Political scientist and sociologist Vesla Weaver is spending her career listening to and researching the voices of people whose experience of democracy, citizenship, and government is completely different from that of those not living under police surveillance
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How broken policing is breaking our democracy
A body of political science research finds that our criminal justice system suppresses the votes of Black people in ways beyond the obvious.
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Days before a jury convicted Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd, a group of boys on bicycles were stopped by police officers in the town of Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
Footage uploaded by one of the boys shows the predominantly Black and Latino group riding close to cars and popping wheelies, but nothing seems illegal. Multiple squad cars appear; the kids, who say they’re far from home and afraid of losing their bikes, try to get away before being pulled over.
Pollsters keep tripping over contradictions in how communities of color talk about cops.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
In 2020, the widespread protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd took both the news cycle and the American conscience by force. The result was an immediate and seismic shift in public opinion: According to the polling from Gallup in June, 19 percent of Americans consider racism an important issue, up from just 4 percent in May. That made these concerns just as important as the coronavirus to the American public.
The zeitgeist-warping power of these protests wasn’t without controversy. More recently, critics of the movement’s endorsement of ideas like “defunding the police” have blamed them for contributing to the Democrats’ losses in swing districts throughout the nation. President-elect Joe Biden has continued to repeat these warnings out of concern that Republicans will paint the Democratic Party as full-bore endorsers of these ideas ahead