JustPublics@365 was delighted to co-sponsor a reception for academics who want to influence policy at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference (‘Reform Conference 2013’) in Denver, Colorado. More than seventy-five academics and activists who are, or want to be, working together on the area of drug policy joined our reception on Thursday.
The Reform Conference brings together a wide range of advocates, academics, and digital media activists from around the globe. Among those attending the conference were representatives from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU). They made this short video (3:51) about the conference which was screened at the closing plenary, and conveys some of what it was like to be there and some of the human cost of drug policy:
The Reform Conference addresses drug policy, which is a global issue that brings together issues of race, criminal justice, public health,civil liberties. And, the Reform Conference is a place where academics, advocates and digital media activists are working for social change around. The next Reform Conference will be held in 2015.
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This post is part of the Monthly Social Justice Topic Series on Stop-And-Frisk. If you have any questions, research that you would like to share related to Stop-and-Frisk or are interested in being interviewed for the series, please contact Morgane Richardson at justpublics365@gmail.com with the subject line, “Stop-and-Frisk Series.”
In this week’s episode of the JustPublics@365 podcast series I interview Ashley Dawson, Professor of English at the College of Staten Island about his book Mongrel Nation and about his work as the web co-editor of the journalSocial Text.
In this interview we talk about some of the ways migrant communities have established a sense of self and community within nations and the history of resistance by African, Asian, Caribbean and white Britons to insular representations of national identity. Professor Dawson also talks about how his academic work and academic training impacts his social justice work.
This post is part of the JustPublics@365 Podcast Series. The podcast series features CUNY Graduate Center faculty who are working on issues of social justice and inequality. If you have any questions, research that you would like to share, or are interested in being interviewed for the series, please contact Heidi Knoblauch at heidi.knoblauch@gmail.com
Stop-and-frisk as a policing strategy is driven in large measure by marijuana arrests in New York City. In New York, much of drug policy reform efforts has been around transforming policy around marijuana arrests.
At the moment, International Drug Policy Reform Conference is coming to a close in Denver, Colorado. The conference brings together academics and activists working to reform drug policy across the globe. While at the conference, I had a chance to interview two people who personify academic-activist partnerships around the connection between stop-and-frisk and marijuana arrests.
Professor Harry Levine (CUNY-Queens and the Graduate Center, Sociology) is the leading expert on the racial disparities in marijuana arrests. He holds Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. from Brandeis University. His work has received seven distinguished scholarship awards for historical and sociological research about addiction, alcohol prohibition and regulation, international drug policy, crack cocaine, the war on drugs, and racial bias in marijuana possession arrests. In 2013 he was awarded a Senior Scholar Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
gabriel sayegh is State Director, New York, Drug Policy Alliance, which he joined in 2003. sayegh and his team work in New York City and across the state, partnering with community organizing groups, human service agencies, and researchers to advance drug policies that are guided by science, compassion, health, racial justice and human rights. Recent successes include reform of New York’s draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws and the passage of historic legislation to prevent accidental overdose fatalities.
Jessie Daniels: Can you share a little bit about how you two came to be involved in the issue of marijuana arrests and how it is related to “stop-and-frisk” in New York City?
Harry Levine: I’ve been researching and writing about (and against) the drug war since the mid 1980s, always trying to find ways of affecting national debate and news. In 2005 I began researching the huge numbers of marijuana possession arrests and their racial bias in New York City. In 2008 the civil rights attorney Deborah Small and I released a 100 page report through the NYCLU — called “Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City.” It was based on two years of partly-funded research including attending national black police conferences and obtaining marijuana arrest data from New York State and the FBI. That report made a brief splash but no follow up. A year later I received a bit more funding so I could teach part time and work on this project and began my terrific partnership with Loren Siegel, formerly director of public education for the ACLU. Gabriel came to us immediately, encouraged, seduced, and tricked us into writing an “update” about marijuana arrests. Jim Dwyer of the New York Times eventually turned a bit of it into a fabulous column headlined “Whites Smoke Pot, but Blacks Are Arrested.” And THAT made a splash. Gabriel then encouraged and seduced Loren and me again and again to dig up more data and write about it, and he created brilliant press releases, wrote articles themselves, and and Tony Newman pitched the pieces to get them in the hands of newspaper reporters, wire service reporters, the NY City Council, members of the NY State Legislature, and even the national press. I’d known Ethan Nadelmann for 20 years and Tony and Gabriel from when they were puppies, but we never worked together like this before. It was and remains a joy to do so and they’ve accomplished soooo much.
By the way, and as Gabriel is likely to say, the marijuana possession arrests in New York and nationally are a by-product or “fruit” of police stops and searches (often illegal searches). And the vast majority (77%) of those arrested for marijuana are young people in their teens and twenties. Although young whites use marijuana more than young blacks and Latinos, throughout the U.S. blacks and Latinos are arrested at many times the rates of whites because they are stopped and searched much more often than young, whites, especially the many middle-class and wealthier whites.
gabriel sayegh: The only thing I would add to in Harry’s response is that while my office wrote all our press releases they were based on Tony ’s winning formula. Tony Newman, the Director of Media at DPA, then helps to finalize the headlines and most importantly – he works his magic to pitch the stories.
In the mid 2000’s, a guy named Bruce Johnson at NDRI had published a series of academic papers about the marijuana arrests in New York City. Between that and the FBI data about the arrests in NY, we were generally aware of the problem. But it wasn’t until Harry and Deborah published their major report in 2008 that the scope of the problem became clear – it was, as Harry likes to say, a scandal. At that time, we were still working on reforming the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws, and we started doing some field preparation for a campaign on the marijuana arrest crusade. It quickly became clear that we simply didn’t have the capacity at that moment to build and launch the type of effort we believed necessary to tackle the issue. After the Rockefeller reforms were passed in 2009, we were able to focus on building a new campaign.
Jessie Daniels: What changes do you foresee with District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin’s recent ruling on this controversial policing practice?
Harry Levine: I think one of the most important things that Judge Scheindlin has done is to provide language for explaining why the extreme racial disparities in stop and frisks (and by extension the marijuana arrests) are bad — meaning morally, ethically, legally bad, wrong, unconscionable and unconstitutional. In a piece coming out soon in The Nation magazine I say the following about the racist marijuana arrests throughout America and quote Judge Scheindlin:
Marijuana possession arrests are skewed by class, race and ethnicity because police departments systematically “go fishing” only in certain neighborhoods and methodically search only some “fish.” The result has been called “racism without racists.” No individual officers need harbor racial animosity for the criminal justice system to produce jails and courts filled with black and brown faces. However, acknowledging this absence of hostile intent does not absolve policy makers and law enforcement officials from responsibility or blame. As federal Judge Shira Scheindlin recently determined in two prominent stop-and-frisk cases, New York City’s top officials “adopted an attitude of willful blindness toward statistical evidence of racial disparities in stops and stop outcome.” Judge Scheindlin found that high-level officials “turn a blind eye” and show “willful disregard” to the discriminatory effects of their policing policies. She cited the legal doctrine of “deliberate indifference” to describe police and city officials who “willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the [stop-and-frisk] policy…is racially discriminatory and therefore violates the United States Constitution.”
gabriel sayegh: A few years ago, there was a lot of confusion in New York City – among the press, among many advocates, and in many communities — about what the law pertaining to stop and frisk practices. We asked Ira Glasser, president of the DPA board and former head of the ACLU, to give our staff a private presentation on the issue. He taught us about the detailed and incredible legal history of stop and frisk and its connection to marijuana arrests in New York City. The presentation was so instructive and illuminating that we asked him to write it up. We published his analysis and distributed it widely, and document helped us and so many others understand exactly how these issues were connected and why the police stop and frisk practices were illegal.
Judge Scheindlin’s ruling in the Floyd case is huge. If implemented, the oversight and community dialogues required under the ruling could prove transformative. We’re already seeing the number of stops in the city go down, and, along with it, the number of marijuana arrests are also going down.
Jessie Daniels: Some academics might be hesitant to get involved in such a controversial political issue. What do you say to critics who might question your ‘objectivity’ as a scholar?
HarryLevine: Most university professors and administrators understand that being objective, or factual, or accurate is not at all the same as having no point of view. And fortunately my colleagues at Queens College and City University of New York strongly support what I’ve done. And lots of academics do advocacy around criminal justice reform and the drug war — especially in law, medicine, public health, social welfare, criminology, but also sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, economics. even education. And more would like to. One obstacle is that advocacy work requires a different set of skills, knowledge and connections than conventional academic work. And almost no academics have people like Loren, Gabriel and Tony to teach them and work with them. (And perhaps most important, there is no funding to make it happen, but that’s another topic.) I think that as the movements for marijuana legalization, drug law reform, and police and criminal justice reform grow, that more academics will find ways to contribute. It is already happening in New York City and in many other places. I think of it as the huge task of building the institutions and policies for a post drug war America.
Jessie Daniels: It’s fairly unusual for people involved in policy or activism to reach out to academic researchers. Do you have any advice for people who, like you, are working on a social justice issue and want to connect with researchers and maybe don’t know how to do that?
gabriel sayegh: Back in the late 90s, I was doing a lot of activism for just and fair international trade policies, especially in those so-called free trade agreements. I learned pretty quickly that generally speaking, the public wasn’t really enthusiastic to hear about the complicated policy nuances of an international trade deal – it can be really boring stuff, inaccessible to regular folks. But those agreements often dramatically impact our economies and can undermine democracies here and abroad, so we had to find effective ways to understand and communicate about them in the public sphere. Activist researchers and academics helped us decipher some of the economic language in these deals at the time, boiling it down to a few main points. And because of their status as Ph.D.s and such, they could help legitimize our positions in the public discourse. If you’re a rag-tag activist as we were then, the press and public generally didn’t pay attention when we declared that “These kind of trade deals are unfair, unjust.” But when Dr. So and So, who is Professor at some University comes out and says, “This particular thing is unfair,” well, then, it means something different.
I was fortunate to get more serious lessons in working with academics and researchers from two people: Judy Greene and Lorenzo Jones. They showed me how a new report, issued the right way and with the right kind of media plan, can not only earn a lot of press, but also shape the narrative around the issue – sometimes dramatically. Judy is one of the foremost criminal justice researchers in the country. She started a group called Justice Strategies specifically to deploy action-oriented research – good research — in campaigns to change policy and practices in criminal justice and drug policy. Lorenzo is a longtime organizer, advocate and strategist – and a mentor to many folks in the drug policy and criminal justice fields. He’s also one of the most successful policy reformers in any field anywhere in the country – he now directs a group called A Better Way Foundation, based in Connecticut. Lorenzo and his team would take reports issued Judy or academics at one of the local universities and then build an intervention and campaign plan around that report. When I first started working with him, back in 2004, he was engaged in a major campaign to reform Connecticut’s sentencing disparities for crack and powder cocaine. They won that campaign – the first to do so anywhere in the country. They used reports and research to reinforce and strengthen their organizing work and utterly transformed the dialogue and politics around the issue. They deployed academics as experts, creating public contradictions between the experts and the idiotic nonsense of some opponents. The academics and researchers understood their positions in the university or their degrees conferred them a particular kind of social capital, and they were playing a role – as themselves, as academics, as experts operating as part of a broader campaign. Judy and Lorenzo showed me what could be done with a partnership between researchers and advocates.
I’ve learned that many academics want their research and intellectual work used beyond the academy. I don’t know if there’s a special trick for organizers to connect with these researchers, but they’re not that hard to find if you look for them. Many of these folks go to advocacy conferences or write articles for the general public. The one suggestion I offer is this: remember that little things can have a big impact. You don’t need a 100 page report to get press. You just need a few pages on a topic, cut in a new way, so reporters can write about it. Literally, a few pages authored by an academic can be called a report and you can build a whole release plan around it. Academics often fret about this, maybe because they don’t work in a world where a two or four-page document is sufficient. But if you can get them to do it, you can leverage their position as an expert to advance your cause. I admit it’s not always easy working with academics – Harry and I have gotten into our fair share of arguments – but it’s certainly worth it. We’ve done this over and over again in New York with Harry and Loren’s research. Our campaign has transformed the overall narrative about marijuana arrests in New York– those research, deployed effectively, actually shapes how people perceive and think about the issue. That’s huge.
Jessie Daniels: Another focus for us at JustPublics@365 is re-thinking how we measure ‘scholarly impact,’ and in the digital era there’s talk of ‘altmetrics’ or alternative metrics. That just means counting things like downloads instead of, or alongside of, the traditional measures of citations in peer-reviewed journals. How do you measure success when you’re working to change drug policy?
Harry Levine: When I first got involved in doing this public advocacy work I was told that the gold standard of impact was getting cited in an editorial in the New York Times. In 2008 we got cited in a Times editorial and in lots of news coverage — but we could not get even a little funding which is a much bigger problem than any problems within academia.
“Metrics” might matter if foundations were funding this kind of work. But they’re not. Academics have full time jobs, like plumbers and cardiologists. This kind of advocacy (which is not academic work) takes time away from teaching and academic projects; and it takes money to pay for research help, data analysis, and for writing, formatting and editing public reports (which are not the same at all as academic publications). Foundations like Ford are willing to fund, say, re-entry from prison programs. But almost no large foundations offer support for work like we’ve done — collecting data to expose routine police, prosecutor and court practices and then writing public reports publicizing what we’ve found. And the bit of available subsistence funding is targeted at service and community-based groups and not academics.
Until recently many liberals (including at foundations) have been allergic to research and advocacy that confronts the moral, economic and social catastrophe called “The War on Drugs.” This is, after all, a huge government program strongly supported by enormous organizations of police, prosecutors, and many elected officials. We reformers will succeed, but It will take a lot to bring the drug war down. The lack of funding for basic expenses in doing this work (research, travel, data analysis, time) is probably a bigger obstacle than anything; I think the leadership of all criminal justice and drug policy reform groups would say that.
gabriel sayegh: There’s a group out of USC – USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) — that issued a report a few years ago about metrics. They separated transactional metrics – like getting your bill passed – from transformational metrics, such as deepening the understanding of an issue among your members. We’ve gotten literally hundreds of media hits on the marijuana arrest campaign – that’s a transactional metric, we can count those media hits. But we’ve also changed the way this issue is reported on in the media – when we first started the campaign, the media, if we got any, would be dismissive: “Oh, the hippies don’t want to get arrested any more for weed.” But now, the issue is taken very seriously overall, by the NY Times, by the state legislature, by the Governor – they all acknowledge that this is a problem of racial bias, police lawlessness, fiscal waste. That’s a transformational change. The PERE report is among my favorite tools for movements to think about metrics because it’s fairly accessible and applicable to social change work. We use PERE’s metrics outline to inform our objectives and to evaluate our progress and determine success in the marijuana arrest campaign and our other campaigns. It’s a work in progress – we’re always learning how to do it better – and I’ve found it enormously valuable. I was recently talking with a foundation director who said she liked the PERE framework of transactional and transformational metrics, but many of her staff thought the transactional metric were too, I don’t remember exactly how she said it, something like wishy washy. But if we only pursued transactional metrics, we may end up just changing a policy — a transactional change – without developing an understanding of the systemic problems that often give rise to bad policies — a transformational change. I think both are essential, together.
There’s a dynamic relationship between them, and if we only pursue either transactional or transformational goals, then we’re probably not going to be all that effective overall, since the big-picture objective, at least for us, is social change.
With the focus on these high-profile efforts to end stop-and-frisk, the individual and collective efforts led by youth are often overlooked. These efforts at the local community level often include an array of micro-mobilizations such as “know-your-rights” campaigns, “cop-watch” projects, community meetings and video storytelling, as well as door-to-door advocacy, that are much less documented than the court cases which garner lots of press attention. Considered together these community-based efforts demonstrate the ability of youth to advocate for neighborhood change.
It’s been well documented that the communities most affected by the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policing strategy are also characterized by low civic engagement and pessimism regarding the likelihood of neighborhood improvement (Rengifo & Slocum, 2011 in, “Police stops and community responses in the context of the New York crime decline“). The reality of youth mobilizations counter these prevailing ideas about these communities and demonstrate that the creativity and intelligence young people bring to these issues should not be overlooked. Particularly, as academics will be getting together to discuss deeper reforms (see the new Academic Advisory Council that will help implement stop-and-frisk reforms.)
Here’s just a short list of examples of some of these youth-driven and community-based responses to stop-and-frisk:
NLG-NYC Street Law Team, is made up of a group of law students from various New York City law schools. These students meet with community groups throughout NYC and conduct free Know Your Rights: What to Do if You’re Stopped by the Police workshops.
NYC High School Youth from the Peapod Adobe Youth Voices Academy at Urban Arts produced, directed, and scored the documentary, Unreasonable Suspicion, which explores the causes and effects of stop-and-frisk.
16-year-old NYC Black and Latino male, Cory Smith, created this photomontage which won first price at a Resilience Advocacy Project’s (RAP) “Youth Experiences of Stop-and-Frisk Told Through Art” contest. The photomontange features a young man at the edge of the frame: he is seated facing its bottom left corner, shoulders hunched forward, hands folded in his lap.
Photo Credit: Cory Smith
These examples highlight two powerful lessons for the Academic Advisory Council and for academics looking to further study stop-and-frisk:
(1) The arts and technology are powerful mediums for not only engaging youth, but changing narratives and helping often-marginalized voices be heard. These two combined can help overcome some of the pessimism and low civic engagement that often affect youth in low-income neighborhoods.
(2) The youth voice should be integrated into the discussion of police reforms and community healing. New research should consider innovative strategies to capture the traction of these youth-led movements and to help amplify their voice and impact.
If you are feeling inspired by these youth efforts, here are a few things you can do to participate in stop-and-frisk discussions and events:
Have a Smartphone? Encourage everyone you know to download the Stop-and-Frisk app and report any instances of stop-and-frisk that you see in the community.
Are you on Twitter? Join the conversation and learn about local advocacy efforts by following these hashtags:#stopandfrisk, #Floyd, #communitysafetyact.
Feeling social? Attend a local stop-and-frisk event and meet and collaborate with other activists. This website features upcoming events: ChangetheNYPD.
Many academics want their research to have broader impact. In fact, according to a recent study, an estimated 92% of social science scholars said they wanted to connect more with policymakers. With the ever-increasing clamor for “evidence-based policy,” policymakers – elected and appointed officials at the local, state and national level – really do want to hear from academics. Here, I offer some ways academics can get involved, tips for effectively engaging policymakers, and some frequent challenges.
As someone who was trained as an academic researcher and has worked in policy for a number of years now, I’ve come to realize that academics have an important role to play in transforming policy. Most recently, I’ve been working on the front lines of efforts to end the war on drugs and reduce mass incarceration. In my view, academics not only have important knowledge that can shape policy, their voices often have enormous weight and credibility by virtue of the training and credentials they carry.
Simply put, academics have an easier time accessing policymakers and are more likely to be taken seriously than does the average citizen without an advanced degree. There’s a privilege and a power to holding a PhD or an MD that can and should be used to promote social justice.
Despite a long tradition of notable scholar activists, many academics are either reluctant to get involved in policy advocacy or simply aren’t sure exactly how to go about it.
Here’s the good news: for most issues, you should be able to find a policy, advocacy, or grassroots community organization that is willing to work with you to be your most effective. There are lots of nuances to policy advocacy; in return for your help, most organizations will gladly walk you through those.
(New York State Capitol – Image source.
One place to find policymakers)
How Can Academics help?
Quick policy activities. These are some ways to engage for those who are just dipping a toe into the waters of policy-making or only have a few minutes, including:
Signing up for and responding to email action alerts (yes, these really can have an impact);
Writing letters and making phone calls;
Attend conferences, receptions where academics and policymakers mingle. My organization, Drug Policy Alliance, is teaming up with JustPublics@365 and the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy to host one of a reception that’ll do just that. Stop by the Sheraton Downtown Thursday night (6:15pmMT, Plaza Court 3), if you’re in Denver. We’d love to see you there!
If you have a little more time and energy, you might try engaging with media, both traditional and digital to get your research out to policy makers.
Get your work in legacy (broadcast) media outlets, such as:
Letters to the Editor (LTEs)
Op-Eds
Be a guest on a television news show
Broaden the reach of your own work by learning to use the tools of digital media, such as:
Blogging
Twitter
Storify
If you’re an academic that’s fresh out of skills in either legacy or digital media, then you might consider taking some of these Mediacamp Workshops. They’re all completely free and designed especially for academics who want to reach a broader audience with their work.
Other ways to get involved include:
Create fact sheets, policy briefs or other highly accessible materials that summarize research about the issue;
Tell a compelling story to help personalize an issue and highlight the human costs (I’m talking to you, qualitative researchers and humanities scholars);
Organize your academic colleagues – at your institution, or in your professional association – for sign-on campaigns and other forms of advocacy;
Convince your professional association to sign on to a policy proposal;
Lobby at your state capitol or city council or meet with legislators in their district offices;
Flesh out the policy implications of your research (or, the research you’ve reviewed in your area of expertise) to influence policy proposals.
To get you started, here are a few “tips of the trade” that can you help you avoid some of the most common mistakes. My work lately has been mostly at the state level working in Albany, but these guidelines are useful whether you’re trying to reach city, county, state or national lawmakers.
Tips for Being More Effective
TIP #1: Identify an organization working on the issue you care about and find the most effective one.
On any given issue, there will be a few organizations that are working on the issue. Your first step should be to familiarize yourself with the landscape of organizations and identify the one you think has been most effective.
TIP #2: Be sure to refer to your credentials when contacting policymakers – they matter.
When you reach out to elected officials, make sure that you mention your degrees and institutional affiliations. These sorts of credentials matter when you’re talking to policy makers. Without your credentials, you’re just another person with an opinion. And if you happen to be a constituent of the policymaker, be sure to mention that too.
TIP #3: Messaging really, really matters.
Most advocacy organizations have worked long and hard to develop effective messaging on their issues. It’s worth your time to speak to folks who have given this a lot of thought. Some organizations will even help you craft and/or place your op-ed or Letter to the Editor in major news outlets.
TIP #4: Work closely with an organization that understands the political scene to help craft a realistic policy proposal.
After you’ve become more deeply involved on an issue, you may have an idea for a new policy that would address a seemingly intractable problem. Crafting a policy and seeing it through the legislative process is definitely a long-term project, but it can be worth it to see lasting change. Before you spend a lot of time on your own crafting what is no doubt a brilliant new policy, it’s a good idea to work closely with an organization that has a clear understanding of the current political scene and what kinds of proposals might just make it through and which ones are dead-on-arrival.
Scholar Strategy Network (SSN) – If you want your research to influence policy, but don’t know how to make those connections, you might consider applying to become part of the Scholar Strategy Network (SSN), which brings together leading scholars to address pressing public challenges at all levels. Scholars in the network prepare short, vividly written briefs highlighting their research findings and offering policy options about a wide range of issues. SSN scholars engage in consultations with policymakers in Washington DC and state capitals, and also work closely with advocates and leaders of citizen associations.
TIP #5: Ask what research needs to be done and do it.
Typically, academic researchers have their scholarship done before they contact a policy organization, but it can also work the other way around. Sometimes, scholars will ask what kind of research needs to be done to address policy needs, and then set about to do that kind of research. CUNY Professor Harry Levine had been doing important research on marijuana arrests. He got involved with the Drug Policy Alliance and then worked with them to produce a number of highly influential reports highlighting the racial disparities and fiscal waste of marijuana arrests. Levine’s report on the fiscal waste of such arrests is here, and was picked up by Alternet; Jim Dwyer of The New York Times then featured some of Levine’s research in an Op-Ed, “Whites Smoke Pot, but Blacks are Arrested.” (There’ll be more about Harry Levine’s work in a post to follow in this series.)
The Tobin Project – If you want to do research that fills a gap in policy-making, you might contact The Tobin Project, which emphasizes “transformative research in the social sciences” and facilitates policy-scholar connections. The Tobin Project starts by identifying the gaps in research that might influence policy, and then finding scholars who want to engage policy by conducting original research that makes a contribution in this way. They recently received a MacArthur Award for Creative & Effective Organizations, so it looks like they might be on to something.
Challenges for Academics Who Want to Influence Policy
Part of the reason I encourage academics to work with experienced policy organizations is because academia isn’t generally set up to train scholars to be effective policy advocates. In fact, many features of academia actually may make pose challenges for those who want to influence policy, such as:
Different metrics of success. Even though changing a policy can impact thousands and thousands of lives, the kinds of activities above are rarely acknowledged or rewarded within academia. Books and/or peer-reviewed journal articles are likely the currency of your institution, but unfortunately, it’s the rare policymaker that looks to those sources to develop policy.
Different language. Most academics are concerned with precision and nuance, while most policymakers are looking for bullet points and sound bites.
Different forms of power and influence. Just like the politics of academic institutions, each legislative body has its own set of (usually unwritten) rules about how power really works and who is really running show. A good policy advocacy organization can help you uncover how policy is really made in your jurisdiction.
Different skills sets. Academics have lots of great skills that make them naturals at influencing policy, but some people may not know the first thing about how to conduct a lobby visit or neutralize an opponent’s argument. Again, this can be taught.
The great news is that – for the most part – these are challenges that are easily overcome. More and more, I’m hearing from academics at all stages of their career that they wish their research could have more of a real-world impact.
It can.
I’ve worked with a number of extraordinarily talented scholar-activists who have re-shaped and profoundly influenced policy and in doing so, they have positively impacted the lives of thousands of people. With a little investment of your time and talents and working with the right policy organization to gain the information and skills you need, so can you.
~ Guest blogger Julie Netherland, PhD (Sociology, CUNY, 2011), is Deputy Directory of the New York State Policy Office within the Drug Policy Alliance. She works closely with Compassionate Care New York, a group of patients, providers and organizations working together to pass a bill that would relieve the suffering of thousands of seriously ill New Yorkers by establishing a carefully regulated medical marijuana program in New York. You can follow her on Twitter @jnetherland.
“I’ve been stopped a thousand times” – Black male survey respondent during the research conducted for Coming of Age with Stop and Frisk.
How do you measure the effects of stop-and-frisk on NYC youth, such as the survey respondent above, who report having being stopped more often than they could count or remember?
Now that the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practice was rejected by U.S. District Judge Scheindlin, the debate has shifted from discussions regarding its effectiveness in reducing crime to the effect it has on the lives of those stopped (in many cases more than once). As activists seek deeper reforms in policing, public scholarship is once again called upon to inform this debate.
While conducting research, Fratello and Rengifo quickly found out that in order to capture the broader effects of stop-and-frisk, they would have to learn to ask better questions and work with key government and community groups. The latter is particularly important, as they soon realized, none of the stakeholders (e.g., schools, police, public agencies, churches) were talking to each other. During the October 17th meeting, panel speaker, Dr. C. Jama Adams discussed the importance of having greater institutional channels for communication among these stakeholders. He mentioned that stop-and-frisk should be addressed holistically through a community-approach. He feels this is the only way to address the deeply-rooted culture of “fearfulness” of which he finds Black males are often the scapegoat and which he feels stifles the individual creativity and spontaneity of all community members.
Fratello and Rengifo faced challenges in capturing the instances of stop-and-frisk events in a respondents’ life. In some instances, the sheer scale of the policing practice proved to be a problem. In piloting the survey, the researchers discovered that they would have to modify their questions to account for multiple stops. For those people who were stopped more than once, they either asked them to talk about the last time they were stopped or their most memorable stop. Yet, even when conducting research in neighborhoods with high rates of stop-and-frisk occurrences, the researchers were not able to meet their data collection goals for two neighborhoods – Jackson Heights and South Bronx – even after adjusting their research questions and approach. In both of these areas they found that in general, people seemed reluctant to speak with outsiders about the police. However, in Jackson Heights they faced the additional challenge that the majority of residents (65%) are foreign-born and may have an added apprehension of talking with “outsiders” (Coming of Age with Stop and Frisk: 11).
In other words, the very nature of stop-and-frisk makes it hard to measure its effects. The reason for this is that those most victimized have a general apprehension over being approached by strangers, especially to discuss involvement with the police.
Coming of Age with Stop and Frisk: Experiences, Self-Perceptions, and Public Safety Implications at John Jay College-CUNY, October 17, 2013. (Photo Credit: WNegron)
Despite these challenges, Fratello and Rengifo were able to uncover some of the corrosive effects of stop-and-frisk policing, especially on young people. They found that among the young people most stopped (between the ages of 13 and 25), trust in law enforcement is disturbingly low.
88 percent of young people surveyed believe that residents of their neighborhood do not trust the police.
Only four in 10 respondents said they would be comfortable seeking help from police if in trouble.
Young people who have been stopped more often in the past are less willing to report crimes, even when they themselves are the victims. Each additional stop in the span of a year is associated with an eight percent drop in the person’s likelihood of reporting a violent crime he or she might experience in the future (Coming to Age with Stop and Frisk: 89).
These findings present several troubling public safety implications. For one, this population is most at risk of future victimization, therefore, its worrisome to consider they may feel like they have no where to turn if victimized. Secondly, they are also the ones for whom law enforcement needs to connect with in order to solve crimes and significantly improve safety in these neighborhoods.
Previous studies have found a similar level of distrust of law enforcement among urban youth of color. In a series of qualitative interviews with urban youth in the United States, Canada, and Australia, Ruck and colleagues document that these young people were not only concerned about abusive treatment by police but were also resigned to it because they saw it as “inevitable and unlikely to change” (Ruck et al., 2008:20, “Youth experiences of surveillance“. In M. Flynn & D.C. Brotherton). However, other studies have shown that distrust of law enforcement can be spread through social networks and does not necessarily require direct contact with the criminal justice system (Menjívar & Bejarano, 2004, “Latino immigrants’ perceptions of crime and police authorities in the United States: A case study from the Phoenix Metropolitan area“). Clearly, this highlights the need for more research to discern between other factors which could give rise to distrust of law enforcement.
Fratello and Rengifo include a set of timely recommendations in the Vera Institute report aimed at restoring trust and improving police-community relations. Most relevant for academics is their recommendation for the NYPD to partner with researchers to better understand the costs and benefits of various proactive policing strategies meant to replace stop-and-frisk.
Although academic-police partnerships are not new and reflect a growing trend toward “evidence-based” practice, it is not a relationship which comes easily for either police or researchers. In the article, “Partnerships with University-Based Researchers,” in a 2009 edition of The Police Chief Magazine, Sanders notes that although partnerships between law enforcement leaders and academic researchers have achieved much success and demonstrate long-term benefits for both, “only a small number of law enforcement agencies have actually reaped the benefits of research partnerships” (Sanders, 2009). Other scholars describe these partnerships as filled with mutual misunderstanding that negatively impacts police-academic relationships and practices (Bradley and Nixon, 2009: “Ending the ‘dialogue of the deaf’: Evidence and policing policies“).
Although this Academic Advisory Council will set to play a large role in informing and shaping further police reforms, it is worth noting that other police-academic efforts at reform are underway. One important new initiative is The Center for PolicingEquity.org, which seeks to promote police transparency and accountability by facilitating innovative research collaborations between law enforcement agencies and social scientists.
The Vera Institute report, Coming of Age with Stop and Frisk, by Fratello and Rengifo is a significant contribution to understanding the effects of stop-and-frisk policing, and there is much work to be done in documenting the effects of this practice, and in charting a new way forward. The ruling by Judge Scheindlin makes it clear that the future of New York City is one without stop-and-frisk. Academic researchers who are interested in this issue have a unique opportunity to help shape this future.
Our series on Stop-and-Frisk continues as we take a look at what it means to ‘come of age’ under stop-and-frisk. Over the next two days, we’ll focus on the impact on young people in New York City dealing with stop-and-frisk and how U.S. youth mobilize to resist criminalization.
Young adults, between the ages of 18 and 25, comprise at least half of all recorded stops in NYC. In 2012, over 286,000 young people in this age group were stopped and frisked. A study by the Vera Institute on Youth Justice recorded that young people in NYC are now less willing to report crimes, even when they are the victims. What does it mean to grow up within a system that targets, rather than protects, you? How do U.S. youth envision their futures within a system they fear?
In December 2010, the Community Justice Network For Youth (CJNY) organized a conference in D.C. to address the injustices within the U.S. juvenile justice system. They called on youth, parents and advocates to share their personal experiences and research on the justice system and create a vision of alternatives to youth incarceration. The keynote speaker, Chino Hardin (the Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives and Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions), addressed the audience by sharing a personal journey as a youth within the prison system. “In my youth I was arrested sixteen times and incarcerated on eight different occasions, so I know what goes on inside the walls of juvenile detention centers,” says Chino.
While Chino addressed the broken policing systems in America, Chino also instilled hope for the future, “Sometimes, you’ve gotta make the bridge by walking and sometimes that bridge is gonna be your back… [but justice will come].” Here is Chino’s keynote address (14:55):
Envisioning a better future, a future beyond stop-and-frisk, means creating a future that listens to the voices of young people. In Hardin’s words, “The children are the future… we’ve gotta make sure they can hold it and they can’t hold it if their hands are cuffed behind their back.”
Get Involved
Do you have a personal story that you want to share related to stop-and frisk? JustPublics@365 is collecting digital stories related to stop-and-frisk and we would love to hear your voice. If you are interested, please contact Morgane Richardson at justpublics365@gmail.com with the subject line, “Stop-and-Frisk Digital Storytelling.”
This post is part of the Monthly Social Justice Topic Series on Stop-And-Frisk. If you have any questions, research that you would like to share related to Stop-and-Frisk or are interested in being interviewed for the series, please contact Morgane Richardson at justpublics365@gmail.com with the subject line, “Stop-and-Frisk Series.”
The goal of JustPublics@365 is to connect the work done in the academy to publics beyond the walls of the ivory tower. Sharing scholarly communication with a broad audience relies on models of publishing that are “open,” that is, that make scholarly literature available to anyone, not just those with an institutional affiliation and access to a research library. Discussions about issues related to how widely available scholarly literature should be are often referred to under the umbrella term “open access,” or (OA).
As it happens, today marks the beginning of International Open Access Week. In conjunction with this, CUNY librarians are launching an Information Interventions @ CUNY series and you’re invited to attend the first event in the series.
Open Access to Scholarly Literature: Which Side Are You On? Friday, October 25, 2013 10am – noon The Graduate Center Rooms C201/C202 (Concourse Level) Refreshments will be served
Open access (OA) to scholarly literature recently hit a major milestone: Half of all research articles published become open access, either immediately or after an embargo period. Are the articles you read among them? What about the articles you write? Are the journals to which you submit open-access friendly? What about the journals for which you peer review? Are there any reasons why the public should not have access to the results of taxpayer-funded research?
Jill Cirasella (Associate Librarian for Public Services and Scholarly Communication, Graduate Center) will explain the motivation for OA, describe the details of OA, and differentiate between publishing in open access journals (“gold” OA) and self-archiving works in OA repositories (“green” OA). She will also dispel persistent myths about OA and examine some of the challenges to OA.
Friday, November 15, 2013 10am-noon The Graduate Center C203/C204 (Concourse Level)
In Spring 2014, there are other events about open educational resources and the controversy surrounding dissertations and open access. Hope to see you there!
As we begin our second week of topic series on stop-and-frisk, I wanted to say a little something more about why we decided to do the series, and how it relates to the overall goal of JustPublics@365, which is to reimagine scholarly communication in the digital era for the public good.
We’re living at a moment in higher education in faculty are increasingly using social media for their personal lives, as well as their work as professional and in the classroom. A new study just released from the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson finds that 40 percent of faculty members used social media as a teaching tool in 2013.
Faculty members’ use of social media has been steadily increasing since the survey was first conducted in 2010, said Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.
Simultaneously, and for a variety of different reasons, a growing number of faculty want to do interdisciplinary work and they want their work to have a broader impact than simply contributing to the scholarly literature in their sub-field of specialization. However, the reward structure in academia is set against both these possibilities. Zachary Ernst (Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Columbia), in an eloquent post, “Why I Jumped Off the Ivory Tower,” describes academia as containing “a perverse incentive structure that maintains the status quo, rewards mediocrity, and discourages potentially high-impact, interdisciplinary work.” After detailing an interdisciplinary grant proposal gone horribly awry at his institution, Ernst assesses the situation thusly:
In such an environment, our efforts are channeled into narrow sub-specialties, and we consign our work to a tiny audience. Despite the common talk about the importance of “disruptive research” in the university, there’s no real understanding of what makes something “disruptive”. To disrupt anything requires going outside the normal methods for one’s work, redefining what’s important or interesting, and usually drawing on a wide range of data and methodologies. It almost always requires collaboration, and almost always requires going outside one’s own comfort zone. But in an environment where the senior faculty and administrators have been rewarded throughout their careers for toeing their disciplinary lines, there’s a lot of resistance to change. Some of that resistance is due to outright hostility, but most of it is just the result of a lack of experience and imagination.
While Ernst took a clear eyed view of the limitations of academia and chose to “jump off” the Ivory Tower, we prefer to reimagine it.
The aim of JustPublics@365 is to foster just the kind of “disruptive” work that can foster connections between academics, activists and journalists who are working to address some of the pressing social problems of our time. From where we sit in the heart of New York City, stop-and-frisk is at the top of the list of pressing social problems because of the deleterious effects it has on the democratic life of the city. Stop-and-frisk has also been an issue around which academics, activists and journalists have worked together, across traditional silos and enabled by digital media, in order to end this practice.
So, we offer this series on stop-and-frisk as a kind of case study of how we might reimagine scholarly communication for the public good.
In this week’s episode of the JustPublics@365 Podcast Series, I interview Margaret M. Chin, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Professor Chin was born in New York City, and is the daughter of a former garment worker and restaurant waiter. Her research interests focus on new immigrants, working poor families, race and ethnicity, and Asian Americans. She is currently working on a project on the 1.5 and second generation Asian Americans who lost or changed jobs during the recent recession. Her book Sewing Women: Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry explores how immigration status, family circumstances, ethnic relations, and gender affect the garment industry workplace. In this book, she contrasts the working conditions and hiring practices of Korean- and Chinese-owned factories. This comparison illuminates how ethnic ties both improve and hinder opportunities for immigrants.
In todays interview, we talk about Professor Chin’s current research, how she gathered her research her motivation for doing this research, as well as her findings about how workers perceived garment work.
This post is part of the JustPublics@365 Podcast Series. The podcast series features CUNY Graduate Center faculty who are working on issues of social justice and inequality. If you have any questions, research that you would like to share, or are interested in being interviewed for the series, please contact Heidi Knoblauch at heidi.knoblauch@gmail.com
Throughout this topic series, we will introduce knowledge streams and digital tools that can help you present information in engaging and meaningful ways. The Timeline JS tool used to create the Stop-and-Frisk timeline is one of these tools.
Timelines allow you to craft a narrative for your audience, gather a wide range of information, and provide a platform that is clean, clear, and interactive. Whether designing a class project, curating data and resources for an academic article, or presenting a history of your community group, timelines naturally combine the visual and textual in an easy to follow format.
While digital tools change at a rapid rate, a current favorite timeline of mine is Timeline JS. Developed by Zach Wise as part of Northwestern University’s Knight Lab, the tool is simple to use and produces visually appealing, interactive timelines that are easily embedded on a website.
To get started, download the Google spreadsheet template. You can then pull in media directly from Wikipedia, Soundcloud, YouTube, GoogleMaps, Twitter, Flicker, and more. There are clear step-by-step instructions on on the Timeline JS website, including a video tutorial and an excellent Help section. We’ve also made some screencasts to get you started. The first walks you through the basics of creating a timeline, the second highlights some of the options available.
Timeline Basics
Working in the Template
Top 3 Timeline Tips
1. Create a clear narrative. The strongest timelines are those that tell a clear narrative. Though presented in a visual form, timelines are much like any research paper or story: they work best when they have a good organizational structure and the order of the argument makes sense.
2. Incorporate a range of media. Images are only one way to ground your text. Charts, maps, documents, links to other sources, video, and infographics can give your project a more robust feel and provide your reader with further avenues to explore on the topic.
3. Cross-promote content. Timelines let you curate a broad range of information. If there are academics, journalists, activists, or community groups working on the subject, be sure to include links to their websites, tweets that are relevant to the topic, and events or research that they’ve done. Not only will this broaden the readership of your timeline, but it will direct people to important work being done in the field.
In the comments, please feel free to share links to your own timeline projects.
This post is part of the Monthly Social Justice Topic Series on Stop-And-Frisk. If you have any questions, research that you would like to share related to Stop-and-Frisk or are interested in being interviewed for the series, please contact Morgane Richardson at justpublics365@gmail.com with the subject line, “Stop-and-Frisk Series.”
This past week, I interviewed Eli Silverman, PhD (Professor, Emeritus, john Jay and Graduate Center, CUNY), about his experience testifying as an expert witness in the recent stop-and-frisk trial, Floyd, et al. v. New York City. In this interview, I asked Professor Silverman about his involvement as one of the leading scholars working on the issue of stop-and-frisk in New York City and his experience translating academic research to a wider audience. We also discussed the potential changes that will occur as a result of District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling and the ramifications of stepping outside the academy and into the courtroom.
Can you share a bit about yourself, and your involvement as one of the leading scholars working on the issues of Stop-And-Frisk in New York City?
I have been involved for some many years on research on the NYPD. I wrote a book [NYPD Battles Crime: Innovative Strategies in Policing] that came out in 1999 that was updated in 2001, which dealt with the reforms, the very important reforms that were introduced in the police department in 1994. I went back before then, but focused on that period, from 1994 on, which was a very significant period in terms of management and crime reduction and reforms. It was essentially a positive book. But when I updated it in 2001 with an epilogue, I found I was hearing many stories and discussions about how some of the things I had considered positive were being distorted and turned on its head, and had resulted, had stemmed from management pressure from the headquarters to really just produce numbers, and these numbers were the number of summonses, the number of arrests, the number of Stop-And-Frisks, and all in the name of driving down crime.
How did you get involved with the recent Stop-And-Frisk case in New York City?
I was approached by someone I knew from the PD, who had retired, named Dr. John Eterno. He was a former captain. He is a dean now at Molloy. He had been writing and hearing stories on this as well. He approached me and said, “Let’s do some research.” So we decided to look into this issue, but the police department had become very closed and exhibited a total lack of transparency. So we did a survey of retired captains and above, which had startling results and turned out to, the story appeared on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, which caused quite a stir a few years ago. That was a survey we did. And then we did subsequently a second survey. But the first survey and other research we did resulted in a book called The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation. We talked about this phenomenon of what they call downgrading crime, moving it from felony. The major crimes that are reported in the U.S. and in New York are what I have called felony crimes, the seven major crimes, that’s how police departments keep score and compare themselves with one another. But the way they were doing it was not taking crime reports. They were moving felony crimes into other categories that’s called misdemeanor crimes, which are not publicly known. There was manipulation. Part of the manipulation ran parallel with this enormous pressure from above to drive down crime and produce activities that they thought drove down crime, and not worry about any of the collateral effects and the impacts of these strategies.
When were you approached to testify for the trial?
John and I were approached many months before the trial came to pass. We had discussions with them and they thought our research was relevant. The part of our research that they thought was relevant was the research, the two surveys that we did, 2004, 2008. In 2008 we did even a more extensive survey of retired people from all ranks of the police department, and those results were even more dramatic as we refined our survey. We found that the biggest up-tick in these pressures, in a number of areas including Stop-And-Frisk, occurred in 2002 in the Bloomberg-Kelly era. So the plaintiffs, the lawyers for the plaintiffs approached us. They wanted us to report on our research and testify. John could not testify because he was involved in the police department in some of these related activities. So it fell upon me to testify, which was one very stressful experience, but ultimately gratifying because the judge did cite our research, and the judge did cite my testimony, among many other things in her decision, but she did do that.
What changes do you foresee with District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin’s recent ruling on this controversial policing practice?
She wrote two decisions. One is the liability decision, which is goes through the whole thing. If you get a chance to look at, it’s unbelievable. This was a nine-10 week with tons of material and documents. She, when you read it, it’s like some 150-some-odd pages. I think it’s extremely comprehensive and extremely analytical. She goes through all this, and she just peels away the layers of the police department defense. The police department, there was an earlier case called the Daniels case, where the police department agreed to make changes, under what’s called a consent decree, no admittance of anything wrong. But in this case, the Daniels case, which has been in the works for many years, it was clear that these things that police department agreed to do, it wasn’t even a question of whether it was on the back burner or the front burner. It wasn’t on any burner. They were just narrowly focused on crime reduction. So these constitutional legal issues were not addressed. In fact, our second survey asked the question, whether there was a pressure to obey constitutional legal positions. That was the only area where the pressure decreased. In other words, while pressure to increase Stop-And-Frisk, summons, and arrests climbed, the pressure to really do it correctly, or as we said in the questionnaire, to obey constitutional legal rights, that went down. It was quite stark.
In answer to your question, the judge issued the liability, which goes through all this, and in the second decision, which is some 50-some-odd pages, I think, is called the remedy. This speaks to your question, I think. The remedy may be pretty stark. It’s uncertain now because she appointed a federal monitor. Now no police department wants to be overseen by a federal monitor, because they don’t like someone overseeing it. But the federal monitor has to report to the judge in terms of changes that she recommends in training, in changes in supervision, in changed in how forms are filled out. She recommended pilot precincts where the officers would wear cameras so it will record the interaction. So it’s not sully fleshed out what in fact will happen, but the potential is for something quite significant. Plus the fact that this is an open-ended, this introduction of a federal monitor, that she selected a lawyer. It’s open-ended, and it depends on what he works out and what the judge approves, and how long this goes on. So this could be quite a long-standing thing.
To me, it’s a very, very sad legacy of a fine police department that’s gone astray because the leadership has taken it astray. To have this record of crime decline, which we agree with, John and I, although from what we’ve ascertained we would guess it’s about half of what they claim. But nevertheless, to have this fine record, and then it actually being sullied by just the obstinance and the refusal to talk to anybody or any of the critics. The city council, as you may know, introduced the Stop-And-Frisk bill, and inspector general, and both of those were passed over the mayor’s veto. So there can be some very long-term implications. And it’s even more dramatic than that, because the New York so-called police model has been a model for not only other cities throughout the world, but throughout the U.S., but throughout the world. I just came back from Denmark where some of this stuff is percolating. I’ve been in Australia. I’ve been in Paris, which modeled this whole issue of performance measurement and management. If it’s done right it’s great, but it it’s done wrong it can have all these perverse consequences. And this has been spreading all over. And everyone now does know or will know what’s happened to the police department and their once fine reputation. Now it’s going to be a whole different ball game, and this model is not going to be be all for everyone. They’re going to have to look more carefully at how it’s done.
Some academics might be hesitant to get involved with such a controversial issue. So what do you say to critics who might question your objectivity as a scholar now, after your involvement?
You know, there’s an old saying, as a scholar all you can do is speak the truth as you know it to power. I mean, I was a reluctant warrior in this. I didn’t seek this out. In fact, when we first got our first survey results, we were floored. We were floored by the extent of it. And not only that, we had a place where they would write comments. And the comments… The interesting thing is, most of the cops agree with us. We get emails and comments and stuff all the time. But they have to remain anonymous, except for those who are recorded. I don’t know if you are aware, but there have been several who have recorded this stuff from their own station house, Schoolcraft, and Palenko, and others. So it’s not just us saying this. There’s tons of evidence to support it. But it was very stressful. At times I almost said, “Let’s forget it,” because the city did everything they could to keep me out from testifying, including demanding all our research, even the research that was not relevant to the court case.
We balked at that because it’s our research. We worked on it, and nothing to do with the court case. We had to agree that it would be held confidential. We gave some. But it wasn’t, I can assure you, it wasn’t something that I leaped into. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t feel that the plaintiff’s case was very valid and made sense, and really was for the good. Now obviously I’m now high on the party list of the NYPD leadership, which I was when I wrote the first book. But, you know, that’s just the consequences of doing this.
But I try, everyone tries to be objective, or everyone should. We tried to be objective. We tried to call it as we saw it. The city tried to throw out our results. They tried to negate it. They tried to keep me out. And at times I said to the lawyers, I said, “You know, this is too much. I don’t really need all this.” And they said, “No. No.” I said, “It’s just too much.” They said, “They’re doing it.” What they told me is that the other side was doing it in order to discourage me and keep me out.
What sort of lessons have you learned do you have from your experience with this case about academics entering a train that’s more frequently trod by activists and journalists?
I think academics have to make a judgment for themselves. Do they want to go forward with what their research uncovers? If they feel their research is valid, and they feel that it’s supportive of a valid cause, then I think every academic has to make a choice for him or herself, whether they feel they want to be supportive. And you know, there is an argument for academic research just not being academic and in the social arena. The interesting thing is, the interesting thing here is, you have to be creative in order to get the data, especially when an organization, and here you have a large organization or a large bureaucracy, is totally nontransparent. The police department has not provided data, not responded, and we spell this out in the book, freedom of information requests.
So the academic, if he or she wants to pursue that, then they have to be creative and say, “How else can I get at this topic, if the institution itself is not providing the, giving me access?” I had access in my first book. In this one we didn’t. But what we did, fortunately, John was a retired member, and had access to the retirees list. And so we did this first through a mail list, and second through a computer program. But you have to be willing. It’s time consuming. But if you believe in something, then you have to make a decision. Do you go forward, or do you just throw in the towel. And if you believe in something then it’s an individual decision, I feel. In the process, you’re going to encounter great obstacles, and there’s no question it’s going to be stressful. Doug Muzzier asked me in an interview, he said, “Who should play you in the movie?” He was being, you know, kidding. I said, “Someone who’s very nervous.”
But that’s the nature of the game. I know this from other academics I know who have testified in cases that by nature it’s very stressful. Even before you testify, in the pretrial examination they try to knock you out, and they try to dismiss what you’ve said. And then they provide. The second day I was there, I was presented with a chart of retirees and how they were. I’d never seen this. But the city lawyer presented it to me. The plaintiff’s lawyer and the city lawyer were going back and forth whether that should be entered into the record. I had never seen this chart. And I said to the judge, I said, “May I object, your honor?” And she said, “Yes, depending on what you have to say.” I said, “Well, this chart is bogus. It doesn’t represent what it pretends to.” And then she queried the person and the city attorney, and she didn’t allow it.
There’s a certain amount of risk. I guess that’s what I’m saying. And one has to make the judgment, is the risk worth taking. In this case, the fact that on my testimony and our research was one piece in the overall decision, was gratifying, and in a way a confirmation of our research.
This timeline illustrates some of the major moments of, responses to, and influences on Stop and Frisk dating back to Terry vs. Ohio, the 1968 Supreme Court decision to the present Federal District Court ruling on Floyd v. New York City. Collected here are important documents, reports, and films, created by the state, activists, research and community institutions. In the comments, we welcome your suggestions for other entries to add to the timeline.
This post is part of the Monthly Social Justice Topic Series on Stop-And-Frisk. If you have any questions, research that you would like to share related to Stop-and-Frisk or are interested in being interviewed for the series, please contact Morgane Richardson at justpublics365@gmail.com with the subject line, “Stop-and-Frisk Series.”
Digital Storytelling is a tool that helps to create and build communities through sharing individual and collective experiences. The simple act of listening to a person’s story can personalize otherwise seemingly abstract theories and policies. In June of 2013, Community United Against Police Reform released a series of short documentaries that highlight the impact of stop-and-frisk on ordinary citizens and communities in New York City. These stories take us beyond the charts and numbers on stop-and-frisk and give us an honest look at the personal experiences resulting from a political action.
Get Involved
Do you have a personal story that you want to share related to social justice and stop-and frisk? Or, do you want help telling your own story? JustPublics@365 is collecting digital stories related to stop-and-frisk and we would love to hear your voice. If you are interested, please contact Morgane Richardson at justpublics365@gmail.com with the subject line, “Stop-and-Frisk Digital Storytelling.”
Be Informed. Stay Updated. For more information on creating your own digital story, take a look at:
Scholarship that’s intended for a small audience of other specialists within the academy and with no connection to the larger social world may continue to have a place, but there are indications that the ivory-tower-only-scholarship no longer holds as much appeal.
Part of that change has to do with digital technologies.
The ‘architecture of participation’ in the digital era has opened up the possibility of being a public intellectual to a much wider range of both traditional academics and non-academics alike. Being a public intellectual today relies in a fundamental way on the idea of open knowledge production, an idea that encompasses open software, open access journals, and open data.
While the “public intellectual” is sometimes thought of as simply a provocateur or dismissed as celebrities gifted at self-promotion, the reality is that when there are pressing social issues it becomes necessary for scholars to connect their work to activism that is trying to address those issues. Being a scholar-activist doesn’t mean eschewing academic rigor, but rather using academic tools in the service of the public good.
A couple of stories of scholar-activists may help illustrate this point.
One of my first assignments as a graduate student Teaching Assistant (TA) at the University of Texas-Austin in the late 1980s, was to work with Les Kurtz on what was colloquially known as “The Nukes Class,” about the sociology of the nuclear arms race. Les is world renowned scholar of sociological theory, religion and non-violence. I learned a lot from him about what it means to be a scholar-activist. Les’ class lectures featured sharp sociological analysis on the dangerous build up of nuclear arms and how the rhetoric about an “arms race” contributed that danger. In an especially entertaining turn, Les invited two representatives from FEMA to offer their by-the-book instructions for what to do in the event of a nuclear bomb attack (note: bring your credit cards, as cash may no longer be accepted after a nuclear holocaust). His book, The Nuclear Cage: A Sociology of the Arms Race, offers a reasoned, scholarly analysis of the issue that is also a devastating critique of this particular form of collective madness.
A more recent example involves the scholar-activism happening around the current crisis in Detroit.
The Uniting Detroiters project has brought residents, activists, and scholars together to examine critical problems facing Detroit and develop tools for collective analysis, reflection, and co-research. Over the past year, they have:
Filmed 41 interviews, and created a storyboard for a 73 minute “Uniting Detroiters” documentary, to be used as a tool for local community organizations;
Collected 21 submissions and 16 oral histories for a “People’s Atlas of Detroit,” which will use counter-mapping, and principals of radical cartography alongside oral histories, hand drawn maps, and photography to highlight the spatial visions of social justice by residents who have not been included on ongoing debates over Detroits’ future; and,
Held three workshops on themes of counter-cartography and land justice that were attended by approximately 150 Detroit residents and activists.
Efforts such as Uniting Detroiters that brings together scholars and activists can be part of work that brings about real change that improves the lives of all people, including those who are often excluded from decision-making in society.
Over the next month here our topic series will explores the pressing social issue of stop-and-frisk, we’ll look at ways that scholar-activist partnerships are making a difference.
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Email us at commonshelpsite@gmail.com so we can respond to your questions and requests. Please email from your CUNY email address if possible. Or visit our help site for more information:
(Scholar Activists of the Uniting Detroiters Project)
