Listening to anthropologist @Laurence_Ralph at @WennerGrenOrg seminar. He is speaking on his new important book, The Torture Letters, which examines the history of police violence in Chicago. https://twitter.com/Laurence_Ralph/status/1166008109069996037

Chicago spends 40% of city budget on police (if I caught it correctly).

Why the title Torture Letters?: "it adopts a personal take on police violence, framing his research & takeaways in open letters to individuals, among them future mayors of Chicago, two random schoolchildren, people who have been tortured and even killed while in police custody"

Now we are listening to Dr. Christen Smith who is reading from her book "Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil" on police violence in Brazil. You can learn about her work here https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/anthropology/faculty/cs23775

Now Dr. Savannah Shange, anthropologist and abolitionist http://savannahshange.com/  // on her book "Progressive Dystopia Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco" on the limits of liberal progressivism vis-a-vis the current state format.

You can watch the seminar "Anti-Blackness: Readings on Violence, Resistance, and Repair"