TUES DEC 2, 2014 Militarized Policing and Public Protest: From - TopicsExpress



          

TUES DEC 2, 2014 Militarized Policing and Public Protest: From the WTO Protests to Ferguson Hosted by Harry Bridges Labor Center-UW ***Location is in the Unity Suite of the Ethnic Cultural Center*** With the National Guard is on stand-by in the City of Ferguson, Missouri awaiting the grand jury decision in the killing of Michael Brown, the issue of militarized police is resurgent in the headlines. Meanwhile in Seattle, activists, scholars, and officials who lived and studied the violent police response to the 1999 WTO protests smell the all-too-familiar scent of teargas in the air. On December 2nd, 2014, three major players join together for a panel discussion of the events surrounding the 1999 WTO conference, reflecting on what it teaches us about militarized policing and new developments in Ferguson and beyond. *The panel will include Norm Stamper, the Seattle Police Chief during the protests, who in recent years has become one of the nation’s most celebrated critics of cannabis prohibition and police violence toward protesters. *He will be joined by Tyler Weaver, an attorney who successfully sued Stamper’s police department for the wrongful arrest of 150 peaceful protesters. *Robbie Stern, formerly of the Washington State Labor Council, will shed light on the role that unions played in those 1999 protests. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Simply put, white cops are afraid of black men. We don’t talk about it, we pretend it doesn’t exist, we claim “color blindness,” we say white officers treat black men the same way they treat white men. But that’s a lie. In fact, the bigger, the darker the black man the greater the fear. The African-American community knows this. Hell, most whites know it. Yet, even though it’s a central, if not the defining ingredient in the makeup of police racism, white cops won’t admit it to themselves, or to others.” ― Norm Stamper, Breaking Rank: A Top Cops Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Following the panel, Peter Kraska, a leading scholar on the issue of militarized policing and protest, and professor and chair of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies, will discuss the larger developments in police militarization and their implications for public protest today. Kraska has published seven books including Criminal Justice and Criminology Research Methods, Theorizing Criminal Justice: Eight Essential Orientations, and Militarizing The American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and Police. All events will be preceded at 3:30pm by a screening of This Is What Democracy Looks Like, a groundbreaking documentary that combines footage from over 100 different cameras to capture the historic event of the 1999 WTO protests. The film will allow older activists to relive the moments of the protest, and allow many younger students to experience for the first time this shocking and painful piece of Seattle history. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Schedule of events: 3:30 Documentary: This Is What Democracy Looks Like 4:45 Panel: Robbie Stern, Tyler Weaver and Norm Stamper 5:30 Speaker: Peter Kraska About the speakers: Tyler Weaver – Attorney (Hagens Berman) who litigated successfully against Seattle for wrongful arrest of WTO protestors Norm Stamper – Former Seattle Police Chief and now police reformer. Author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cops Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing. Peter Kraska – Professor, School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, author of numerous articles and books on militarized policing. Robbie Stern – former Special Assistant to the President of the Washington State Labor Council, labor march strategy leader for WTO protests About the documentary: Cut from the footage of over 100 media activists, This Is What Democracy Looks Like captures the historic events of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. The film marks a turning point in collaborative filmmaking and achieves a scope and vision possible only through the lenses of over 100 cameras. __________________ Heather Day, Director Community Alliance for Global Justice 206-724-2243 (c)
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 05:58:20 +0000

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