Black Lives Matter – LPE Project

An Abolitionist Horizon for Child Welfare

Corinne Blalock — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 18:02:56 +0000

This post is part of a series on Black Lives Matters. The COVID-19 pandemic and police killings of George Floyd and other Black men and women have starkly revealed society’s race and class-based inequality and brought unprecedented attention to the excesses of the carceral state. One arm of punitive state regulation, however, has gone largely undiscussed: the “child welfare” system...

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Read Amna Akbar on the Abolitionist Moment at NYRB!

james — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 10:30:36 +0000

This post is part of a symposium on Black Lives Matters. We are assured Amna will have more to say here at the Blog, but for now check out her account of the abolitionist movement has developed into the type of coalition that can make real change in this moment. From the conclusion: “The struggle for abolition belongs to a broader push to rewrite the social contract, including efforts to cancel...

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On Reimagining State and Local Budgets in an Abolitionist Moment

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 10:30:40 +0000

This post is part of a symposium on Black Lives Matters. For nearly three weeks now, masses around the country have taken the street to protest the violence that is routinely inflicted upon Black people by unaccountable police. Their demands for change, made in the tenor and tradition of abolitionist organizers, swiftly have coalesced into a shared refrain: Defund the police. Behind this demand is...

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Who Should Pay for Police Misconduct?

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 10:30:47 +0000

This post is part of a symposium on Black Lives Matters. George Floyd’s family will almost certainly bring a lawsuit against Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, the three officers on the scene who stood by, and the City as a whole. Assuming Floyd’s family prevails, who will foot the bill? And who should? In this transformative moment—during this nationwide conversation about what we empower...

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We Cannot Prosecute Our Way to Making Black Lives Matter

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:30:00 +0000

This post is part of a symposium on Black Lives Matters. Cities across the country are in turmoil after the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. While the protests are motivated by and calling for a range of solutions to the ongoing problem of police brutality, the loudest call is for accountability in the form of criminal charges against the officers involved in...

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Don’t Reform Policing, Transform It

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 10:30:34 +0000

This post, which first appeared in the Boston Review, is part of a symposium on Black Lives Matters. Read the rest of the posts here. *** There is a distressing disconnect between the ringing demands for justice on the streets and the suite of “police reform” proposals that many experts say satisfy these demands. Protesters and social movements talk about divesting from policing and investing in...

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The Many Forms of Police Violence

Corinne Blalock — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 13:43:51 +0000

Over the past week, there has been unprecedented acknowledgment of the physical violence that Black people in America have faced, for generations, at the hands of police. While this is an important development, the work to eradicate police violence will not be complete if the public remains concerned only with the most visually and viscerally jarring forms of police violence, and those for which police seem most responsible. The public must realize that violence—not only of the physical sort, but also the structural and symbolic variety—is endemic to much of the routine work police do in communities across America.