Abstract The battle to protect abortion rights in the United States has not been this fierce in fifty years. From the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision to a precipitously growing number of states passing draconian laws that drastically limit—and in some states, entirely ban—access to safe and legal abortion services, reproductive freedom is under...
Unexceptional Protest
Abstract Anti-protest legislation is billed as applying only in the extreme circumstances of mass-movements and large scale civil disobedience. Mass protest exceptionalism provides justification for passage of anti-protest laws in states otherwise hesitant to expand public order criminal regulation. Examples include a Virginia bill that heightens penalties for a “failure to disperse following a...
Transitions in Sex Reclassification Law
Abstract The ability to reclassify legal sex as male (M), female (F), and even X, is a core issue of trans and non-binary legal engagements. A wave of legal reform and debate has recently swept across the United States, resulting in a spectrum of laws and policies, from a complete ban on reclassification to the innovative framework of self-identification. This Article provides a comprehensive...
War on COVID: Warfare and its Discontents
Introduction This Essay critically analyzes the wartime framing that both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden relied upon in fighting a “War on COVID-19.” According to this militarized framing, they sought to, in Trump’s words, “fight that invisible enemy,” the coronavirus.[2] The conundrum this Essay explores is: Even as Biden has announced plans to let the coronavirus health emergency...
The Art of Abolition: Interview with Angela Davis by Bryonn Bain
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To Democratize Algorithms
Abstract Jurisdictions increasingly employ algorithms in public sector decisionmaking. Facing public outcry about the use of such technologies, jurisdictions have begun to increase democratic participation in the processes by which algorithms are procured, constructed, implemented, used, and overseen. But what problem is the current approach to democratization meant to solve? Policymakers have...
Loser
Loser I’m a loser I lose I lost my way I lost my kids I lost my say I lost my power Plucked right out of my chest In my heart’s final hour Motherhood stolen for family court to devour Still I demand and I plead Bring my babies home to me! It’s my blood they bleed It’s my love they need! All my strength couldn’t fight the shock They took my joy and lodged a boulder between us So I dug my nails...
Abolitionist Aesthetics and the Abolitionist Movement: Los Angeles Grassroots Organizations and the Aesthetic Foundations of Real-Time Abolition
Abstract This Article profiles and interviews seven artists and organizers who are leaders throughout five distinct Los Angeles grassroots, abolitionist organizations at the forefront of dismantling and abolishing the largest penal system in the world, which is comprised of lethal policing and carceral institutions operated by the County and City of Los Angeles. Through an examination of the...