what does black lives matter hope to accomplish

Testify Notes

In the final few weeks, our country has been rocked by nationwide protests post-obit the killing of George Floyd, and many other black people, at the hands of police. To be true to the mission of our show, we're using our platform to address the underlying and historical racial injustices that have driven the protests in the simply way we know how: by talking to UChicago scholars.

On this episode, we brought together a console of experts— Prof. Cathy Cohen, Asst. Prof. Reuben Jonathan Miller and Asst. Prof. John Rappaport—to tackle this conversation from different viewpoints. Our chat examined the role of formerly incarcerated people in the protests, police reform and calls to "defund the police force," and how young people are making them hopeful about the futurity.

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(Episode published June xviii, 2020)

Related:

• Big Brains podcast: What We're Getting Wrong Nigh Millennials with Cathy Cohen
• 'Atmospheric condition were ripe for a moment like this': How electric current protests expose deeper racial inequalities
• Having 'The Talk': How Families Prepare Black Children for Police Interactions—WTTW Chicago
• John Rappaport on Police Misconduct and the Influence of Insurers and Public Opinion
• Pod Salvage the People: What Science Says Virtually Constabulary (with John Rappaport)

Transcript:

Paul Rand: From the University of Chicago, this is Big Brains, a podcast about pioneering research and pivotal breakthroughs that are reshaping our world. I'm your host, Paul Rand.

Paul Rand: In the final few weeks, our state has been rocked by nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd and many other African Americans at the hands of law. This show is dedicated to presenting a central research from the Academy of Chicago that analyzes the underlying and overt historical and racial injustices that accept driven the protests. Nosotros're going to exercise something only a little dissimilar for this episode. We're bringing you a panel discussion rather than an interview in order to tackle this conversation from many unlike angles. Cathy Cohen is a professor of political scientific discipline at the Academy. Her piece of work focuses on the African American experience in politics. John Rappaport is an banana professor of police at the University. He studies policing and constabulary misconduct. And Reuben Jonathan Miller is an assistant professor at the Academy'southward School of Social Service Administration. He studies how mass incarceration impacts communities. I started by asking Dr. Miller to lay out the key points of social and political context to understand the motion that we're seeing today.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: At that place was a recent written report, came out final year, that showed something like 1 in 1,000 black men volition be killed by constabulary over their lifetime, which is just striking. So decease past the hands of constabulary is a leading cause of death for black men. And then, in that location are other studies that find that ane in 2 blackness women, for example, is connected to somebody who'southward currently in jail or prison. And and then, if we think about the broader context, on the 1 manus of police force violence and the regularity in which black boys and men, black women interact with the criminal justice organization, the landscape is haunting. So much so that political scientists are writing about how modal contact with the criminal justice organisation shapes the black feel of American democracy. There'south a really provocative paper that's called The Police Are Our Government, in fact. So the question becomes, what does it mean for the police stop, the abort, which often ends in violence and death, to be the main mode that blackness people interact with the state? I think it's telling virtually a broader set up of social conditions where blackness people are on the bottom. So it's not just the criminal justice system, though. These systems bleed over. Unemployment rates are ever twice or worse for black people. If we look at deaths from COVID-19, nosotros see that black people are disproportionately, not only contracting the virus, just unduly dying from COVID-xix. And all manner of infectious disease pass through jails and prisons beginning and overwhelmingly affect black people. And then the health and social infrastructure is deadly for black folks in this country.

Paul Rand: Right. John or Cathy, do yous have anything to add into some of the comments that Reuben just fabricated?

Cathy Cohen: I'll add a couple more than. I mean, I idea Reuben was right on point, as Reuben always is. But as someone who studies young people, I call back in terms of generations and generational exposure, and so I remember we have a generation of immature people who have seen up close the limits of electoral politics. They've seen the election of blackness mayors, they've seen the election of the first black president, and they've also seen that their lives take not inverse. And in many ways, as Reuben detailed, their encounters with the state are violent, they're oppressive, and they don't necessarily believe, in fact, that the electoral arena has a kind of upside that will substantially alter their lives or change their communities.

Cathy Cohen: We also accept a generation that has witnessed the possibility of protests. Then these are young people who saw the immigrant right marches in 2005, 2006. These are young people who saw Occupy in 2011. And these are immature people who have benefited from the infrastructure built by the movement for black lives since 2013. So all they can rely on, at this moment, is themselves, their communities, and taking to the streets. And I call up that's what we're seeing right now.

Paul Rand: John, what would you add into this?

John Rappaport: I agree with those who have asserted that a lot of what we're seeing is symptomatic. Information technology'southward symptomatic of broader societal failures, governmental failures that don't appear on the surface to have anything to exercise with policing or criminal justice, simply they're decades and decades in the making and accept brought us to this indicate where nosotros have a racialized caste system in this country, we have a police force that is tasked with preserving order. A lot of times what that means is preserving the order of that caste system. So I recollect information technology is very important to trace this all back to the broader, it's the healthcare, it's the didactics, it's everything else that has created these conditions that are now coming to a head in the protests that we're seeing and in the mode that the police are interacting with citizens.

Paul Rand: So information technology begs this question in some ways of the why now. And Cathy, I know that you certainly studied the AIDS epidemic and how it impacted African American communities during that time, and there was a protestation movement that came in effectually that. Are there similarities to that flow and to now that help continue to answer that why at present question?

Cathy Cohen: In that location are and at that place aren't, so I'll endeavor to unpack it. If we think about COVID, the comparisons, and I've said it, it was pretty amazing to see a country shut down over what was idea to be a health crunch, was more a health crisis, when in fact, when we recollect about HIV and AIDS, y'all couldn't become the president to actually even say the words AIDS. Then it is strikingly different, but there are also some deep, deep similarities. I call up it reminds united states of who is expendable at both of these moments.

Cathy Cohen: When people who were using injection drugs, who were primarily poor and black people, presented at hospitals in emergency rooms, with the same thing that would come up to exist understood as AIDS, that wasn't seen as a medical crisis. Why? Because those people weren't understood to be full man beings. They weren't understood to be healthy man beings. So if we don't sympathise them to exist healthy, we tin't empathize when they are, in fact, ill. It was merely when white men, largely white gay men who had insurance, who went to individual doctors who could say, "Oh my goodness, yous used to be salubrious, and at present you're sick," that nosotros could empathise that there was something going on that would become HIV and AIDS.

Cathy Cohen: If we retrieve well-nigh COVID, when COVID was existing, and information technology conspicuously did, in communities of color devastating those communities, I don't think we understood the kind of impact of COVID. Nosotros had the mayor of Chicago saying she was shocked virtually the devastation in communities of color. I think because oftentimes nosotros are non paying attention to the systemic nature of racism that of course would reproduce COVID in communities of color at much higher rates.

Cathy Cohen: So what did we acquire? We learned that, in fact, communities of color have ever suffered, they've e'er been disproportionately impacted, and the ways in which they can amplify their voices are traditionally not through the institutions and the levers of something we phone call democracy. Information technology is but when, in fact, they take to the street, only when they threaten the privilege and the security of other man beings and other communities that nosotros take their voices seriously and their suffering seriously. The ways in which people are demeaned for, for example, looting or burning is in office the merely mode we tin can go people to pay attention to those communities and to recognize what is being replicated and reproduced equally sickness in those communities.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: So I want to echo something that Cathy said, seeing the grouping equally deserving of the consequence. So you lot've got immature LGBTQ people of color who were showing upward in the emergency room who were exhibiting signs of a disease that people think they got from stigmatized behavior, sexual practice and drug use. This is the understanding of this group. And in a very similar way, the incidence of police force killings has been with us and has been actually the impetus for so many other protest movements. About every other black protestation motion that we've seen in history, merely police killings are oftentimes always dismissed because at that place's a presumption of guilt on behalf of black people. Black people have been divorced from any presumption of innocence. And I don't mean in a legal sense, I mean blackness babies are non seen as innocent, black children are not seen every bit innocent.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: But nosotros've got video now. We've got video as a form of cocky defense. We've got black people who cease their cars and whip out their video cameras every time a black person's stopped in the street, and we've got nearly nine minutes of video. And we've got the blatant disregard for the homo life caught on camera. Different from Laquan McDonald, say, that the video was hidden for a year. Merely the blatant disregard for the life, the face of that officer. I recollect that really makes a difference.

Paul Rand: Got it. Got it. I want to proceed on this comment about police. And John, I wonder if I tin can direct this question to you. A lot of your research looks at collective bargaining and right now there'southward a lot of discussions about police unions. And I wonder if y'all can kick us off going downwards this path and talking about what is happening in this area, what'southward the concern, and is it something that can be dismantled and a new path felt frontwards?

John Rappaport: If you follow stories nigh policing and criminal offense, it doesn't have long before y'all come up across some absolutely abhorrent comments from the president of some union post-obit the tapes coming out. And so you see this stuff and you think, "This is not salubrious. This is not helping." But at the same fourth dimension, there was no research that could tie this atrocious rhetoric to behavior on the ground.

John Rappaport: I recently wrote a paper with a couple of colleagues from the Law School, where we were able to identify a natural experiment that let us mensurate actually the furnishings of collective bargaining rights on police beliefs. And it uses a Florida Supreme Court decision that gave sheriff's deputies the right to bargain collectively for the outset time in 2003. And we look at their behavior before and after they had the right to bargain collectively and compare it to the behavior of municipal police force officers whose rights did not alter when this conclusion was issued. And we detect that when you give sheriff's deputies commonage bargaining rights, it led to a forty% increase in incidents of tearing misconduct.

John Rappaport: When I think about the big picture effect of police unions, I think about information technology at 3 levels. The highest level is electoral impact. Then police force unions are organized groups of people who collect money and donate it to political campaigns, sometimes big amounts of coin, and they endorse candidates. And there are some areas where those contributions and that endorsement tin really make a difference in electoral politics. And they tend to, unsurprisingly, favor more than conservative, more than and so-chosen police force and lodge candidates.

John Rappaport: The side by side level down is at the policy level. So if you are the mayor of a big urban center and y'all desire to alter your employ of force policy or you lot want to make information more transparent most police officers' disciplinary history, you're going to have to get that through the union and the marriage's going to oppose it. And they always, always oppose information technology. And before they were opposing these things, they were opposing affirmative action in hiring, they were opposing letting women into the police, they were opposing anything that I think a lot of us would call progress. Then it's hard to go policy changes through, because of the wedlock resistance.

John Rappaport: And then, at the most granular level and I think peradventure the most important level, the unions have been incredibly successful in bargaining for contracts that make it extremely hard to hold officers accountable. And they exercise this past bargaining for an array of procedural protections that boot in when an officer is being investigated for misconduct. And they contain rights like you tin't question or interrogate the officeholder for the first 48 hours after the incident. And before you question him, y'all have to give him witness statements from all the other witnesses that you talk to. Y'all have to give him all the photographic camera footage. And then, a cynic would look at this and say, "Male child, it seems like you're just setting him upwardly. You lot're showing him all the prove and saying, 'Make upwards a story that is defensible and fits all this evidence.'" And these are rights that we would never dream of giving anyone accused of a crime, because it simply makes it besides piece of cake to get out of things.

John Rappaport: So, even if you do succeed in sustaining a charge against an officer and maybe firing that officer, at that place are actually strong back-cease procedural protections, rights of appeal, you accept your case to a labor arbitrator. And there'south not a lot of skilful academic testify on this, but some really good journalistic investigation. I saw one recent study using Minnesota mediation decisions over the last five years said that l% of all the officers who'd been fired had been reinstated by labor arbitrators. So it's incredibly hard to agree them accountable.

John Rappaport: Then my co-authors and I think this is a existent problem. I'm very gratified and excited to see that people are starting to pay attention to this. And I think that this is a major impediment to so many of the other things that nosotros want to practice. People have lots of adept ideas and nosotros have lots of knowledge about how to makes changes. And unremarkably the answer is, "Oh, the union'll never let that through," and that's got to get.

Paul Rand: So along with this concept of unionization, we are now getting an increased number of requests either to fund or abolish the law. And I wonder if I could, Cathy or Reuben, perchance take either one of you counterbalance in on where is this coming from? People are expressing their feelings about this in a lot of unlike ways, merely where is this concept coming from? And what'south the likelihood of it progressing in whatever which way?

Cathy Cohen: Well, I'll just spring in and so Reuben tin follow up and clean up. I remember it'south coming out of lived experience. Information technology comes out of what happens when you collaborate with a failed institution. In many means, people would say that we take asked or at least it'southward been dictated to police that they will try to provide many unlike services for which they are clearly not prepared. If there's a mental health issue, we send a police force officer. And we send a police force officer oft with a gun, thinking that somehow the presence of a firearm attached usually to probably a white man who is not a function of that community is supposed to de-escalate the situation, when in fact it oftentimes escalates the situation.

Cathy Cohen: If we're thinking almost something like domestic violence, once more, oftentimes an approach has been to criminalize the encounter, as opposed to thinking nigh what in fact we can exercise as a successful intervention. Even around issues of violence, we know that programs like CeaseFire and others that are really thinking about de-escalation in terms of violence, often are more effective than trying to ship out a law officer. And so I think office of the defund the constabulary is only about the ineffectiveness of police in communities.

Cathy Cohen: The 2nd part is the way in which a police upkeep absorbs then much of the air and the possibility for what might be productive in those same communities. So part of, I retrieve, what has happened is that much of the media has really missed the demands that were coming out of the motion for blackness lives, for example. Information technology was disinvest, invest. It disinvest in the criminalization of black communities. Disinvest in the expansion of police force departments. Disinvest in officers in schools. And take that money and invest in those same communities. Provide for healthcare clinics. Provide for individuals who tin can help with domestic violence. Provide for housing for people who are homeless. Information technology isn't a complete model, and unfortunately I think the media has kind of landed on something that they believe is controversial without taking the whole idea, the whole need into consideration.

Paul Rand: By latching onto this thought of defunding.

Cathy Cohen: Yes. Yeah. So they're maxim defund, yes, only the other critical piece here is invest. Invest in communities where at that place has been no investment.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: I think that's admittedly right, and I think it comes out of an abolitionist critique of how policing works. Police and prison house abolition is really misunderstood. At that place'due south a presumption that there's no mechanism for public safety, that what would be produced is a kind of vacuum. Just actually the abolitionist critique is to reimagine our social systems in such a manner that the problems that we're trying to address actually get addressed. Hence, investing in the kinds of infrastructure that's been systematically gutted since about 1965.

Paul Rand: So nosotros're watching and y'all're seeing Minneapolis saying that they're going to exercise a complete restructuring, then you've got LA and New York Urban center saying they're going to make cuts. Does that give you, John, any sense of optimism?

John Rappaport: It'southward early on. I don't know what these things really mean. I know that the city council in Minneapolis said, "We're going to dismantle, disband the constabulary section," just then I saw the police chief in Minneapolis give a press conference where it sounded like he hadn't gotten that memo and he was talking about the reforms that they were going to undertake. Reduce the constabulary upkeep in LA, well what I've heard, the accounts I've read is that, well, it'southward really more he'southward not going to expand the police forcefulness, rather than trim information technology back. So I remember it'due south early to say.

John Rappaport: A lot of people are talking about Camden every bit an example of a police department that has been disbanded and sort of reformed-

Paul Rand: Can you explain what they did, John?

John Rappaport: Yeah. So they were trapped in one of these collective bargaining agreements that fabricated it really hard to concur officers accountable. The police department was basically a disaster. And Camden said, "Await, this is such a disaster, we're not going to get to where we need to exist by making incremental changes." And and then, they just dismantled the police department. They said, "We're shutting downward our police department." That sort of cancels the collective bargaining understanding. "And now we're going to reform a new public safety bureau. It's going to be organized at the county level. Camden police force officers are immune to come up interview for jobs at the new county level agency, but we get to choose who we hire and who nosotros don't."

John Rappaport: And so presumably what they tried to do is hire the skillful apples and not the bad apples. And I'm not going to stake my reputation on it, because I recall nosotros don't know plenty about Camden, just the early on signs are good, in terms of the style that it has transformed the relationship between the law and the community. I know enough now to know that all sorts of bad things are going to happen in Camden, and so no one should say that this is utopia hither, but information technology does await like a marked improvement. And and so I remember a lot of people have that in listen every bit a potential model.

John Rappaport: I can see Cathy wants to jump in here.

Cathy Cohen: I do, because I want to bound in on this point of is it hopeful. And I totally hear everything you said, John, simply I think none of u.s. thought nosotros would accept a national give-and-take nigh defund the police at this moment. So I remember, in fact, information technology is hopeful. It doesn't mean that, in fact, what will be instituted volition be what we want, but the idea that young people, young blackness people putting their bodies on the line can change the national discussion absent of the intervention of a president or even significant political individuals, to change the discussion and so that, in fact, we might reimagine what public safety looks like that isn't centered on a policy of policing I call back is astonishing. And I think it should give u.s.a. tremendous hope for what is possible in terms of the radical policies, the radical dreams, and just the radical politics of young people, in detail young black people at this moment.

Paul Rand: Right. Reuben, annihilation yous'd want to put into there.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: No.

Paul Rand: No, okay. It'due south a good sign when information technology's like, "You've said it all." All right, well allow me move into a unlike area, if I can, Cathy, because you brought this up at the beginning of our conversations about our current political environment and what that represents and why that is contributing to information technology at this indicate. And I wonder if y'all could expand a little chip, maybe clear what is it that'southward specially challenging about the current political environment and what needs to change if we're going to address some of the problems that we've been talking well-nigh.

Cathy Cohen: Oh boy, that'southward a large question. What'south problematic virtually the current political surroundings?

Paul Rand: And we merely have 12 hours, and then...

Cathy Cohen: I know. I was like-

Paul Rand: ... fit it in there, if you tin.

Cathy Cohen: ... where do y'all kickoff? Well let me start with, once more, the information and the research. We practise this bi-monthly survey of young adults and it is very articulate to them that many of the political institutions that we think of as central to democracy are failing to them, whether it is the Congress, clearly the presidency, even the media. They have very fiddling faith in those institutions. When we ask the question well-nigh should at that place be a third party, more than than two-thirds of immature adults say, "Absolutely, yes, there should be at least a third party."

Cathy Cohen: So conviction in terms of leadership is one of the problems. Now, what has been, I think, interesting at this moment is we often are thinking about the kind of political landscape from the federal perspective. We have seen the consummate absence of leadership in that location. But in many of the cities in which we've seen uprisings, whether it is Atlanta or Chicago or DC, nosotros actually see black women as mayors. And there is an interesting, I call back, interaction between both them representing governments, just likewise being able to articulate their position of governance from being black women, from having the experiences that Reuben started us with of having people in their lives, whether it's men or women or folks who are non-binary, who have interacted with the criminal justice system, who have been incarcerated, who understand the difficulties and the dangers of policing. That has kind of opened up a unlike type of infinite for the possibility not of immature political maxim, "I believe in elections," merely at least agreement that the electoral arena is part of what they accept to focus in on.

Cathy Cohen: Only they also are recognizing that they can in fact shape the discourse on their ain outside and circumvent those institutions. They can dictate what the agenda will exist by taking to the street. They tin can need justice for George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or the people in their neighborhoods past showing up twenty-four hour period later on day after day in the streets.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: And just to add to that, I'yard thinking about a text that I got from a group of young activists during the last ballot cycle, and it was a flyer with judges circled, "He's a op," the flyer said, and the judge was circled who was consistently ruling confronting the interests of these young activists. What that said to me in that moment and what that says to me now is that the activists are paying attending to local politics, which to me is fantastic. I experience like at that place'south been an overwhelming distraction at the federal level, especially during the Obama administration.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: And the second thing are the kinds of things that we're discussing. Cathy mentioned that nosotros're discussing defunding the law, discussions almost anti-black racism, about what it means to be a "ally," about how to address change in a broader level, and near the role of violence. This, to me, is the place we need to be where we exercise away with categories of innocence and guilt. Not birthday, because I think that matters. People cause harm, things demand to happen. But at that place'due south been a valuing of innocence and a valuing of clean, slap-up, perfect lines that I feel like is commencement to be done away with that I think opens a new set of possibilities for political action and political mobilization, and just for new ways to experience everyday life.

Paul Rand: And I want to keep this going, Reuben, if I tin can with you, considering I know you've done some research around in the surface area that you phone call moral worlds. And I wonder if yous tin can explain a lilliputian scrap what yous mean by moral worlds and what are the moral worlds of this current environment?

Reuben Jonathan Miller: Yeah, so I started a project where I'm following people who have been accused of crimes of violence, murder, rape, people we tend to fear and loathe. And I'm very interested in the way that they're valued in the social earth that they navigate. I'one thousand interested in the kinds of letters that are relayed about trigger-happy people and problems of violence, and I'thou interested in the extent to which they interpret and internalize these statements about who they are and what they've done. And I'k also interested in the relative reasons why people brand decisions. So why become a drug robber and non, say, a dope dealer? Why get a gun runner and not, say, I don't know. Name your other position that y'all could take upwards in, say, a "illicit economy."

Reuben Jonathan Miller: I think right now the moral mural is irresolute. And this is office and bundle of my last set of comments. I think nosotros've been fixated with questions of innocence and guilt, which is why there was and then little progress when the AIDS epidemic, for instance, kickoff happened. What are the things that you lot did that brought this matter onto yourself? And I think there's a full-out rejection of respectability politics that was ushered in by the movement for blackness lives, and I retrieve that's changing the moral landscape in the values that nosotros assign to people and their actions, and our power to allow for whether or not you've engaged in some procedure of redemption for people to be total participants in, say, a homo community.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: So when you lot asked me what'southward the mural right at present, I think the mural is changing. The politics of onetime are showtime to exist eroded slowly. And the proof of that for me are the role that formerly incarcerated activists are playing in every social motion that nosotros're seeing right now.

Paul Rand: John, y'all're nodding your head on that. What are your thoughts?

John Rappaport: Peculiarly that last indicate. Earlier I was an academic, I was a public defender and came to know a lot of people who had been convicted of a lot of crimes, including a lot of murders, and they're just people, too. I retrieve I'g the curmudgeon in this group, so I hadn't noticed this, but I call back Reuben'south exactly correct that-

Paul Rand: You're as well young to be a curmudgeon, John.

John Rappaport: Reuben's exactly right that the interest of formerly incarcerated people, putting them non simply involved, non only in the crowd, merely out in front, and that, "This is a fact near my life, but this doesn't ascertain me. And this doesn't let you to marginalize my views and my voice." And of course this makes me remember on a legal level of the voting rights bug that have been going on in Florida right now with re-enfranchising and then the fight against the re-enfranchisement of people who have been convicted of crimes. But I practise, I hold with Reuben that that's really a meaning development and that that's a good for you sign, I remember, for our guild if we tin can get to a place where people really can be reintegrated and that you tin commit a offense, even a tearing criminal offence, yous tin can serve time, if that's how our society needs to bargain with it, and so you can re-enter and you're not permanently marginalized because of that. I call up that's meaning.

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Paul Rand: Now, all iii of you are professors at the University of Chicago. How do you see this chat that nosotros're having playing out on campus with your students?

John Rappaport: Well information technology's such an unusual time to have conversations at all. I haven't seen my students in the mankind in quite a long time, and though I see them online, the conversations are dissimilar from what they used to be. Nosotros tin can sense the change in our students, it's so rapid, from one twelvemonth to the next. The understandings and the expectations that students bring in, particularly just to the written report of constabulary, because yous show up at police school and, specially in the first year of legal education, you are taught the way things accept e'er been done. And you read a lot of old stuff and it's all about sort of slow change, incremental. In the final couple years, seems like the offset year students have become more impatient with that and they say, "Well, why do information technology that mode?" And we're similar, "Well, because lots of really smart people before us take thought nearly it and they decided to do it this way." And they only don't accept that.

John Rappaport: And more concretely and more specifically, we've had conversations nearly how to handle protests at the Law School. At that place have been protests that go to a betoken where Police School staff feel similar they're not sure they can handle it. Who exercise you lot call? And correct now, in our society, you call the police. And if the police come, they're going to be bearing arms, and the students are pushing back on that hard. And they're demanding something that doesn't be, which is you should call somebody who'south going to show up merely they're not going to be armed and they're going to be able to aid the situation. Our reaction is: "Well, that'south not a bad idea. In fact, that's a pretty adept idea, simply nosotros don't exactly know how to pull it off right now." Literally, we're sitting here like, "Well, can we tell the police to leave their gun at the door? Can we leave it in the automobile? How does this piece of work?"

John Rappaport: And this just all circles back to stuff we've been talking most this whole time most we have such a deficiency in non-police public safe services. We have no other pick sometimes. And and so, the students are really pushing the states in a very concrete style to call up almost this and to come with something ameliorate, to come with something different.

Cathy Cohen: I think, when we think about our students, at that place is a way in which that question could be read equally, "Wait at all that'due south happening out on the world. How volition y'all talk about that with your students?" And I want to say that, look at all that's happening at the University. You tin can't talk near universities these days without recognizing that I think information technology's 92% of colleges and universities take their own police force forcefulness. And so I think there at present has to be a conversation on campus about what does it mean to invest in policing through our campus law. What does it mean to study and reimagine what safety looks similar independent or without the idea of policing as information technology'southward currently practiced? What is the office of the University in reproducing systemic racism?

Cathy Cohen: At that place is a fashion in which many of united states who have a responsibleness to our students and to the communities from which we come, black communities, to the South Side, which is right in that location, correct at the door and the gates of the University, that we have to understand the role of the University in hoarding power, hoarding resources and labor for its benefit, in many ways disinvesting in those same communities. Then now that we have a framework, what does it hateful to disinvest in policing and invest in those communities, to invest in those students, to invest in employment? And I am certain the University would say they're already doing some of that, but I call back we would want to brainstorm to think almost systemically what does that look like and what does a shift in ability at the University where those issues are a priority, what does that look like.

Paul Rand: Reuben, anything to add into this?

Reuben Jonathan Miller: Yep, just that our students are certainly pushing usa to recall in these ways. I'grand thinking about what'southward happening, for example, at the Pozen Center for Human Rights, the mass incarceration working group. It is amongst the virtually pop things that I've seen. At that place was one of those midnight philosophy talks on policing. Information technology was packed. Hundreds of people. Simply very powerful. So our students are pushing united states of america, hopefully forcing usa to accept conversations near broad-based social change at the University and certainly virtually the Academy's office in perpetuating these systemic forms of violence.

Paul Rand: Information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to listen to this conversation proverb, "Nosotros've got some huge challenges in front of us." And y'all guys have washed a wonderful job articulating what some of those things are. Is in that location anything, starting with yous, John, that as yous call up about this, maybe it's even thinking most this energy with some of our students and young people as a whole that is giving you a sense of hope?

John Rappaport: Yeah, I judge two things. I is I'd start where Reuben but concluded and where the last exchanges just ended, which is with the students. The chief reason I love being a professor and why I wanted to be a professor rather than a practicing attorney, which is what I was before, is this opportunity to work with people who never age. There are always new 22-, 23-year-olds coming in and bringing their new ideas in, and they're hopeful. And peculiarly if y'all work in the legal world for long enough and you run across how hard information technology is to make modify, yous become worn downwardly and y'all go a certain degree of pessimism nearly the footstep of modify. And the students actually, I think, energize us and push usa. And so, just every yr the influx of students and hearing from the students does brand me hopeful. And that's, I think, overlaps with the population that nosotros're seeing out in the protests right now.

John Rappaport: And then another thing is just that this is a really special moment and in that location are things that are on the tabular array now that weren't on the table a couple weeks ago, in terms of policy changes, legal changes, cultural changes. Nosotros can debate all dark about whether they're going to exist meaning enough changes or whether they're going to backlash or all these things, but the point is, the conclusion spaces is huge right now. And people have been talking well-nigh ending qualified immunity for decades, and it actually looks like it could happen. And all these other things that we've been writing about for decades, a lot of them could happen right now. And that's really, actually exciting.

Paul Rand: Cathy?

Cathy Cohen: I would agree with John. This is an incredible moment and I want to say expanding moment. I don't recollect information technology'south ending any fourth dimension before long. We have an election coming up in November. I think even the word almost voter suppression in ways that nosotros haven't seen-

Paul Rand: I.east. Georgia, right?

Cathy Cohen: ... the idea of ... Well in Georgia and across the state. The possibility of vote by mail, the question of where does a voting strategy fit into a protest strategy. I retrieve all of these things are beingness discussed in a serious fashion, and to John's point, not just by a small-scale group of people on Twitter or not but by the left, if we want to call them that, but really past a larger public who is trying to figure out what the hell only happened and why did it happen. We start with this question: "How did this happen?" And I think we are watching a state struggle with its history of systemic racism and white supremacy in a way that I oasis't seen in my lifetime.

Cathy Cohen: Then I don't think we know where this ends, simply I practice always want to say in that location has to be some gratitude to young people who've been organizing without a lot of whens, who have built infrastructure in communities, who accept talked to immature people and engaged in political education, and who are now helping to mobilize people into the streets to demand attention and set an agenda. And I call up nonetheless it ends, and I don't know if I'd say terminate, it really speaks to the possibility of what political participation in democracy should look similar. And that makes me hopeful.

Paul Rand: Reuben, allow's wrap this question up with you.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: Then two things. Well, two groups of people brand me very hopeful. Then 1 is the role that formerly incarcerated activists are playing in the broader borough mural. I think that people are seizing the moment and are seizing opportunities to not simply participate in movements, as John and Cathy have pointed out, but to atomic number 82 them. And that, to me, says a lot. It simply speaks volumes.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: And and so the second, I'm going to cheat and say the kids. The kids make me hopeful. And maybe calling them kids is pejorative and I don't mean to, merely let me say the youth and immature adults. I retrieve the level of civic didactics that participating in a movement provides is loftier. And I think the level of borough didactics and civic activity right at present is loftier. We've just had sustained protest movements across 50 states. Every state participated. This is new. We have not seen this before. And I think watching young people, young adults specifically, notice new ways to resist systemic oppression and violence, whether that be through songs and memes, dancing in the street, or breaking a car window or burning a police auto, all these different expressions of resistance give me hope. Requite me real hope.

Matt Hodapp: Big Brains is a production of the UChicago Podcast Network. If you like what y'all heard, please give united states of america a review and a rating. The show is hosted by Paul M. Rand and produced by me, Matt Hodapp, with assistance from Alyssa Eads. Thanks for listening.

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Source: https://news.uchicago.edu/black-lives-matter-protests-hope-future

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