Boltin 1
Last Name 2
Faith Boltin
Ruffin Reynolds
ENG112-K6B
6-6-2018
Annotated Bibliography
Demby, Gene. “The Birth of a new Civil Rights Movement” Current Issues and enduring questions. Boston, New York; Bedford/St. Matins Macmillan Learning, 2017. Pages 488-494
This article talks about how in 2014, the new social justice movement became a force that the political part of the regular majority of people had to figure out/think with. In fact, if you wanted a megaphone for a movement started and led by young people of color, you'd have a hard time to find a better one than Twitter, whose users distort younger and browner than the public, which often has the effect of magnifying that group's broad (things that are the most important) and fascinations. It's not a coincidence that the Twitter verse helped surface and magnify the stories of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and Michael Brown. They're trying to take on deeply dug in/established (unfair treatment based on skin color, age, etc.) that is fueled less by showy prejudice than (related to the deep-down, basic way something works), understood biases.
Three, the movement's renewal has exposed a serious generational crack (or argument). It is mostly a bottom-up movement being led by young unknowns who have rejected, sometimes angrily, the thought (made beforehand) of leadership thrust on them by (person with lots of experience/person who served in the military) famous people like Al Sharpton. While both the younger and older (people who use action and strong words to support or oppose something) both trace their family to the (the right to vote, to free speech, to fair and equal treatment, etc.,) movement, they seem to match up/make even themselves with different parts of that family tree. And in (more than two, but not a lot of) ways, these modern tensions are updates of the disagreements that marked the earlier movement.
Board, The Editorial. “Political Lies About Police Brutality.” The New York Times, 27 Oct. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/opinion/political-lies-about-police-brutality.html?partner=bloomberg.
This kind of public close attention is all to the good, given the damage police animal-like violence has done to African-American communities for generations and the (causing slow chemical destruction) effect it has on the wider (community of people/all good people in the world). This movement focuses on the definitely true fact that black people (who lawfully live in a country, state, etc.) are far more likely than whites to die at the hands of the police. The more the country ignores that truth, the greater the (related to the responsibility of being a member of society) disagreement that will flow from it. This, he said, may have added/have given to an increase in crime.
There is no data suggesting such an effect, and certainly, Mr. Comey has none. But his suggestion plays into the right-wing view that holding the police to (agreeing with, or related to, the Constitution) standards endangers the public. Justice Department (people in charge of something) who have made a top priority of (starting a trial in court against someone/performing an action) police departments for (the right to vote, to free speech, to fair and equal treatment, etc.,) violations -- and who argue that increased close attention of the police drives up crime -- were understandably angry at Mr. Comey's guesses. His creation hints that for the police to do their jobs, they need to have total freedom to be violent and cruel.
It also hints that the public would be safer if Americans with cell phones never started circulating videos of officers beating suspects in the first place. A day after Mr. Comey made his statements, The Times published a long (act of asking questions and trying to find the truth about something) into (assuming certain races of people are more likely to commit crimes) and violent and cruel police behavior in Greensboro, N.C., the third-largest city in the state. After looking at (again) tens of thousands of traffic stops and years of arrest data, Times reporters found that the police pulled over African-American drivers at a rate far out of proportion to their share of the local driving population. The police searched black car/truck drivers or their cars twice as often as whites -- even though whites where much more likely to be caught with drugs and weapons.
Lyle, Perry, and Ashraf M. Esmail. "SWORN TO PROTECT: POLICE BRUTALITY - A DILEMMA FOR AMERICA'S POLICE." Race, Gender & Class, vol. 23, no. 3, 2016, pp. 155-185. ProQuest, https://login.proxy071.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1899014782?accountid=11048.
Today, police departments have an even higher probability of incurring liability since the passage of §210401 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Passed in part because of the Rodney King incident; it gives the DOJ extremely broad powers in the investigation and prosecutorial authority in cases of alleged use of excessive force by the police. It allows the agency to look into patterns or practices of misconduct in local police departments and requires the collection of statistics on police abuse, even to file civil actions on behalf of citizens to obtain declaratory or equitable relief. The monitoring of metrics may be put in place to ensure their compliance with the DOJ's findings. Any such measurements should gage racial profiling or any other police actions from citizen complaints that indicate biases or racism in the handling of contacts.
Caddoo, Cara. "THE BIRTH OF A NATION, POLICE BRUTALITY, AND BLACK PROTEST." The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 14, no. 4, 2015, pp. 608-611. ProQuest, https://login.proxy071.nclive.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1769581913?accountid=11048, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1537781415000420.
On September 21, 1915, shortly before 10 p.m., a brick crashed through the glass window above the entrance of Philadelphia's Forrest Theatre. Instantly, the streets erupted into a "bloody scene" of the "wildest disorder." Police charged with batons and revolvers. The crowd, which consisted mostly of black demonstrators, scattered. A few dashed for the building's main entrance. Hundreds more fled up Broad and Walnut Streets, the police at their heels. " Those who could not run fast enough to dodge clubs received them upon their heads." Two protesters threw milk bottles at the patrolmen pursing them. At the corner of Walnut and Broad, someone hurled a brick at Officer Wallace Striker. On Juniper Street, either a rioter or a police officer fired shots into the air. By night's end, more than a score was injured, several arrested, and the theater defaced. Nineteen-year-old Arthur Lunn, a farmer from Worcester County, Maryland, was charged with inciting the riot. Dr. Wesley F. Graham, the pastor of Trinity Baptist, sustained "severe injuries." Lillian Howard, a caterer; William A. Sinclair, the financial secretary of Douglass Hospital; and a thirty-three-year-old laborer named Lee Banks received severe lacerations. The clash between Philadelphia's police officers and the local black population--"young and old," poor and relatively wealthy--occurred during the protests against D. W. Griffith's photoplay, The Birth of a Nation. Black Americans had already organized demonstrations against the film in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. Soon after, tens of thousands of black protesters, including those in Philadelphia, joined the broad-based, concerted battle against the film.
Recent centennial reflections on The Birth of a Nation have cast the film as a powerful symbol of the past and as evidence of a shameful history of racism that American society has overcome. Yet if we consider the goals, demands, and desires of the men and women who fought against the photoplay, a different lesson comes into view. In light of ongoing anti-black police violence, the continued exclusion of black Americans from public spaces, and the systemic valuation of private property over black lives, the history of The Birth of a Nation has as much to tell us about our present as it does our past.
Spillar, Katherine. “How More Female Police Officers Would Help Stop Police Brutality.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 July 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/02/how-more-female-police-officers-would-help-stop-police-brutality/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ee5fd3398c51.
Over the last year, America has finally begun to admit that it has a police animal-like violence problem. The conversation about solutions has focused on body cameras, better training or stricter use-of-force policies, along with a need for community engagement. But a critical idea is being (ignored/didn't notice/looked at): increasing the numbers of women in police ranks. Women in (watching and checking by law officers) make a difference -- a big difference -- they make for a better police department. Haven't you wondered why women police are not the ones involved in recent officer-involved shootings? After all, they are usually smaller, somewhat weaker in physical strength, and yet they don't appear to shoot suspects as often. In fact, over the last 40 years, studies have shown that female officers are less strict in their approach to (watching and checking by law officers), less (depending on and needing) physical force and are more effective communicators. Most importantly, female officers are better at disarming (or lessening) possibly violent arguments before those meetings turn deadly.
This research was caused/brought about/reminded by (existing all over a large area) guess/guessing that women, who began joining police departments in larger numbers in the early 1970s, would fail as patrol officers. One of the earliest studies paid for and supported by the Police Foundation in 1974, found that women met many of the same kinds of situations (involving angry, drunk or violent people) and were as capable as men. The study's most important finding, though, was that "women act less aggressively and they believe in less (angry, violent behavior)." The (people who work to find information) (described a possible future event) "the presence of women may stimulate increased attention to the ways of avoiding violence and cooling violent situations without resorting to the use of force." Until now, the national conversation has ignored the benefits (male/female status) balancing would bring to the effectiveness of police departments and to the people in their communities. With demands for police reform echoing from the streets to city halls to the White House, the president, the Department of Justice and local public leaders have a perfect opportunity to think about a dramatic, (male/female status)-based response.
