Journalist – Historian – Speaker
It’s been quite a week. Since the publication of my Al Jazeera America piece on the cult of compliance, I’ve done a bunch of press, written a few new essays, prepped for the start of classes (tomorrow!), and pitched some long-term projects. More news on that when there’s news. I was so swarmed with topics …
Today St. Louis police shot a man with a knife. He had been acting erratically, police showed up, he raised the knife and said shoot me now, so they did. Read more about it here. The officers ordered the man to get down, according to Dotson. The man, 23, became more agitated and walked toward …
My first piece for Al Jazeera America is a big one: The Cult of Compliance. As regular readers know, I have been talking this for a long time and thinking about police violence in various ways for even longer. I used the phrase for the first time on this post from August 17, 2013. The …
I’ve been busy researching several new pieces this week so the blogging has been a bit light. That’s likely to continue next week as well. Bear with me! Good stuff is coming. The most important piece I wrote this week was about the efforts of a radical right-wing group to use Down syndrome prenatal testing …
Everybody pay attention to these next two sentences, ok? If your police force is shooting too many people, TASERs are not the solution. The solution is not to shoot people except in dire circumstances. Thank you for paying attention. Last week, a major report came out in Toronto as a result of the death of …
From Digby, we have another example of what I call the cult of compliance. In Springfield, MO, a panhandler in a Walmart parking lot, Eric David Butts, was confronted by a police officer, Jason Schuck. Butts turned to run away and Schuck drew his weapon and shot him in the back. Later, he claimed that he …
At the end of May, a black female professor named Ersula Ore at Arizona State University was walking across the street when she was arrested for jaywalking. By report, people cross at that site regularly to avoid construction and it is reasonably suspicious that a black woman was the person singled out by police. She …
At New Criticals, Alison Kinney has written a powerful piece comparing police violence against suffragists to the police violence against Occupy activist Cecily McMillan. She starts with this story: “Constables and plain-clothes men who were in the crowd passed their arms round me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public …
I co-write a new piece just published by The Atlantic on police violence and disability. My co-author is Lawrence Carter-Long, communications director for the National Council on Disability. I’m really honored to have worked with him and hope that more collaborations with the NCD follow. There’s nothing surprising in this piece for readers of this …
Cecily goes to prison bc you’re supposed to let cops do whatever they want to your body. Frisking, groping, doesn’t matter. #Justice4Cecily — Sarah Leonard (@sarahrlnrd) May 5, 2014 Note: Below is a picture of Cecily McMillan in her bra, showing the bruise on her breast. This is a picture she made public but it’s …