I spent a lot of the last week thinking about and writing about police violence. I had a piece about the LAPD shooting come out from CNN that talked about looking at use of force incidents using a broad timeframe, not just concentrating on the moment of death. I followed on that in three blog…
Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post has published the latest mis-use of the word medieval, not as a casual pejorative, but as a specific pejorative. He writes: “The new Department of Justice report depicts a system in Ferguson that is much closer to a racket aimed at squeezing revenue out of its population than a properly…
A few days ago, before we had full information, I wrote a piece for CNN on the shooting of a homeless man named “Africa” on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Here’s my core argument: The media and the investigation will likely focus on whether Africa was reaching for an officer’s gun when he got killed….
Yesterday CNN published my new essay on the shooting of a black, homeless, disabled man by the LAPD. I argue that the focus on whether of not “Africa,” as the man was known, was reaching for a gun, is the wrong question. Instead, use-of-force incidents should be assessed by taking a broad time frame, looking…
Yesterday was the day of mourning for people with disabilities killed by their caregivers. I stood in the cold with a small group of people at the University of Chicago, candles mostly blown out by the wind, reading names. I noticed that some of the names included individuals killed by law enforcement, and while I…
Nothing was published this week outside the blog, but I filed several, including a parenting essay that I’m particularly proud of and a closely-researched piece on a coming SCOTUS case. I’m also working on some scholarship that has slowed down my journalism for a week or two. My Pieces from the week: Two Vows: Day…
Every year on March 1st, the disability community gathers to mourn people killed by their parents and caregivers. We mourn all untimely deaths, of course, and there are far too many deaths by accident, stranger violence, police violence, and more. But there is something specific to the disability community in which caregivers kill and then…
Last night I had the pleasure of watching one our nation’s great writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, give a talk on the case for reparations at my university. The content of the talk was based on his recent major article for The Atlantic, which you should read. His thesis is that for 350 years, in an ongoing…
All the news lately on Bill O’Reilly has focused on his chronic exaggeration of his records as a reporter on war. The short story is that while has has seen violent things here and there, he’s not a war reporter, but it’s not likely Fox News or their audience will care. What I don’t want…
Today is National Adjunct Walkout Day. Around the country, adjuncts have organized walkouts and rallies and donation funds and many other efforts to bring people together and insist on fair wages. And they are right to do so. As a tenured faculty member, I stand fully in support with this movement, I see their movement…