turn the
gaze, to be Foucauldian.
Turn the gaze, so to speak.
The racist code that
correctional officers
weaponize to make sure
that prisoners remain
divided, for example.
What would happen
to our theorizing
if we looked at the carceral
state from this perspective,
where intentions are
systemic and they're
working at different
levels of violence.
And so my book
research does this
by centering prisons
in our discussion.
And one of the ways
I accomplish this,
in terms of looking
at intent, is
by showing how correctional
officers partnered
with white supremacist prisoners
to target Black freedom
fighters because of
their political beliefs.
And I show that there's
various examples of this.
And to give a few
of them, one would
be arming white supremacist
prisoners with street knives,
while Black prisoners are
having to makeshift shanks,
knowing that a hit is coming.
Or spreading rumors.
Spreading rumors
that Black prisoners
are out to get you to
instigate racial animus.
This is what I mean when
I say law enforcement
as white supremacy--
really focusing
on, that is intentional.
It's a hit.
And other ways I also
document examples
of correctional
officers sexually
assaulting Black freedom
fighters as punishment--
as a form of degradation.
These are political.
These constitute, as we
talked about, war crimes.
These are war crimes
against Black protest
that are arguably
easier to carry out
within a total institution where
the people incarcerated are
already relegated to a number.
They're already relegated
to a number status.
And so this is not metaphorical
racial violence and racist
ideas, but this is
instrumental use
of violence behind the notion
of what Dubois would say
is this white above all.
Even across status
boundaries that we might see,
there's a sense of white
above all, and no more else
than in prison.
And that's what
I think we really
need to grapple with
when thinking about how
novel is this, really.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: And you've
given me a connection when
you talk about intentions.
We will get back to that,
intentions as systemic.
I want to revisit that.
Especially in relation to
how scholars are talking
about racism and policing.
In my own case, in jailing
and policing in Chicago,
often the police officers, when
arresting Latino defendants,
would say wait till
you get to the jail.
And they would use Black
defendants as scare tactics,
saying there will be Black
men who will rape you.
And I think we're not talking
about that kind of relational
violence when we talk about
anti-Black racism and how--
I think you used the
words weaponized--
it can be weaponized.
So let's come back to all those
really great, amazing ideas.
Marco, how are you feeling?
And tell us a little
bit about your work
as a scholar activist
and the emotions
that the current events
have brought to you.
MARCO A. MCWILLIAMS:
Yeah, thank you, Nicole.
The first day that I saw
the George Floyd video--
this was, of course,
after Ahmaud Arbery.
This was, of course, after
Amy Cooper in Central Park.
And I came to what I
imagined at the moment
was a realization of
something that I'd
never been able to fully
admit to, at least to myself.
And that was that this country--
and by this country, white
civil society legitimately
hated black people.
In the words of James Baldwin,
these people just cannot
possibly think that
we're human beings.
And I was like, maybe
we all made a mistake.
Maybe after the Civil
War, we actually
should've just got out of here.
We should have just left
by any means necessary.
That's how I felt. Who
are we to actually believe
that we could exist
in this country
and make it some notion of
a multiracial democracy.
I was like, that was
150 year fool's errand.
Maybe we just should
have all left.
Perhaps it's not too late.
How do I get out of here.
That's what I felt, right?
And then I started seeing
the energy in the street.
I started checking in with
folks around the country.
And was like, all
right, the streets
was doing what they do
when they have to rise up.
And that started
to invigorate me.
That started to bring
back that hope that
always moves within me,
that change can happen.
Because at the end of the day,
I'm a hopeless optimistic.
I'm like, we survived here
like over 400 years like this.
The Black radical
tradition is that we're
going to keep moving.
We're going to keep growing.
We're going to keep progressing.
And so that felt good.
I started to get back
into the swing of things,
I teach Black studies as a
form of political education
in the community, and I've been
doing that for a long time.
And part of my idea, as I
say, is to try to create--
working with community
folks to create
theoretical solid
ground for folks
to organize off
of as a platform.
How do we place in
historical context this work?
And I've seen that is not the--
necessarily the exclusive
domain of the academy,
you know I mean?
I'm like, this is-- we--
so much of my
political education
came not from a college class,
but a radical reading group
that I sat in.
It came from hours of sitting
and organizing meetings,
talking to attorney,
trying to figure out
how we're going to do what
it is we're trying to do.
So that has never
felt more real than it
does right now in this moment.
And we have to begin--
and I feel like I'm
starting to see this--
we have to begin to
make systemic changes
and practices in the policies
and in the ideas that
animate our institutions
because that's where this lives.
And that cop that has his
knee on George Floyd's neck--
you can almost see
in his entire--
I don't even know
what to call it.
But you could just see
that he believed in that.
He looked like,
nobody's going to--
I'm untouchable.
And at the same
time, you could also
hear in the voice of the cloud
of witnesses that gathered
around, and they're
watching George Floyd
and they're recording
this, it's like they
wanted to do something but
they didn't know what to do.
They wanted to--
I don't know I'll
stop right there.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: No, I think it's--
I think that's a--
profound, in that I think that's
why so many of us have felt
this way-- is that we've gone--
I don't know about
everybody, but I've
gone from the
depths of pessimism
to the heights of optimism.
Marco, I was watching as people
were starting, the first night
of protests, and it was like
the president of the NAACP
was telling everybody
stop protesting,
it's time to wait for your vote.
And people are
like, are you crazy?
Get into the streets.
I mean if not now, when?
How long do we wait?
And I think if there's anything
that can embody the violence--
the cultural violence--
of that-- of the system of
white supremacy in policing
was the posture and stance.
I mean I'm not a
performance scholar.
But to see him with
those pockets--
the casualness which death came.
And that he-- and that people
on the outside could plead
and plead and plead and be
scared for their own safety,
but plead, and it--
and the stance didn't change.
I think we have to revisit
that, too, because that--
I think the officer's
stance, I think,
read so much to everyone.
And I think so many of us
have seen an officer take
that stance, whether
it was for death,
but for other posturing
in other places.
Chris, why don't we go to you,
and tell us about the emotions
and take us there, but also
to your [INAUDIBLE] as well.
CHRIS ROBERTS: Yeah,
no, definitely.
Thank you, Nicole,
for having me here.
And thanks to my
colleagues and everybody
who I'm able to share
in this space with.
I'd like to start with
thanking the Creator
for this opportunity, the
Afrikaner spiritual community
for looking out for me, and my
ancestors for walking with me.
More specifically, I would
like to call on [? Marcia ?]
[? McCarroll, ?] [? Liso ?]
[? Clifton, ?] and my aunt
[? Rosalyn ?] [? Graham, ?] my
high school football teammate
[? Shawn ?] [? Gamble, ?]
and [? Cardi ?] [? G. ?]
[? Watson ?] to accompany me
in this particular moment.
I ask for precision,
perspective, humility,
and clarity as I
begin this engagement
of intellectual warfare as
an agent of Black liberation
and a practitioner
of Africana studies.
[? Ashet. ?]
All right.
So where I'm at, I think,
in terms of my feeling,
I would probably have to
say that I'm pretty annoyed
in some ways.
So I kind of think
about situating myself
at different times and
in different locations
of struggle.
So currently for me,
a lot of what that--
where that's
struggling is taking
place is within the
collegiate university context.
Whether through solidarity
with Black and brown students,
organizing the work with
Black and brown faculty,
and really thinking
about what is
our relationships to these
institutions, which for me, are
in many ways,
extensions of the state
and extensions of
policing, which
our communities engage with.
So for example, Temple,
where I was previously
at in Philadelphia, Temple
runs one of the largest police
forces in North Philadelphia.
And constantly wields an
ability to ensnare folks
within the carceral state.
So I think that wherever
it is that we struggle,
we find ourselves in
contestation with the state.
And I would also
say annoyed before I
get into some brief
prepared remarks--
annoyed because I think
that there's this move to--
that--
I listen to a lot of Big KRIT.
And Big KRIT has this part
in Children of the World
where he says,
"They want my soul,
like my ancestors ain't enough."
And I think about
that here because it's
like, if like white
folks want everything.
You want to wield
racism and solve racism.
You want to do the harm and
be the ones that fix it.
They want every
aspect of this, to be
the worst of the worst while at
the same time, be the saviors.
We saw this historically,
which for me,
is where I think a lot with
abolition, in that white people
wanted it all--
wanted to be able to say that
white people weren't human--
I mean Black people weren't
human or Black people
were human--
like all of these things.
I'm annoyed with the
everything that I
feel whiteness wants, even
in it's most violent forms.
So I guess how that kind
of moves me into my work
is one of the things that
I've been thinking about
is the movement of
the word abolition,
and how it's really
come to be more popular.
So at this moment,
when abolition
is a word that in a short time
has become just as ubiquitous
as terms like radical,
transformation, and decolonial,
it's becoming just as imperative
that we attune ourselves
not only to the
meaning of the term,
but to the embrace of the term
by more and more Black people
every day.
So those of us
who've been engaged
in this protracted struggle
for at least a decade or more,
there are, I'm sure,
moments of astonishment
when the phrase abolish
the police is being uttered
in and through the mainstream.
Whether folks believe that or
not is a whole different thing.
But at least that they're saying
it is a trip in some ways.
In addition to ensuring
that the term retains
as much as possible
its veracity,
we must be mindful of the
opportunities and challenges
that we have, are,
and will continue
to emerge from our
attempts to practice
and embody abolition within
our various communities,
particularly within
a context where
abolition is something
of which people will now
have expectations.
Something in which
people will expect
there to be a level of
attention to detail.
Something in which people
will expect a level of care.
But even more than
care, people will expect
a certain level of principle.
And we must never forget that
abolition in the 20 and 21st
century, like that iteration,
and now, this most current one
that we're in is an invitation
for others to trust you.
When we say abolish
prisons or abolish police,
we're asking people
to trust us when
we say that there is something
better on the other side.
And not something better
for a small segment
of the Black population,
not something
better for race first,
cis, hetero, folks only.
But that's better for Black
poor people, Black trans people,
Black sex workers, Black
undocumented folks,
and Black people
yet to come and yet
to conjure themselves in ways
that our current vocabulary
can't even encapsulate.
Every person who
embraces abolition
as a radical possibility
for their own
and their descendants'
futures is trusting us.
My question to us is, what
will we do with that trust?
So that's where I'm at is--
I think that as people like,
yo, that abolition thing,
I might be with that, I think
we have to think, OK, well then,
what does that mean for the
work that we have to do?
Like if the work shifts
from OK, as simply, yeah,
the police are wack.
If people are like,
I've looked at--
I see that.
Like I have awoken to this.
I want to think with folks
who are like, all right.
How do we do the next
iteration of this work?
And I'm just glad to be
here with all y'all today.
Thank you, Nicole, again.
Yeah.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Thank you.
Thank you all for those
opening statements.
And I already see
themes intertwining.
I think this idea
of trust, I feel
like if we go back in our
DeLorean time machine,
even just to like
two months ago,
police reformers, the
frustration for me was they're
calling on more procedure.
If only we had procedure.
If only that we ban choke holds,
there'd be no choke holds.
And then I'm like,
well, tell that
to Eric Garner and his family.
So I guess maybe if some
of us can chime in--
the logical person to
start would be Monica--
about, we have trust in law.
We have trust in
numbers and data.
We have trust that
these instruments
are going to help free us
from this type of policing.
Can you talk to me,
especially as a law scholar--
I mean, it--
I studied lawyers and I
study, again, the law.
But as a critical lens.
And so sometimes the frustration
is this trust in procedure
can save you.
What do we make of that?
MONICA BELL: Yeah.
So I think this is--
one of the things that's really
exciting to me right now,
in terms of how people coming
up or doing movement lawyering,
is critical here.
Which is to say, lawyering
and procedures, et cetera,
they're not the answers.
But they need to be good, right?
So it's like, we need
to have good procedures.
We need to have processes
through which people
can have their voices heard.
I don't think that it's
bad for police to behave
in a procedurally-just manner,
which is something that--
I've criticized that
as a lens for reform
or for transformation
or anything
like that because it's
not transformative.
But-- so sure, fine.
We need to have that--
but I think what
we've come now is
that lawyering and legal
processes are not justice.
And I think it's
really, really important
to disentangle what justice
looks like from what--
from the way lawyers
usually behave.
And so [INAUDIBLE]
that pushes you--
basically, that pushes your
entire theory of change.
And so one of the things
I'm excited about--
and that's definitely reflected
in a lot of the work I've done
and what I want to
continue to do--
is to continue to
disentangle that vision
that we can go to court and
that justice will be done.
Instead, we need to have a
framework of justice that
is freed from typical
constraints-- that
listens to people's
real, lived experiences.
And-- I don't know.
I guess I'll stop there,
but I think there's
a lot more to say about that.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Right.
And Marco, I think,
is there anything
that procedure would help
communities feel-- like,
can that be some type of remedy?
And I think there is a--
I remember interviewing
a defendant,
and he-- but right
before my book came out,
and I actually added
him to the book.
He said, if you--
he said, if you
write about this,
they're just going to come down
upon us with harder justice.
And I thought, oh my god, he's
using justice as punishment
because in his real life,
that-- the justice system is
just synonymous with brutality
and corruption and everything.
So I guess the--
back at the law
professors out there--
not specifically Monica,
but the totality--
can communities ever think of
justice as being or procedure
as being a remedy that
would make them feel safe?
MARCO A. MCWILLIAMS:
Here's what I would say.
Oftentimes, in these kinds
of revolutionary struggles,
because that's actually
what we're talking about,
you have levels of scaffolding
in the kind of work
and platforms that you have
to lay to create change.
You know that there have
been a number of organizers
that have left DARE and have
gone into the legal practice.
They've gone into law
school and they study.
And so you need that
dimension on the table.
And that's just been
a necessity of what
it's meant to be
Black in America,
like you got to have this.
You got to have that.
Like is voting going to save it?
No.
But we got to vote
strategically here
and we got to think about that.
But yet, at the same
time, that can't be--
and I think this is
the key point in here.
We can't imagine that freedom--
that liberation--
comes from that work.
That's a tool.
And that's a
necessary thing to do.
But the theorizing about
how we get free actually
has to come from
some other place.
We do what we need to do to
survive, just to get along.
You understand what I'm saying?
Listen.
Momma, who's working in
the white lady's kitchen,
she's always going to steal
some food from the kitchen
and bring it back to
the house and feed you.
That's what was expected.
But at no point in
time is she imagining
that that practice is actually
the practice of liberation.
Like we just trying to survive.
The actual practice
is how do we imagine.
This is a beautiful
moment for us
to imagine a different world.
When are the last times that we
remember something like this?
We think maybe like
the last instantiation
of the civil rights
movement modern era.
When the country has a
radically re-imagined
what life was going to be
like for Black Americans who
don't live under the confines
of the Jim Crow system.
Because the white
civil society, that's--
that's where was
Black folks' place
after we started
busting out of that.
Not just in terms of legal
policy, but where else
did we see Black folks
breaking those confines?
Music.
Motown.
That's what Motown was--
finding ways to break
outside of these confines.
But then if we jump back,
what's the time that we
remember before that?
Literally-- we have
to literally go back
to the Civil War, when
the nation is grappling
with the concept of what does it
mean to have these Negroes who
used to be our private property
now moving about in space,
not as private property.
And so part of my
response to that
is those moments call upon a
radical re-imagination of how
society is going to function.
And that's the place that we're
talking about right there.
I mean, I'll come back to like,
my brother Chris Roberts--
like it's--
it's like-- it's not
that we say abolition,
but how do we now have
a critical conversation
about what does
that actually means.
That's the-- everybody
can spell it.
But now its, OK.
Let's create-- oh,
you say abolition?
OK.
Here we go.
We just-- oh, y'all wasn't--
y'all didn't really mean that.
I thought y'all meant--
Because the last time we said
abolition, it mean we had to--
the nation fought
a war over that.
It was the Civil War.
And so we have a moment where
we can create right now.
I think that's a
beautiful thing,
but we've got to have
some intellectually honest
conversations.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: And I
think that I want to talk
to Chris because it's so--
the topics are so--
your idea about the trust
and defining and definition,
I have to admit that
even though I was someone
who studied racism in the system
at a time where people told me
there is no racism.
How will you measure racism?
And I was like, what?
I just walk into the
court and there almost--
people are in open court
abusing people or using slurs,
or it was so obvious to me.
But I have to admit, even
though I had read Angela Davis,
I could not imagine--
like I didn't have the
scripts in my brain
to imagine a world where there
wasn't police forces locking
down community.
I have to say that.
How do we get to this idea of
this radical imagination when--
yet all we've known--
And as a cultural sociologist--
many cultural sociologists would
predict that doesn't exist.
If you don't have frameworks--
cognitive frameworks
in your head, to
then start imagining,
how do we get to that
place that so clearly
articulate abolition.
But then how do you
make sure it's not
co-opted by the policing
scholars that were so
vested in the same
system and actually
taking money to make it
look exactly the same.
CHRIS ROBERTS: Thank you
for that question, Nicole.
I think that's-- that's really
one of the major questions that
we have right now because
in one way, for me,
part of what we have to think
about is there will be attempts
at co-optation.
The question is rather,
what do we do about that?
So I guess, really for me--
it's important maybe to give
some background context--
I've arrived at this position
through really working hard
at reform, to be
honest with you.
I think I-- when I was
younger, I used to--
I was part of an
organization called Justice
for DC Youth, where we would
go into this-- facility
no longer exists.
It was called Oak Hill, but
now it's New Beginnings.
This is in DC.
Pretty much 100% black
and brown juven--
folks who were under 18
were incarcerated there.
And we would do literacy
programs with them
all the time.
Shout out to [? Shaunie ?]
[? O'Neal, ?] who ran that
program.
After which, I was doing
work with [? Joanna ?]
[? McCance, ?] through a program
in DC called Visions to Peace.
And we were doing work-- this
is back, maybe 2010, 2011
around thinking about creating
different pathways for folks
to envision peace and
justice in their communities.
And for me, it
started doing-- it
wasn't even early--
it was work that
was more about meeting folks
and community where they were.
And that was where
I began to see,
oh, we can solve
conflict differently.
We can deal with
harm differently.
And, oh, we might not have
to call the police for this.
We can just settle
this amongst ourselves.
And that ultimately led to me
doing work in Oakland Freedom
Schools and with BYP100--
really thinking through what
healing and safety means,
like through a community
of Black folks committed
to freedom collectively.
So for me, it's been a mix
of-- it's been a long journey.
But I think I was brought
up someone really invested
in electoral politics-- really
invested in what they could do,
and I think I saw those systems
break my heart time and time
and time again.
I think for me, it was trying--
and this sort of what
I think about policing
is that James Baldwin has this
Fifth Avenue, Uptown essay
where he talks about despite
the policemen's best intentions,
they are going to
be nothing but what
they are in the communities.
Like he says, you can
give gumdrops and candy
to children all day.
It doesn't matter.
And I think that for me,
and what part of my journey
has really been that it doesn't
matter about your intentions.
Like you can be the
best-intentioned whoever.
You can think you're going
to be a police officer who
changes the whole thing.
You can think
you're going to be--
It's kind of-- for me,
it was about moving away
from ego that got
me to abolition.
Because I feel like
there's a lot of ego
in thinking that I'm going
to go in totally upend
in this with like--
there have been a lot of
folks really dedicated
to this reform thing.
And we still are where we are.
So that for me has been
the journey-- was that--
really taking
seriously folks who
dedicated their
lives to changing
these things from within
and seeing how entrenched
these systems are.
So for me, it's actually
been about moving away
from an ego that thinks I
can go in and do something,
and really thinking of abolition
as a collective project that
is much more about
us working together,
because it's not about--
because no one person
is going to go in--
you need to create the new thing
or take apart the old thing.
We all need each other.
So, yeah.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Yeah.
Thank you.
Brittany, I want to
turn back to your really
provocative and important
statements about academics
kind of failing to interrogate
the notion of intention,
and I--
this idea of their
intentions and the system.
So as a race
scholar, I've been--
have a major pet peeve.
When people talk about
structural racism
and when people talk
about implicit racism,
it in some ways
absolves white people,
police officers in particular,
of their overt violence.
That it actually
took real actors
practicing culturally in real
settings with real people
to inflict this
level of violence.
So if you say what created
George Floyd was systemic,
it meant it's kind
of not within him.
If you say it's implicit
bias, it's unconscious.
And I'm like no what
killed Mr. George Floyd was
a type of conscious
and violent racism
that can be practiced and
learned and passed down
through generations of people.
And so if you could
take us a little
bit into the prison system
because there is such a link.
And I think maybe
start a little bit
with how policing is linked to
law enforcement within jails.
And then talk about
that intentionality.
What's the right type
of racism to use?
Structural, implicit, overt?
What do you use in your
research and tell us why.
BRITTANY FRIEDMAN:
So I think I will
start by building also off of
what Christopher was saying
about the posture
and stance of Chauvin
when he killed George Floyd.
And so Nicole, as you
often say, cultures
of violence in the courts
and jails are an open secret.
And that's the position that
we see him taking with-- even
with a smirk,
because I believe you
can see a smirk in the
video of the murder.
And this sort of reminds me
of what other open secrets do
we have amongst professionals
who work in corrections
and also study corrections.
And so an example
I can think of is
presenting at an
academic conference
where I'm talking about intent.
And I'm using examples of
how correctional officers are
combining legal controls, like
solitary confinement, with what
we would consider
extra-legal control
strategies, like
assaults or hits,
to control incarcerated people.
And particularly,
targeting people
who have been
identified as being
a political threat, particularly
a Black political threat.
And a person, at the end of the
conference, comes up to me--
who is affiliated--
announces that they're
affiliated with the
corrections association
and says off the
record, yes, that does
happen in the contemporary.
Because I'm talking about
it historically in my work.
But he said in the
contemporary, when
officers feel it's easier--
more effective to remove
someone from the population.
And so when I think about
abolition, I think about this.
How will bias training
fix an open secret?
How will bias training fix
the fact that [INAUDIBLE]
that officer [INAUDIBLE]
you could argue officers--
to go back to the
posturing, officers
at all levels of the
security apparatus--
we can look at all the levels,
from police to corrections
to border patrol.
They take this godlike
stance in their weaponization
of racial violence that's
so brazen, to where is even
the secret for the survivors.
And so when I'm talking about
intentions that are systemic,
I think we should be
moving in a direction
where we look at your
work and combining it
with the work of Jeff
Ward when he's talking
about the organized nature.
But also looking
at the fact that--
I had great conversations
with a colleague
of mine, Theresa Beardall.
We were talking about
how the system has
the ability-- it's not
just slow violence when
we're talking about intent.
The system has the ability to
act quickly, and we see it.
There's moments where there's
an opening and a reason
to act quickly in its violence.
So I think incorporating
the levels,
but also teasing out what do
we mean by slow violence that
is intentional.
But what do we also mean
when the violence is--
there's something temporal
that the system can act in--
really, by any means necessary.
Not to perverse that,
but that is the case.
That is what I would argue--
that the stance
that officers take
when they're trying to
eradicate either something or--
Ruth Gilmore calls
it a surplus--
Black Surplus.
What do-- how do we think
about that when we're
talking about intent within
prisons, in particular,
in corrections?
Because I would argue that
the mass incarceration,
in terms of organizing
this surplus,
I think we have to
think about that
in terms of what happens
within the institutions
once people get there.
What are the [INAUDIBLE] people
to then, quote, "organize,"
but I would--
I use the word
"annihilate," because that's
what my data shows.
It's to completely
annihilate not only the body,
but the spirit is
what I would argue.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Right.
And I think it's important,
in terms of talking
about the words that we choose.
And again, I think it's very
telling to me that something
like implicit bias--
work that talked about--
I think of the case of Philando
Castile, that second shot,
you know that second reaction--
the split-second reaction--
excuse me--
that the officer made where
he thinks that it's a gun.
And I think Philando Castile
is pulling his wallet out
of the glove compartment.
That could have a legitimate
place within criminal justice
research, law-- legal research.
But yet, it's become the
word that we use now when
we don't want to say racism.
Or scholars for years says,
I'm a scholar of race.
When they really--
I used to wonder, well,
do you study racism?
I mean, tell me more.
So I think academics--
we have a role.
We have a role in this.
Monica, if you could talk a
little bit about that, too.
I was thinking when
Brittany was talking
about police unions, one of the
major things that I've seen,
beyond the kind of--
they've often stood against
reform at all costs--
transparency at all
costs-- so we get back
to this dirty open secret.
Many of them will resist
police records and people
that have been reprimanded
numerous times of the records
of those to be open.
Can you talk a little bit
about the role of police unions
and even-- and the legal--
I would say the legal actors
that protect police officers
because there's an
entire force of attorneys
that they've gone to law school.
There are-- in some
ways, they make
commitments like
any lawyers, I would
think, with-- in their ethics.
And yet, their job
is largely to produce
positive outcomes for
police unions and officers
that inflict violence.
So can you tell us a
little bit about that
and the role of the
lawyers in this all?
MONICA BELL: Sure.
I'm happy to talk a
little bit about that.
So one thing to keep in mind--
there's a-- it's kind of
like a strange feature
of this conversation or of
these conversations about police
unions because theoretically,
we want workers to organize.
Theoretically, we
want there to be
some sort of voice for lot,
front-line workers, which
theoretically, police
unions are supposed to be.
But the problem is, because of
the toxicity of police culture
and because of the particular
functions of policing,
even this thing
that we might want
to support
theoretically, the union,
is tainted and becomes a
device for protecting violent--
like, and-- I should
say protecting
individual, violent
police officers
and trying to
shield information.
I think there are a couple
of different pieces of this,
from a legal perspective,
that are really important.
One that has been talked
about ad nauseam--
I would say too much--
is qualified immunity.
So essentially, if
the police officer
violates someone's
constitutional rights,
then there's currently,
right now, a semi--
like an interpretation of
constitutional doctrine
that allows them to
escape accountability
for that in a legal context.
And there is, as
Nicole's talking about,
an architecture of
lawyers that are engaged
in perpetuating that idea.
But critically-- and this is
really, really important--
I think most of the police
prosecutors, private defenders
of police, police union
workers, et cetera
see themselves as engaged in
a sort of neutral activity.
They don't see themselves as
engaged in a racist activity.
They think, well,
look the officer may
have actually feared for
his, her, or their life.
And so And so the constitutional
doctrine is clear.
This is reason-- there's
reasonability here.
They sort of cling to the
letter of the law and precedent
over really taking into
account the sociological
reality of racism in policing.
And so I think that--
there's this way in which both
police, police unions, and also
lawyers are engaged as kind of
maintenance of the status quo.
And so it allows
people to escape
individual accountability
for their role
in perpetuating
these institutions.
So that, I think, is a really,
really deep conversation
within the legal profession
that has to be had,
reckoning with the divide
between what lawyers typically
do, which is maintain and
focus on the rule of law,
and [INAUDIBLE] a concept of
justice, of racial equity,
et cetera that we're
starting to have now.
So my hope is that we
will be able to infuse
these things more deeply
into the ethos of policing--
not-- excuse me-- not of
policing, but of lawyering.
And also, in ways that
would influence the make--
the perpetuation
of police unions.
I have one other quick
thing I want to say,
which is that we also need to be
looking at state law and state
legislature action.
So police unions are often
treated in a preferential way.
And for us to say, also,
police fraternal organizations.
Not all of them are
technically unions.
But there's a way in
which states treat them
preferentially, give
them extra voice,
give them additional lobbying
power, build in their existence
into-- so I'm talking
about Maryland--
a law enforcement
officer's bill of rights.
This is also something people
need to be made aware of.
In addition to lawyers, there
is also legislation that needs
to be unwound in order to
change some of the conversation
we're having from a
workers' rights scenario.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Can I ask one
follow up on this
because you know
is one thing that
is close to my heart
and is interrogating,
prosecuting, prosecutor's
role in all of this.
It was quite telling.
I worked on an article
with Somil Trivedi.
He's an ACLU attorney, and we
study the kind of national--
how prosecutors from
a national standpoint
have largely covered up for
police by never charging them.
For a bunch of
different reasons,
but we go through
institutions, and we're--
Really we were at a Boston
University law symposium.
And a scholar pushed back up to
me and says that the dynamics
that I witnessed
in Chicago, that I
had data on, about
police perjury,
its systemic prevalence
in the court system,
where prosecutors were
covering up for police officers
and doctoring cases, that
that was just a Chicago only.
And I said, show
me a jurisdiction
where officers are
getting charged.
Show me that jurisdiction and
that will be our best practice
model.
I guess the question
and frustration
is where are the ethics charges
for these types of prosecutors.
When do they get
held accountable?
I'm thinking about
Connick v. Thompson and--
where Harry Connick, Sr.,
has a team of prosecutors,
and they're hiding evidence.
And people are going to jail for
30 years, wrongfully convicted.
And yet, Harry
Connick, Sr., can just
continue to be a prosecutor
after acting in that way?
Where is the bar association?
Where is the ethics?
And how can we, in some ways,
hold the bar associations
accountable for what-- for
them looking the other way when
prosecutors act more like--
I don't know-- the
henchman for the police?
MONICA BELL: Yeah.
Yeah, so really quickly
on that, I think--
I mean, that is so important.
And I think--
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Can you
tell I'm a little
angry at that part?
[LAUGHS]
MONICA BELL: [INAUDIBLE] And
I would of course take issue
with that.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Yeah.
I'd say, yeah, I take issue.
MONICA BELL: This is like
a just a Chicago story.
In terms of
accountability, when I
think about the major vector of
accountability for prosecutors,
sure I think the bar-- like bar
associations can play a role.
The problem is the public.
The problem is many
prosecutors are elected.
and.
What gets people excited
is letting police officers
go for when-- kind of
when they violate people's
rights because there's this
public idea that the police are
associated with public safety.
And of course, prosecuting
marginalized people
for similar sorts of acts
and that the entire charging
structure.
So we have to keep in mind
that political story, which
is that it's really hard to
make change in the prosecutor's
office without there being
some more public reckoning.
So one thing that's
really exciting
to me is that I think there
are starting to-- we've
started to ask questions.
There started to be some
change in what the whole--
and people then have
lots of valid criticisms
of progressive prosecutors.
But there is a
conversation, at least,
that prosecutors have been
a big part of the problem.
And that even many powerful
prosecutors are saying,
we have been part
of the problem.
So I think that's a positive
step in terms of a narrative
shift, even if it's not the
big change we want to see.
But yeah, in terms of
the bar associations,
I think there could be a
lot more shaming done there,
of course.
But yeah, I think we need
bigger change that that.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE: Yes.
Well, OK, so here, just to
take a quick announcement here,
we want to get to as many
questions as possible.
So I said we have like 700
people tuning in right now.
And I just want to thank all
of them for sticking with us
and being engaged.
We're already seeing some
people chime in with questions.
So I think what
we're going to do
is I have one more question
that I want everybody to tackle.
And then we have a wonderful
facilitator, Catherine van
Amburgh, is going to-- you're
going to hear her voice.
And she'll help me filter
all these questions
and pick some of them.
Some of them already came
in with the registration,
and we're going to start
doing that very shortly.
But I wanted to end with one
more for-- and not just end
the piece, but I wanted one
more question from all of you--
is tell me about what
reparations looks like to you.
And I think-- and
I mean reparations
in a lot of different ways.
Professor Marcus
Hunter at UCLA talked
about academic reparations.
Think about what
happened to Dubois--
never getting acknowledged by
the University of Pennsylvania
for the work that he did and
the accomplishments he made
and how many white scholars
had pushed him out and vilified
him or marginalized him.
And I know so many scholars
who have done work in this area
have also had the same fate.
But I think reparations-- it
can mean things like money,
it can mean things
like research,
it can mean things like what?
And I said, I wanted to go
through the panel and maybe
why don't we start with Marco.
And tell me, what would--
broadly thinking, what would
reparations look like to you
for this system?
MARCO A. MCWILLIAMS:
Well, this is a--
we could have a whole panel.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: We should
do a part 2 just on that.
MARCO A. MCWILLIAMS:
A part 2 just on this.
So the first thing that I was--
I will start out my
response by saying this.
One thing I think
reparations looks like
is a literal undoing
of the structures that
were put in place
by white supremacy
to maintain what we see now.
So the first thing
I'm going to say
is free every
political prisoner who
is still alive and in prison.
Free them-- complete
commute of sentences--
and set up a financial
fund to take care of them
and their family for
the rest of their lives.
A radical retransformation of
the public education system
in the country, so that
these fundings that we're
talking about when we
say defund the police
have a direct pipeline rerouting
that into those structures.
I also imagine
reparations looking
like colleges and
universities opening up
specific, targeted
scholarships--
fully-funded-- for folks
in the Black community,
not unlike what they
do through a sort
of like clandestine
pipeline for elite folks.
But something like
very intentional.
I think that where reparations
gets weedy and muddy
is when we try to do
this really fine tune,
like OK, well,
this, but not that.
Well, who's going to actually
pay, and this and that.
For me, what's functional now
is to just make a broad set of--
I mean, look at Black
Panthers' Ten-Point Program.
Like that, there's-- we
could pull out stuff--
literally lift right out of the
Black Panther Ten-Point plan.
And be like, all right.
Put a "R" by reparations.
Yep, reparations right there.
And move that way.
That's always been a very--
a useful way for me to start to
think about that conversation.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Chris,
what are you thinking
reparations would look like.
CHRIS ROBERTS: Uh.
That's a multi-layer
question, I guess.
As someone who's
committed to abolition,
I don't think much is possible
in the current system.
So for me--
I will say, though, thinking
about the efforts of folks like
[? M Cobra ?] and [? Caricom, ?]
I think about the question
in two ways, I guess.
What Alexis Pauline Gumbs
calls at the end of the world,
I think, there's before
the end of the world
abolitio-- like reparations--
and after the end of the world.
Those are two different things.
So before this
whole thing is gone,
and it should be gone,
before that happens,
I do think that we--
for me, this is in
a monetary sense--
anything that is not empires,
wholesale, defunding themselves
into insolvency, I
think, is a start.
I think that the United States
would have to defund itself
to the position of
insolvency for me
to take anything like
reparations seriously.
I think that it is not--
because I'm thinking with like
[? Celia ?] [? Hartman ?] and
[? Stefan ?] [? Vest-- ?] there
is no justice in this thing.
Justice is not there for us.
We're always on the run
and always forced to run.
We're always moving and
always having to move.
I think for me, looking at the
long history of reparations
efforts in this country,
I think that yes,
access to institutions,
transforming the material
conditions of folks--
I think those are things for me.
OK, like immediate addressing
material conditions
such as homelessness, such--
or houselessness--
such as people
who don't have access to
health-- like all those things.
But those aren't-- to me,
that doesn't meet the bar,
but I'm-- that's the
baseline of like--
that's when these white
folks talking about like,
oh, I want to be an
anti-racist today.
That's just a start for me.
There shouldn't be folks
out on the street, period.
This system should
not exist, so--
I don't want to talk too long,
but the point for me is that
ultimately, I--
and we haven't even gotten
to Native American folks
and that all of this is
happening on stolen land.
So for me, it's like reparations
on an abolitionist trajectory.
I think everything
that Marco stated,
for me, that's what we
coming to the table with.
That's what we're coming to
the table with as a baseline.
Give me the 10 year plan
for police to be gone.
Give me the 10 year plan for
this thing to no longer exist.
I think you were asking in the
beginning how are we feeling.
I'm tired of trying
to make a thing
work that will not work for us.
I would very much like to invest
my energy into what I said
before, about creating these
radical imaginings of futures,
so that when people
trust us-- when we say,
hey y'all, hop on
this abolition wave,
I want to be able to
put my time there.
To be like, yo, we spent years
and years and years thinking
about what care, justice,
and accountability
could look like outside
of these legal systems.
That's where I want to put
my time, is crafting those
alternative things.
So I'm going to stop there.
But I think where Marco
said, that's where we start.
But ultimately, these places
have to defund themselves
into insolvency.
That's reparations for me.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Thank you.
And Brittany, what do you think?
I guess I was thinking as well
as all the data in your book
of all the people brutalized
by the prison system, I don't--
it's hard to even quantify
how you give people their life
back, take away their trauma,
take away what's been denied,
their dignity.
From your vantage point,
looking at law enforcement
as it extends into the prison,
what would reparations look
like?
BRITTANY FRIEDMAN: So I
would contextualize that
within some of the
points that Christopher
raised, in terms of defunding.
So one of the things that the
question had me thinking about
is what if we turned
our reparations gaze
on to the funding agencies.
What about the funding
agencies that have harmed
our communities-- that have
harmed the survivors that
I've spoken to--
by transforming
tools of torture,
like solitary confinement.
What if we shift those funds?
For example, when I'm
thinking about them,
I'm thinking about all
of the research that
has tried to transform various
types of control techniques
that are not just torture
somewhere out there,
but they're torture
here at home in the US.
And so I think we were talking
about reparations, an avenue
that I frequently think of, too,
is this academic reparations,
but turning it to the funding--
the source of funding that is
expanding the carceral state
through this production
of knowledge.
And we like to say that, for
example, scholars, like myself
and your work and
Monica's work and Marco's
work and Christopher's
work, people like
to say, oh, that's political.
But isn't it racist to
say that's political
if all of your work is
done on behalf of the state
to expand the carceral state?
Right?
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Yeah.
I was thinking that.
Well, how about this.
We call scholars who study how
the state inflicts violence--
some people would say you're
an activist to demean you.
And I'm thinking,
what does it mean
if you take a grant from
the police themselves,
and then do research alongside
the police as a partner.
Where is the appendix
to your research
to show your impartiality when
you've both taken money and--
I don't know.
Wouldn't there be repercussions
if you said something negative
about the people you study?
Wouldn't they throw
you out if you--
To me, this is--
I think, Brittany, you're
hitting on a larger point
about academic complicity.
How-- when you said the funding
should shift to these agencies,
I was thinking, in
some cases, there
are scholars that do predictive
crime science policing, where
they're swarming neighborhoods.
And yet they're
trying to [? apply ?]
for body cam research
was supposed to be
the remedy for accountability.
It was supposed to be an
accountability measure.
And it's the same people
that taken the money.
So how do we--
I guess, before we
move to Monica--
how do we get the receipts
that you are actually
a person that should be funded,
when so many people are taking
money but have done
really harmful things.
BRITTANY FRIEDMAN: Yeah,
that's exactly the point.
And that's why when I
think about reparations,
I think that we
also have to think
of reparations as shifting funds
toward abolitionist visions.
I think we have to think about
the production of knowledge
as being complicit.
When we're thinking about
defunding the police,
we also have to think
about the knowledge that is
produced to expand the police.
And think about
how that knowledge
has been wielded to create
incredible intergenerational
harm.
So I think that abolition is--
I know the phrase
abolition is a presence,
but it's a presence across.
You can't be for one system--
abolishing one
system of oppression
and not looking at all.
That's what abolition is
thinking broadly about--
oppression, and thinking about
it, as Angela Davis says,
as the intersection
of struggles.
It's the intersection
of struggles.
And so when you were bringing it
up for me, it was immediately--
I'm thinking about
all of the people
that I have interviewed
that have spent decades
in solitary confinement as
a result of knowledge used
to justify them being there.
So I think we have to think
about reparations broadly
in that sense, and linking it
to knowledge that is justifying
these systems of harm.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE: Yes.
And Monica, if you can give us
your sense of what reparations
might look like.
MONICA BELL: Yeah, sure.
So I guess I'm stuck a little
bit on this idea that--
where does reparations fit
into a broader struggle
for abolition, for
transforma-- for whatever it
is, for something that
justice looks like.
And so for me, I think, one
point I want to raise is to me,
the dialogue about
reparations is
really key for understanding
how history links itself
to the present.
But one thing I want
to be clear about
is that the history that
we're talking about,
apropos of the
conversation we started
to have about colonialism,
is not just one of slavery.
So when I think about the value
of a reparations conversation,
it's reparations for all of it.
It's micro and macro.
It's much bigger.
And I think in order to
actually have something
that we can really have
this tractable, tangible,
and practical
around reparations,
we have to start thinking
about really micro-level.
So one idea I've had
recently, for example,
is all of these incidents
in which white people call
the police on Black
people or brown people
for just being in space.
One approach is
the one we've had,
which is shaming sanctions,
which I'm not really
hating on that,
but I don't think
internet justice is justice.
Another thing that
people have thrown around
is, oh, why don't we
prosecute these people.
I take umbrage to that
approach to justice.
Doesn't do anything for us.
That doesn't do anything
for marginalized people
who experience these calls.
And so one really
granular thing that
could that communities
could do is
to put together
a racism response
fund, where it's like, OK,
you've faced a racist incident.
Here is money and here
are also resources
to deal with the trauma
that comes from that.
And that's really, really
micro, and it's very practical,
but what it does is shift
the conversation to one
about repair and restoration
and away from just like--
I don't know-- shaming racists.
And so I guess as much as
I want to be an analyst--
I want to be a theorist,
I think about my family.
I think about people who
are harmed every day, who
don't have resources
because we haven't
had serious
granular-- we haven't
done serious granular work.
I mean, people have done,
but like on a policy level,
around reparations,
that is comprehensive.
And so I actually do want to
be granular in the status quo
about giving people
resources and access
to meaningful change.
One other just very
quick, final point
that we haven't raised yet, I
think the academic reparations
thing is key.
And I also even would say
that runs toward who we cite.
So that's a big part of it.
But also this whole
issue we're having
around Confederate
monuments and stuff.
And maybe I care about
this especially because I'm
from South Carolina.
And I grew up with this
specter of all of these things.
It's like, no, I want to see
monuments to my ancestors.
I want to see-- and here--
and why that matters--
one of the ways that matters
is because it gives us
new ways of thinking
about power.
It's like, who owns this space?
Who is this for?
That shift in ideology is tied
to these ways we memorialize.
And so for-- my
vision of something
called reparations would
certainly include those, too.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: And I
think that's important,
too, because it leads
to the notion of education.
In Chicago, there
was a torture ring.
Jon Burge tortured over
120 African-American men
into false confessions.
It reads like war crimes.
He was never charged
for those violent crimes
and was ultimately charged
for a type of perjury.
But one of the victims
of that torture ring--
of that injustice--
received this--
I would say a large
settlement that was
divided among so many victims.
But one of the
things, I think, that
was most protest by
policing families
was the requirement of
the Chicago public schools
to teach that history.
And I think that shows
that white supremacy relies
on covering up the violence.
And I would like
to get to a point
that AP US history-- if you're
going to take AP US history,
you should understand the
history of lynching in America.
And you should be able to
understand how it worked,
and that people took
pictures and sent postcards
and posed with black victims,
and how it terrorized people.
We should know about
that white criminality.
And I think even saying the
notion, white criminality,
we have not really said that.
So I think the education does
matter because then by the time
that child then grows up to
be a free-thinking person--
going to college,
getting a job--
they will feel very differently
about a lot of policy decisions
and how they vote.
So to me, that's a
really important thing.
And maybe important
instruction from Chicago
in this kind of one victory
that was that was won.
So I want to go
to Catherine who's
going to moderate
some of our questions.
Catherine, are you there?
CATHERINE VAN AMBURGH:
Yes, and we've
been getting some really
wonderful questions
from the audience.
I'm so sorry we're not going to
be able to get to all of them.
But the first question
comes from Daria,
and they're asking about the
political economy of policing,
how white capital depends on
law and policing to prop up
racial capitalism,
and how do we think
about reform and radicalism
in the shadow of capitalism.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE: Wow.
Who can take that one?
CHRIS ROBERTS: I can--
oh, go ahead, Monica.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Thank you, Chris.
MONICA BELL: No, I--
please go ahead, Chris.
CHRIS ROBERTS: OK.
Now, I just quickly was
going to say thank you,
first off, for the question.
And what I would say
or think about it,
and maybe bringing my
own thinking into it.
Since were just talking
about monuments, Monica,
that actually brings
me to a lot of the work
that I do around public
memory and memorialization.
And I think that we have
to understand memory
as a particular type of
social capital, as well.
In that, for me, I guess what
I would want to think about,
relative to policing, is
the protection of monuments
that we've seen recently.
That we've seen police really
deployed to protect monuments.
And I think about
this, in many ways,
as the police being
drawn out and physically
surrounding the statues,
often in circular motions,
or otherwise, these
geometric formations, where
the state is literally
acting as the compass.
And it's drawing the police
in a sort of thin blue line--
to go with the theme
of the talk today--
around the monuments in
order to protect them.
To really ensure
the preservation
of the facts,
supposedly, of empire.
Because when people
question monuments,
they begin to question
facts because monuments
are set in stone.
So how does that get us to this
idea like racial capitalism?
So for me, it's that--
I think once we
begin to really see--
what is it-- this sort
of a bit like what is it
that the police really protect.
And that's a base question, and
I have like early conversation
with folks about
abolition, it's like,
what do the police protect.
And more often than not, most
of what they protect is stuff.
They protect things.
They protect money.
And also, to go back
to this idea of law,
what is the law to those who
are already always objectified,
i.e.
Black folks.
When you're not--
you don't have access
to these categories of
like human and person
in the same way that others do.
So when I think about how
this informs our analysis,
I think that we have to
begin to frame discussions
for people around the police
relative to a lot of the work
that's happened on the ground--
around like 8toAbolition, which
came out in response to
the more reformist measure
that was out before.
So that would be my response--
is I think that, for me, we
have to think about what is
it that the police ultimately
protect.
And what ways can we
begin to move folks
to understanding that that
protection is not for you,
but it is against you.
It is in fact to be
wielded against you.
There is nothing in the function
of policing, structurally,
that is like, well,
who gets protection.
So I think really opening
up these conversations
around protection
for folks, and I
think the monuments,
as Monica brought up,
open up an opportunity.
That's like, wow, I've never
seen police in a community
like that before, some may say.
Or I've never seen
police protect
like the home of a
domestic violence
survivor I know like that.
Or I've never seen police
protect a sex worker who
was assaulted like
that, but they're
protecting this random statue.
That's where I think we can
begin these conversations.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Thank you.
Catherine, do you
have another question?
CATHERINE VAN
AMBURGH: Yes, we do.
The question is asking
the panelists thoughts
on law enforcement coming from
the communities where they work
or being mandated to be on a
community policing team that
allows them to become invested
in the communities socially,
and is that an appropriate
response to the situation we're
in now.
MARCO A. MCWILLIAMS: So I'll
just talk briefly about that.
And I actually want to start
with what Monica and Brittany
left us with in their remarks.
This idea of police culture--
it does not matter if the
individual police officer--
I don't care if he
coaches little basketball
and he's a church pastor.
That's irrelevant.
How do we think
about police culture?
And Monica connect that to
essentially three things.
She says the state.
That's electoral
politics-- being
involved in creating these laws
and setting these policies.
Then, we have the legal system--
teams of lawyers
who manage this.
When we put these things
together in a constellation,
that's a system at work.
And that system,
coming to Brittany,
then gets informed
and reinvigorated.
Essentially, it continues
to procreate itself
through a particular
line of knowledge--
a particular line of thinking.
And we can't be intellectually
lazy in this moment.
Part of the work
we have to do is
we have to think ourself
through something.
See, if this was like--
I don't know-- 1799
and we in Haiti,
folks would just get
to sugar cane knives
out and we in the
midst of a battle.
But that's not the
moment that we're in.
So how do we understand
the particular context
of the moment that we're in?
If we are to be, again,
intellectually honest,
there's officers and folks
there in law enforcement.
All of us got a cousin
who knows somebody
that works in some area
in law enforcement.
And we have very amicable
relations with this individual.
But at no point in
time did we lose
track of when they
don that uniform, what
they're representing.
That's what we
trying to speak to.
And those kind of moves
are like a default setting.
But yeah, but they're--
that's nice.
That's just not what
we're talking about.
I don't know.
I hope that makes sense.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE:
I think it does, Marco.
I think it goes back
to what Brittany--
we had mentioned the
dirty open secret, which
is why don't we see more
officers whistle blowing.
So if there's this
notion of dichotomy
of the good cops
versus the bad cops,
where are the good cops
whistle blowing right now?
Where are they?
I'd like to see them.
Because I know they exist,
but the issue is when you talk
about the culture being more
important than the individual,
they cannot step forward.
I would say many of them
don't step forward out
of absolute fear.
And that should tell
us the violence.
If the supposed good cops
are scared of their brothers
in blue, now we
are appropriately
talking about the level
of violence and racism.
There was a protest in Chicago
where Black retired officers
were taken in the
outside of the FOP,
they had no white
officers next to them.
There were none in the picture.
And so again, I challenge this
idea about, to your skepticism,
I absolutely think that's true.
Is it a culture is bigger
than the individual.
And this is not about nice.
This is about racism or this is
about a violent culture that's
bigger than one good--
quote, good-- officer.
One good officer.
Catherine, is there
more questions?
CATHERINE VAN AMBURGH:
Yes, there are.
This question
comes from Stanley.
And Stanley says, "I'd
love to ask the panel
their thoughts about
the extent to which
and the ways in which the law
can be considered a resource
for Black people,
especially in the context
of extra-legal police
killings that are justified
by the prediction of action
in the future by feelings
and by racism legitimating
violence in the present tense.
You know, the quote I feared
for my safety, et cetera.
If these killings can be
legal, but we nevertheless
need the law, how can we think
about the law in relation
to blackness in the US?"
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE:
I feel like, Monica, you
have to take that question.
Please help us think through it.
MONICA BELL: Sure.
I'll say-- well one
thing that's really
important is to not
have this in our heads--
this idea of there's the law.
The law is actually
extremely complicated,
and there are aspects of
the law that can be helpful
and then there are many aspects
of the law as a status quo
orientation system that are
of course deeply dehumanizing.
And so there's this
way in which we
have conversations
about policing
and zoom in on the
reasonableness of police
killings as being the-- or the
lawfulness of police killings
as being the law
and the situation.
But what I think about
the law and what kind
of the possibilities
we could have,
I think about the Thirteenth
Amendment, for example,
I think why don't we
reinterpret this idea
of moving beyond the badges
and incidents of slavery,
and tearing those out as being
something that's in the law,
too.
So one thing I think
is really important,
as I was saying earlier, law
isn't leading this movement.
We are not in a Civil
Rights era framework
in which, there can be some
concept that if we only
win the right court cases, then
we will have achieved justice.
That's wrong.
But there are so many ways
in which aspects of the law
can be adopted as language
to help us push forward
in ways that could
ultimately be liberatory.
So thinking about
law more as a horizon
than a set of tactics and the
status quo, I think, is key.
And then there are--
Yeah.
So I think that's
one piece of things.
Not to lose-- not to say,
oh, because certain acts--
basically, because
the law legitimates
a certain amount of
evil, then there's
nothing in the law for anyone.
And I would also urge us to
look more locally, as well.
So not just to think
about federal law,
but also to be thinking about
state law and local ordinances.
And if we look at Minneapolis
and the move to defund,
these actions are
creating law as well.
And so I'm having much
more of a power position
than a power orientation
toward capabilities in the law
is going to be key for moving
us toward a world in which
Fourth Amendment
reasonableness is not
our vision of what justice
and lawfulness looks like.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE:
Do we have anymore, Catherine?
I think we have time
for at least one more.
CATHERINE VAN
AMBURGH: All right.
If we only have
time for one more,
the one I'd like to end on is
hearing the panelists thoughts
on what a post-abolition
world could look like.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN CLEAVE:
Maybe let's start with--
want to start with Brittany?
BRITTANY FRIEDMAN: So when I
think about what post-abolition
world would look like, One of
the things that I zero in on--
and this is because
much of my work
is really looking at the
atrocities of the police--
what I think about
is all of the ways
that communities have
been handling disputes
without this violent
state intervention.
And I also think about
all of the ways that
are possible where people
could live and exist
without this sense of fear--
this sense of fear
clouding over.
I talk about this a
lot a lot in my work
as a sense of darkness--
as law enforcement
as death work, where
there's this darkness that
is encompassing.
People feel it as encompassing.
And this is using
people's own words.
And so when I think about
an abolitionist vision,
I think about it.
And I'm using
metaphors, but that's
because I'm trying to
draw from people's voices
of there's a light, in terms
of how the community thrives.
That's how I think about it.
And I really--
I look to-- and thinking
about the how this is
operationalized-- to the
longstanding work of scholars
like Ruth Wilson Gilmore--
of Micah Hirskand, his work.
I think about all
of these visions
for how we can thrive
without this sense of fear
covered in silence.
And I know that's very
poetic, and people
would criticize it as such.
But that's really where I start.
I start big in terms
of the dreaming
before getting down to
protocols, as such, that people
might better grapple with.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Right.
Thank you.
And how about Chris.
Can you talk us through?
CHRIS ROBERTS: Yeah, I
have a ton of thoughts.
But I guess in the time we have
left, just to quickly say--
I think one is--
I really want to come back--
I guess what I was thinking
about in advance of this talk
today is really this
idea of abolition
as an invitation to trust.
And I think that
for me, if we were
to think about a quote a
post-abolitionist future,
I think it's a world where
we're able to begin trusting
and caring for each other.
Because in many ways,
we retreat to policing
or we retreat to elected
officials in many ways
because we live in a society--
speaking of racial
capitalism, capitalism
is built off of insuring
that we don't really
have a collective
of people to trust,
but rather a collective
of institutions.
Like you trust police, you trust
government, you trust media.
We trust things
and institutions.
And I am more interested
in a world where
we can trust people, and trust
each other, and be trustworthy.
So that requires me an
entirely different way
of being in relation
to one another.
An entirely different way of--
and I come to this
through thinking
about things like conflict
resolution, addressing harm.
I've done a lot of work
around conflict resolution
and like circle
practice as a mediation.
And oftentimes, what
we find is that it's--
we might agree with each
other [? collectively, ?]
but we just don't
trust each other.
Like a lot of folks can
agree politically, but do you
trust and care for one another?
So I think it starts there,
as do we move with integrity?
Do we move with principle?
Because I think if
we have those things,
we can weather everything else.
If we don't have trust, care,
and love for one another,
then I don't know what--
I don't know really
know what we can
do because like
the state is always
going to be ready to respond.
I think that's the other
thing is that Ike--
Yeah.
So it's just trust.
I think that trust
is really going to be
at the center of a lot of it.
And that's not perfection.
That's not idealism.
That's not that
everything's perfect.
We will harm each other.
We will still hurt each other.
But if the trust is
underneath all of that--
if we trust each other to
just do better next time
and earn that trust.
Yeah, that's mine.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Thank you so much.
Marco, want to take us?
MARCO A. MCWILLIAMS:
I was going to say.
It looks like Wakanda--
Black Panther.
We just need some vibranium
and then we could build it.
[LAUGHTER]
Find some vibranium somewhere.
You know I don't--
we don't know, because
we have to create it,
and we have to like--
this is the lab.
We gotta get him in
there and imagine it.
And so we got to have
that love and that trust.
I think part of
what it looks like--
we have to ask our children.
I think they know.
And we also gotta ask our elders
because they've been looking
at this for a long time.
We got to ask our scholars
and our scientists
to crunch some data and
process some information.
We've got to ask our artists--
those who create-- to help
us paint another picture.
I believe this is
a beautiful moment.
This is not--
Yeah.
I don't-- we don't know,
because we have to build it.
And everything is
available to us.
If we work on that love.
If we work on that courage.
If we work on that trust.
Because we haven't seen it.
And Black people have been
trying to do this, again,
for over 400 years, and we
are at a particular moment.
So it's an invitation.
It's an invitation to imagine,
to dream, to be transparent.
It's an invitation
to say you don't
know-- to say you're not sure.
I mean, we're scholars
on here, and we're
talking about these things.
And sometimes, I
think, the larger
public lose track of the
fact that like, I don't know.
We don't know.
We like-- we talk to
people, and we read books,
and we study stuff, and we sit
in conversation, and like--
I don't know.
We' trying to figure this out.
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My grandmother was a farmer.
And she would plant some
seeds in the ground.
And then you'd try
to ask her, what's
going to happen when
the harvest comes up.
She said, well,
we gonna find out.
We gonna water it.
And we gonna tend to it.
And we gonna process it.
And then we'll
see what comes up.
But she had to put in that
labor and do that work.
And so I guess--
yeah, that would be
my response to that.
NICOLE GONZALEZ VAN
CLEAVE: Thank you so much.
And Monica, if you can tell
us what the future would look
like.
MONICA BELL: OK.
I'm going to be really brief.
In part because, I think,
probably my response
is sort of annoying,
which is that I
don't think we know what a
post-abolition world should
look like.
And so in that conversation
about getting from here
to there, we need
things that might
be less inspiring
to think about,
like research on the
alternative systems
that people are
trying to develop.
We need to think about ways
to build collective efficacy
and power within communities,
more so, that it's not
just communities that already
have community organizations
and things to help
these processes along
to be able to make
this kind of scalable--
to make alternative scalable.
And then the last
thing I want to say
is that it is a little bit
unclear in conversations
about abolition what people's
views are on the state.
And I just want to say,
from my vantage point,
is that, for me, the ideal
has to be a state that works.
That doesn't mean a
policing and prison
system that works as it
is or anything like that.
But I think there will
be a grave injustice
if the answer was just, oh,
we do everything ourselves,
given that we live in a complex,
multifaceted society that
is going to have a
government of some type.
And that should
work for all of us.
So that's my positionality, but
I don't think that's really--
I don't think we know what
a post-abolition world looks
like.
NICOLE GONZALEZ
VAN CLEAVE: Right.
Well, thank you so much.
And I want to express my
thanks to this amazing panel
of experts and
activists and scholars.
We want to thank the Center
for the Study of Slavery
and Justice.
In particular, Barrymore
Bougues, who's convening us,
and his tireless
work for this center
is really keep it
with its vibrancy.
And to all the support staff
that made this event possible.
Thank you all for
coming, and thank you
for engaging in these important
issues in this series,
This is America.
I hope you will come back for
more engaging conversations
about race and racism.
And in my heart, I want to
dedicate this panel to a friend
named Thomas [? Ream ?]
[? Cotton. ?] He passed away
due to COVID and spent
28 years behind bars.
And I think the most
important thing about him
is that upon his
release, I don't
think I experienced a
better day than watching
him walk as a free man into
a coffee shop, Uncle Bobby's,
in Philadelphia, and getting to
embrace him and buy him coffee.
And he tirelessly worked
to expose the system
and to continue never to
unpack and move into prison,
but to be a free
person, whether it
was on the inside or the out.
And so I hope we continue
to honor his memory
by fighting for justice
and fighting for a better
system in this world.
Thank you all for coming.
