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Race

Law & Justice

Getting Judges on the Side of Abolition

Success in transforming the criminal justice system will depend on convincing judges to shift how they relate to—and rely upon—police in their criminal courtrooms.

Matthew Clair

Politics

Confederates in the Capitol

The National Statuary Collection announced the unification of the former slave economy’s emotional heartland with the heart of national government.

William Hogeland

Law & Justice, Race

How Police Abuse the Charge of Resisting Arrest

We must reject the current legal regime under which resisting arrest is so widely accepted as a justification for police brutality and officer shootings.

Lisa Cacho, Jodi Melamed

Law & Justice

Accept Nothing Less Than Police Abolition

As post-Katrina New Orleans illustrates, even ambitious attempts to reform police leave intact the structures of racial violence. Worse yet, such efforts drain public money that could instead have been invested in caring for communities.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Politics, Race

America’s Long War on Children and Families

A new book shows how Trump’s family separation policy belongs to a much longer history of U.S. government forces—alongside state and local entities—taking children from families deemed inimical to the idealized American family form.

Paul M. Renfro

Law & Justice

Hold Prosecutors Accountable, Too

In order to achieve lasting change, we must focus on systemic problems across the criminal justice system. That includes holding prosecutors accountable, not just police.

Kate Levine, Joanna Schwartz

Gender & Sexuality

How a Conservative Legal Perspective Just Saved LGBT Rights

Gorsuch’s majority opinion tossed out the old common sense about sex, even as its logic buttressed other kinds of state control.

Paisley Currah

Race

Black Bereavement, White Condolences

“This sudden attention to the ongoing grief of black life can also feel like a slap in the face. Didn’t you notice we were dying?”

Marina Magloire

Race, Reading Lists

Abolition Isn't Only About Police

We also need to abolish prisons—as well as put an end to counterterrorism. An abolitionist reading list. 

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Gender & Sexuality

In the Fight for Policing Reform, LGBT Is a Threadbare Alliance

Pride festivities attempt every year to reinforce the idea of an LGBT community, but when it comes to views on policing, white gay men and trans women of color often have little in common.

Joseph J. Fischel

Politics

The Politics of the Mask

Today we face the paradox of states simultaneously criminalizing masks—because of protests—and mandating them because of COVID-19. In this interview, social theorist AK Thompson explores the history of masks in protests and why rioting is politically effective.

AK Thompson, Clare O’Connor

Race

Some Statues Are Like Barbed Wire

Activists fighting to remove statues of slavers and colonizers understand better than most how public memorials can be a form of violence.

Jonathan Beecher Field

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THINKING IN A PANDEMIC

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