Abstract During the coronavirus pandemic, movements for penal abolition and racial justice achieved dramatic growth and increased visibility. While much public discussion of abolition has centered on the call to divest from criminal law enforcement, contemporary abolitionists also understand public safety in terms of building new life-sustaining institutions and collective structures that improve...
Continuing Post-Brown Retrenchment: The Chilling Effect of PICS on a School District Seeking to Combat Rapid Resegregation
Abstract Nashville, Tennessee was once heralded as a desegregation success story. Three decades after the United States Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Brown v. Board of Education, schools in Nashville were, in a statistical sense, desegregated. Since then, Nashville schools have returned to a far more segregated state, mirroring many cities across the United States where desegregation...
Countering Epistemic Injustice in the Law: Centering an Indigenous Relationship Toward Land
Abstract This paper argues that Indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada are subject to epistemic injustice in the law, particularly with regard to many Indigenous groups’ worldviews and relationship to land. Many Indigenous cultures share a sacred connection to the traditional homelands they lived on and with, sometimes for thousands of years before colonization interrupted this...
Death in a Pandemic: Funeral Practices and Industry Disruption
Abstract The COVID-19 death toll is staggering and has impacted the funeral industry more than any other event in recent memory. Funeral service providers have been on the frontlines of this pandemic doing the work of the dead—transporting, storing, and disposing our dead. They have performed a critical service during uncertain times. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the funeral industry was...
Discrimination by Algorithm: Employer Accountability for Biased Customer Reviews
Abstract From Uber to Home Depot to Starbucks, companies are increasingly asking customers to rate workers. Gathering data from these ratings, many firms utilize algorithms to make employment decisions. The proliferation of customer ratings raises the possibility that some customers may review workers negatively for racist, sexist, or other illegal reasons. Absent a legal framework to address...
The Master's Tools and a Mission: Using Community Control and Oversight Laws to Resist and Abolish Police Surveillance Technologies
Abstract The proliferation and use of technology by law enforcement is rooted in the hope that technological tools can improve policing. Improvement, however, is relative. Quantitative data and qualitative experience have proven the criminal legal system a site of racial injustice and rank brutality. Police are one of the principal instruments of those harms. For the communities who bear the...
Black Lives Monitored
Abstract The police killing of George Floyd added fuel to the simmering flames of racial injustice in America following a string of similarly violent executions during a global pandemic that disproportionately ravaged the health and economic security of Black families and communities. The confluence of these painful realities exposed deep vulnerabilities and renewed a reckoning with the long...
A Mother's Crown
A Mother's Crown I wear my heart on my sleeve Being tugged by little hands So my heart may fall And be caught by the tiniest fingers I wear my crown proudly ButI never forget to adjust theirs Which sits upon their curly, soft hair Upholding their sovereign royalty When the days are darkest And the tears are falling freely Their voice brings me smiles and relief They don’t know they keep me strong...