Prosecutors have dropped the perjury charge against the police officer who arrested Sandra Bland, a black woman who was arrested at a traffic stop and later was found dead in jail.

The officer, Brian Encinia, only faced a single charge of perjury for lying during the investigation into the arrest. He agreed to surrender his officer license and never work in law enforcement again in exchange for the charge to be dropped. But the case will permanently show on his record.

In July 2015, Encinia pulled Bland over on a road near Houston, Texas, as she didn’t use her indicator when switching lanes. She said she was trying to get away from the police vehicle, as it had come up very close to her car and wouldn’t stop following her. When Bland was pulled over, Encinia asked her to put out her cigarette.

But she refused. In the audio from the dashcam footage you can hear how he violently pulls her out of her vehicle and slams her to the ground. She can be heard complaining about her wrist being bent to the point of breaking, and saying she can no longer hear.

Encinia also threatened to “light [her] up” with his taser gun. He also said “good” after Bland explains she has epilepsy. After taking Bland into custody, Encinia can be heard laughing and debating what he will charge her with–resisting arrest or assault.

It’s not enough. These officers need to be held accountable for murdering Black people. Anything less than that is unacceptable.

— Dr. SaVonni Yestanti (@SaVonniYestanti) June 29, 2017

Three days later, jail staff found Bland dead in her cell, hanging with a plastic bag around her neck. The official explanation was that she committed suicide. But her family has doubted that claim, saying that she had just gotten a new job and wouldn’t want to die. In July 2016, another officer claimed that officials tried to make him keep quiet about circumstances surrounding Bland’s time in jail.

The officer claimed he had seen marks on Bland’s forehead, and said that Encinia made up a charge of assaulting a public servant to justify why she would be detained for so long. After the dashcam footage was made public, Encinia was charged with perjury. He reportedly lied in a sworn affidavit in which he wrote that Bland was “combative and uncooperative” at the time of the arrest. But he never faced any assault charges.

No members of the jail staff faced any charges at all, even though they knew Bland had expressed suicidal thoughts before and had a history of depression. A lot of people do not think justice has been served, and Bland’s family has criticized the single perjury charge.

“We understand that this is far from a perfect solution, and that many people will feel that this is an inadequate punishment, while others feel that charges should have never been filed,” prosecutors in Encinia’s case said on Wednesday.

Rep. @GFColeman, author of Sandra Bland Act: “I’m sorry to Ms. Bland’s family for how poorly Texas has treated their loved one.” #txlege pic.twitter.com/DptVePBI06

— Chuck Lindell (@chucklindell) June 28, 2017

The one good thing that came out of this tragic case was the creation of the Sandra Bland Act, which Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law two weeks ago. The new law will require county jails to divert people that suffer from mental health issues or substance abuse to treatment. It will also require law enforcement to investigate any deaths that occur in jail. The law will go into effect on September 1.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Perjury Charge Dropped Against the Officer Who Arrested Sandra Bland appeared first on Law Street.

On Thursday the Justice Department announced new guidelines for collecting nationwide data on law enforcement officials’ use of force in encounters with civilians. According to the New York Times, this is the biggest effort of its kind that the federal government has ever made to account for use of force.

“Accurate and comprehensive data on the use of force by law enforcement is essential to an informed and productive discussion about community-police relations,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a statement. She said that the purpose of these new steps is increased transparency and a better understanding between law enforcement officials and the communities that they serve.

The FBI is currently developing a national database as part of the Department of Justice’s efforts to gather… https://t.co/9LE1tzKQ7m

— QkTip (@QkTipcom) October 13, 2016

The Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) that was passed in 2014 requires officials to record and report all deaths of civilians that occur either in custody or during interaction with officers. But they are not required to report non-fatal cases. With the new initiative, officers must collect, maintain and report data on all shootings or violent encounters involving an officer, whether fatal or not, and the same goes for people already in custody.

Last year, the FBI started working on developing a National Use of Force Data Collection, an online portal for reporting use-of-force data from all over the country, in collaboration with local law enforcement. Bigger city police departments and the FBI will start reporting data early next year.

The past year has been dramatic and traumatic and seen several fatal encounters between police and civilians, with casualties on both sides and violent protests as a result. If these new procedures could help to resolve the societal tensions, it is a good start.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The DOJ Will Start Collecting More Info on Police Officers’ Use of Force appeared first on Law Street.

Footage from a dashboard camera and a body camera on one of the police officers involved in the shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte last week have finally been released. It turns out the one officer who wore a camera didn’t turn it on until after Scott was already on the ground.

Two videos were released late Saturday after mounting pressure and some violent protests that left people wounded and one dead. The footage from the dashboard camera shows a plainclothes officer aiming his gun at a car. The officer in the car with the dash cam gets out and joins him. Then Scott is seen exiting his car and backing away, and the officer without a uniform fires four shots. Since the video is from inside the police car, there is no audio to prove what was said. But it’s clear that Scott did not aim any gun at the officers at that point.

The body camera footage is grainy and jumpy and shows an officer standing behind Scott’s car, as the officer wearing the camera comes up and knocks on the window with his baton. Scott is then seen getting out from the car but disappears from the video. Next time he’s in the picture, he’s on the ground. The sound on the camera is not turned on until this point, which is why it’s unclear what happened and who said what. It’s also impossible to see from that footage whether Scott had a gun or not. When the sound is turned on, the officers are heard yelling “handcuffs, handcuffs” and asking each other whether they are okay, while Scott is moaning and lying on the ground dying.

Body camera footage shows Keith Scott shooting https://t.co/W0NhU5sBn8 pic.twitter.com/t44YKbjFlK

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) September 25, 2016

Charlotte was the first major city in North Carolina to start using body cams for officers in 2015. The cameras are always on, but they don’t save the footage until the officer presses a button to activate it. That’s when the audio sets in, and it also automatically saves the last 30 seconds of video from before that.

According to protocol, all patrol officers should wear a camera and must activate it as soon as they anticipate any interactions with civilians. But the officers who first approached Scott were wearing plain clothes and therefore did not have any cameras. They claim they realized Scott had a gun, so they retreated to put on police vests and wait for a uniformed officer. That officer was wearing his camera, but he waited to activate it until after Scott was shot.

This news upset many.

Yet another example of why body cameras are not the way to end police shootings. Sometimes, cops don’t turn them on. https://t.co/Q1jNRKYYkU

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) September 26, 2016

But this might be the last footage you see from a police shooting in North Carolina. A new law goes into effect on October 1 that will prevent the public from obtaining footage from body or dashboard cameras. According to Governor Pat McCrory it’s about: “respecting the public, respecting the family, and also respecting the constitutional rights of the officer.”

Under the new law, police videos like the ones in Scott’s case would no longer be considered public record.

The day before the footage was released, Scott’s wife published her own video of what happened, in which the officers are heard yelling “drop the gun” to Scott inside his car. She repeatedly says, “he doesn’t have a gun,” and also points out that he has a traumatic brain injury and just took his medicine. In the video she begs the officers not to shoot her husband, right up until they shoot him.

Wife of #Charlotte police shooting victim #KeithScott films encounter https://t.co/kL9M8WjC4P

— YouTube Newswire (@ytnewswire) September 23, 2016

The attorney for the Scott family, Justin Bamberg, argued that the officer not activating his camera is both a violation of department policy and also meant there was little evidence to show what had actually happened. He said:

Information that we could have had is forever gone because of this officer’s failure to follow department policy and procedures. Those policies exist for a reason, and there is a reason the CMPD equips its officers with body cameras–because body cameras provide visual evidence so that when tragic things do happen we don’t have to question exactly what happened.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Officer Did Not Turn on Body Camera Until After Keith Scott Was Shot appeared first on Law Street.

Betty Shelby, the police officer who shot Terence Crutcher on a highway in Tulsa, Oklahoma last week, was formally charged with manslaughter. Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler announced on Thursday that he had charged officer Shelby with first-degree manslaughter, which would amount to a minimum of four years in prison if convicted.

In a brief statement about the charges, Kunzweiler said, “The tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Crutcher are on the hearts and minds of many people in this community.” Shelby was booked at the local county jail early Friday morning before being released on a $50,000 bond. Crutcher’s family members said that they approved of the charges and hope that Shelby’s prosecution will lead to a conviction.

Crutcher’s twin sister, Tiffany, said after the announcement, “This is a small victory. The chain breaks here. We’re going to break the chains of police brutality.”

Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby will face first-degree manslaughter charges in death of Terence Crutcher: https://t.co/qgCni2r96U pic.twitter.com/cKXAxAqiw6

— Complex (@ComplexMag) September 22, 2016

Crutcher’s car broke down on the interstate last Friday and a woman called 911 reporting that a man was running away from the vehicle as if it was about to blow up. Betty Shelby, who was responding to another 911 call about domestic abuse, came across Crutcher and his car. She got out and started asking Crutcher what was wrong, but he reportedly ignored her questions and kept mumbling to himself. As the interaction unfolded, backup arrived at the scene and Crutcher was later shot and killed.

The court documents claim that Shelby shot Crutcher “unlawfully and unnecessarily.” The filing argues that she became emotionally involved and overreacted to the situation. Shelby’s attorney Scott Wood said that Crutcher was acting erratically, which led Shelby, who Wood said is a drug recognition expert, to believe he was on drugs. She claims to have feared for her life before she fired the shot, and said that Crutcher kept patting his pockets and she couldn’t tell if he had a gun. Crutcher was unarmed and there was no weapon in the car.

A video of the incident shows Crutcher with his hands raised in the air shortly before he was shot. Shelby apparently ordered him to go back to his car and another officer tasered him as he approached the driver-side door. Shelby then shot Crutcher shortly after he fell to the ground.

Police say that Crutcher was reaching into the window before he was shot, but the attorney for the Crutcher family, Benjamin Crump, later said, “The window was up, so how can he be reaching into the car if the window is up and there’s blood on the glass?”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Tulsa Officer Charged With Manslaughter in Terence Crutcher’s Death appeared first on Law Street.

On Tuesday night violent protests erupted in Charlotte, North Carolina, over the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott earlier that day. The protests came the day after police in Oklahoma released video footage of the shooting of another man on Friday, Terrence Crutcher.

The protests started peacefully, close to where Scott, 43, was killed. They went on until late at night, with people chanting “Black Lives Matter.” In the early morning hours of Wednesday, demonstrators started blocking traffic on the interstate and even opened up backs of tractors and trucks to take out the cargo and set it on fire in the streets. Others broke into a local Walmart. Police used tear gas and flash grenades to interrupt the riots, during which at least 12 police officers and 11 civilians were injured.

#Charlotte #cmpd pic.twitter.com/LJVfhRcgUc

— Adam Rhew (@AdamRhew) September 21, 2016

On Tuesday afternoon police looking for another man with an outstanding warrant approached Scott, who was sitting in his car outside of an apartment complex. Police say Scott got out of the car carrying a gun, and then got back in. When they got closer he got out again, and according to the police statement, the officers felt their lives were in danger and felt compelled to shoot.

But according to Scott’s family, he was unarmed and disabled, and was reading a book in his car while waiting for the school bus to drop off his son.

Here’s the man’s sister. She says he did not have a gun. @CMPD says he did. @WBTV_News pic.twitter.com/JwHMixy9m7

— Sarah-Blake Morgan (@SarahBlakeWBTV) September 20, 2016

His brother said the cop that shot Scott was undercover and dressed in normal clothes. He was shot four times and pronounced dead at a local hospital.

The brother of the victim in the officer-involved shooting says that the cops were undercover. pic.twitter.com/PBrDwkjEdm #Charlotte

— Beatrice E. Peterson (@MissBeaE) September 21, 2016

The family claims Scott didn’t own a gun, but the police say they did recover a firearm at the scene. Police Chief Kerr Putney said that although the police officer who shot Scott was dressed in plainclothes, he also had on a police vest and there were uniformed police at the scene. But he couldn’t say for sure whether Scott aimed his weapon at anyone, nor did police specify what brand or model of gun they had found.

The man who was shot on Friday evening was Terrence Crutcher, 40. He was waiting for assistance next to his car that had broken down on a road in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when female police officer Betty Shelby, who responding to a domestic violence call, found him. When she asked what had happened, he didn’t answer, and according to her attorney, he kept ignoring her questions. When he reached toward his vehicle, she thought he was grabbing a weapon and shot him.

The video that police released on Monday show the man surrounded by several other officers before he falls to the ground. In another video from a police helicopter circling the scene, one officer is heard saying Crutcher is “looking like a bad dude,” and “looks like time for taser.”

“Looks like a Bad Dude” why don’t you Say his name instead #TerrenceCrutcher pic.twitter.com/USSL3TjBzE

— The HBCURoundTable (@HBCU_Roundtable) September 20, 2016

According to the Crutcher family’s lawyer, it is impossible that he reached inside the car for a gun, since the window was rolled up and blood stained on the outside.

Both officers involved in the shootings of Crutcher and Scott have been placed on paid administrative leave.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Protests in Charlotte Sparked by Shooting of Keith Lamont Scott appeared first on Law Street.

Another police officer has been found not guilty on all charges in the death of Freddie Gray. Ceasar R. Goodson Jr. was the third officer out of six to stand trial after the 25-year-old Baltimore man died while in police custody. None of the trials so far have ended in a conviction–a troubling sign for those who hope for justice for the Gray family.

The first trial in the case of Freddie Gray in December 2015 ended in a mistrial due to the jury’s inability to deliver a unanimous verdict. In May, the second officer to go to trial was cleared of all charges, including second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and two counts of misconduct in office.

On Thursday, Goodson–who drove the van that took Freddie Gray to prison–was also cleared of all charges. His charges were the most serious: second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office.

Freddie Gray was arrested last April after running from officers. The officers found he had a knife on him and placed him in the police van. With feet shackled, hands cuffed behind his back, and no seat belt, he had no chance of holding on during the ride.

The prosecutor claimed that Goodson made a wide turn to intentionally injure Gray. Gray ended up unconscious with a fatal spine injury as well as head injuries in the back of the van, and died a week later. The Judge Barry G. Williams rejected the claim, saying, “The court finds there is insufficient evidence that the defendant gave or intended to give Mr. Gray a rough ride.”

The verdict has sparked new life for opinions from the public as well as celebrities.

NO1 KILLED FREDDIE GRAY,
& YET…HE’S DEADTHERE MUST B DEFINITIVE
DIMENSIONS & DESCRIPTIONS
OF LEGAL KNIFE..WHAT R THEYWHATS“FUZZINESS”

— Cher (@cher) June 23, 2016

It is unacceptable that #FreddieGray's death was ruled a homicide & yet no police officer was held responsible. This is happening too often.

— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) June 23, 2016

They kill our daddies then make fun of us for being fatherless. #FreddieGray pic.twitter.com/LEHuTZaE0l

— Bipartisan Report (@Bipartisanism) June 23, 2016

How long can we ask our brothers and sisters to be patient when justice for #FreddieGray is not served?

— Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) June 23, 2016

The result of Thursday’s verdict also puts increased pressure on Baltimore State Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, who initially promised to bring justice in the case. To charge police officers with murder is extremely unusual. According to NBC, no officer has been convicted for murder or manslaughter in the line of duty between 2005 and 2011. It was seen as a very ambitious move from Mosby.

“If she abandons the prosecution of the four remaining trials, the only interpretation of that is that she has been defeated–certainly that does not bode well politically for her,” said lawyer Warren Alperstein to New York Times.

Hopefully Mosby succeeds in bringing some justice for the people of Baltimore, and in doing so, sets an example for the future of police conduct.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Driver in Freddie Gray Case Found Not Guilty appeared first on Law Street.

In May 2011, a man was arrested in a Paris suburb, along with eight others, for planning to travel to Pakistan to wage jihad. He was imprisoned for two years while awaiting trial. A judge sentenced him to three more years in prison. But he was released immediately following the trial, as it’s French practice to dock years spent in prison awaiting trial off the eventual sentence. On Monday, that man, Larossi Abballa, stabbed two police officers to death and held their three year-old son hostage until a police raid killed Abballa and rescued the boy.

Given that Abballa pledged to the Islamic State, or ISIS, during the raid, and a statement from ISIS’s official news service Amaq alluded to Abballa as an “Islamic State fighter,” Monday’s gruesome attack has been dubbed “incontestably a terrorist act” by French President Francois Hollande. Coming just months after the terror Paris faced in November, when 130 were killed in coordinated strikes across the city, and the horrific massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida over the weekend, France and other Western nations are on especially high alert concerning independent terrorist actors.

The terrorist threat “is high in France, it’s high in Europe, it’s high in the Western world as shown by the events that happened 48 hours ago in the United States,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday morning. He also said more than 100 people have been arrested in France so far this year in connection to terrorist activities.

The stabbings occurred in Magnanville, a small town on the Seine river, roughly 35 miles west of Paris. According to statements by the French Interior Ministry, Abballa, 25, murdered a police captain and his partner outside their home. He could not decide how to handle their three year-old son, so he held him hostage in the home of the slain police officers. The boy was rescued and Aballa killed by police in a three hour operation. Police raided Abballa’s home Tuesday morning, and reportedly found a hit list with names of “rappers, journalists, police officers and public personalities.”

As police conducted their investigation and journalists covered the attack Monday night through Tuesday morning, some notable bits of information regarding the circumstances before and during the stabbings have surfaced: On Monday, before he killed the two police officers, Abballa spent so long praying at his neighborhood mosque that the rector of the mosque had to ask him to leave. In addition, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said Abballa shot a 12-minute video of him during the attack which he made public on Facebook Live, the social media network’s live video service. The video–and Abballa’s account–have been removed.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Man Kills Two Police Officers in Parisian Suburb, Pledges Support to ISIS appeared first on Law Street.

Sixty celebrities, artists, and activists from the United States and Palestine joined together to create a powerful video highlighting the solidarity between Black Americans and Palestinians. American celebrities that participated in order to bring attention to the movement include Grammy Winner Lauryn Hill, author and Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, actor Danny Glover, and political activists Cornel West and Angela Davis, among others. Centered around variations of the line “When I see them, I see us,” the short video draws comparisons between the struggles of Black Americans and Palestinians.

The video project was spearheaded by Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and an assistant professor at George Mason University in Virginia. She was inspired to make the video after observing the events of the summer of 2014 in both the United States and Palestine. That summer, protests erupted in the United States after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and have continued as more Black Americans have died at the hands of the police in the United States. Concurrently, Israel launched operations against the Gaza Strip, killing over 2,000 Palestinians. While the experiences between Black Americans and Palestinians are obviously different in many ways, the members of the movement focus on larger similarities, rather than divergences, to make a point about human rights issues writ large. Those who have joined the movement see similarities between state-sanctioned violence and the institutionalization of racism with which both groups have to contend. Erakat explained how a comparison of those two events inspired her, stating:

Here were two groups of people dealing with completely different historical trajectories, but both which resulted in a process of dehumanization that criminalized them and that subject their bodies as expendable. Not only were their lives more vulnerable and disposable, but that even in their death, they were blamed for their own death.

The video, which juxtaposes Black American and Palestinians killed, isn’t the first example of solidarity between the two groups of people. According to the press release accompanying the video:

It comes on the heels of an Aug. 19 statement signed by more than 1,100 Black activists, artists, scholars, students and organizations that calls for ‘solidarity with the Palestinian struggle’ as well as a boycott of private prison company G4S and other corporations profiting from Israeli occupation.

Additionally, during protests in Ferguson last summer, Palestinian activists used social media to offer advice in support–for example, some provided tips on how to deal with tear gas. Black Lives Matter activists also visited Palestine earlier this year, also in a show of solidarity and support.

The video is powerful, and makes exactly the point that its creators intend. As Erakat stated: “It’s really affirming the idea that none of us are free unless all of us are free.”

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post When I See Them, I See Us: Black American and Palestinian Activists Join Together appeared first on Law Street.

Just a cursory glance at recent social movement-esque trends on Twitter reveals a disturbing tendency of national conversations.

I am currently arching one eyebrow–judging hard–at the fondness we seem to have for localizing national problems in Midwestern states. Observe: homophobia, we locate in Indiana with #BoycottIndiana, almost as though it is the only place with queerphobic laws. Racism and police violence, we locate in Ferguson, as though this city in Missouri itself embodies racism across the country. Even Colorlines.com, an excellent source for intersectional news about structural racism in the U.S., has a separate tab for “Ferguson” on its site. Many tweets hashtag the names of several Black men who were brutalized by cops (or cop stand-ins, in the case of Trayvon Martin), but the only location identified is #Ferguson. No #StatenIsland or #NewYorkCity (where Eric Garner was strangled to death) or #LosAngeles (where Rodney King was savagely beaten by cops in 1991).

Focusing on individuals rather than identifying larger trends (like city-wide implementation of racist stop-and-frisk policies, or nationwide and international waging of a racist “war on drugs”), this place-based use of hashtags allows us to displace racist violence into conveniently “conservative,” Midwestern states like Missouri and Indiana.

This is similar to the trend in films such as “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Brokeback Mountain,” which portray violent homophobia and transphobia as individual acts of hatred rather than structural realities. They also position these acts as being located primarily in rural locations like Falls City, Nebraska and the mountains of Wyoming.

While I was born and raised a city girl, I know (because I have friends, I’ve dated different folks, and I read things like this and this) that vibrant queer cultures exist in rural spaces, and, though I navigate the streets of New York City with the privileges of being white, I know that racist, queerphobic violence is inflicted vis a vis laws and police batons in city centers every day.

As writer Lauren Anderson notes,

[R]ural gay youth teach [urbanites]:
1. Identities are a process of collective action, not a condition waiting for discovery
2. Multiple visibility strategies in play
3. We need to stop moralizing about who does queerness right.

When we erase these kinds of perspectives by asserting that coastal urbanity is the only site of vibrant queer cultures, all it does is romanticize queerness in cities and propagates violence to fellow queers who are from rural areas and/or from Midwestern and southern cities.

And speaking of violence…

Using Ferguson to represent racism and Indiana to represent homophobia risk erasing the massive violences inflicted on queer people of color (as well as white queers and non-queer people of color) that occur in everyday life in cities. Frighteningly, it may well be precisely this erasure that makes #BoycottIndiana and #Ferguson so popular: if we blame individual conservatism and “backward” rural cultures, then we do not have to do the hard labor of dismantling the structural white supremacy and anti-queerness upon which this country–including its cities–operates.

(Looking for more than what I can explain with my limited perspective? Try renting Scott Herring’s Another Country: Queer’s Anti-Urbanism from the library, or read the introduction online here.)

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post #Boycott Indiana, #Ferguson, and Romanticizing Coastal Cities appeared first on Law Street.