Vol. 3 Issue 4
The Election, Police K9s as Weapons, Somebody Teaching Guide
"Boy on State", 1997, Photo: Patricia Evans
As the election draws near, it’s hard to think about anything else. Whatever the outcome, it will remain the case that alternative realities, nourished by media derangement, have taken hold in America, making us strangers to our neighbors and, at the extremes, enemies prepared to do merciless battle with each other.
What lies ahead? Amid all the uncertainties and imponderables, one struggles to maintain perspective: to remain, in a state of equipoise, equally alert to peril and possibility.
The twin disasters of the pandemic and misrule have caused incalculable harm, yet they have also disrupted the status quo and opened up precious space in which to imagine alternative ways of constituting our society and the bonds between us.
Grasping for perspective in recent months, I have returned more than once to this passage by Arundhati Roy. I find ballast in her words and hope you will too. (Here is a video of Roy reading the passage.)
What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.
Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality,” trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Jamie Kalven
November 1, 2020
Mauled: when police dogs are weapons is an investigative series about the severe injuries inflicted by police dogs every year on thousands of Americans, most of them accused of minor offenses or not suspects at all. The project is a collaboration between The Marshall Project, AL.com, IndyStar and the Invisible Institute. Our reporters examined more than 140 cases of serious injury, analyzed dog-bite data from police departments across the country, reviewed thousands of pages of documents and interviewed victims, law enforcement officials, current and former trainers and other experts. The series includes the experience of a Washington, D.C., woman attacked by a police dog while out for a walk, a single K-9 unit in Alabama involved in numerous troubling bites in a tumultuous year, and the department with the worst dog-bite rate among the nation’s 20-largest cities.
Follow the full series on The Marshall Project →
In 2017, as part of our work to make police data public, our reporter Sam Stecklow filed FOIA requests for complaint and use of force data across the country, and we learned that Indianapolis police dogs bite residents at a higher rate than any other major city in the US. Indianapolis has nearly ten times more reported police dog bites than New York, Chicago, and SF combined. Andrew Fan and Dana Brozost-Kelleher partnered with IndyStar to analyze the data. Since the publication of the investigation, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has announced new restrictions on use of police dogs, and the Indianapolis City Council has questioned the police chief about racial disparities in dog bites [link].
Read the Indianapolis investigation in IndyStar →
We are pleased to announce the launch of The Somebody Podcast Teaching Guide. The curriculum consists of ten lessons focused on strengthening high school students’ critical listening abilities. It includes excerpts from the podcast, transcripts of the episodes, and guided questions. And it is designed to be adapted for online learning.
In a moment when the relationship between police and communities of color is under scrutiny, the teaching guide provide an opportunity to bring those larger conversations into the classroom.
Also, in a recently-released bonus episode, the team shares new developments in the case. Shapearl organizes with the Courtney Copeland Memorial Foundation's annual book bag giveaway (www.copelandmemorial.com), as Alison remembers the role of Courtney's own book bag in the murder investigation.
Join us Monday, November 2nd 5:30-7pm CT for a discussion on the persisting problem of incommunicado detention by the Chicago Police Department.
Market Box, a mutual aid initiative in which organizations in the Experimental Station collaborate, concluded its first season this week. Thanks to over 2500 donors, we were able to distribute $260k to local farms while sustaining 26 weeks of delivering over 5000 bags of fresh produce, eggs, bread, and critical information to over 800 South Side homes. This winter, we will continue to deepen our relationships with those in the network, centering storytelling and the sharing of critical information. Stay tuned for ways to get involved.
Listen at SomebodyPodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Somebody podcast team won an award in the 2020 Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition, and narrator Shapearl Wells received the 2020 Adweek Award for Podcast Host of the Year.
Congratulations to Forrest Stuart, Invisible Institute board member, on receiving a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship. His latest book, Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy (2020), demonstrates how youth use social media to promote their street prowess while also mitigating or avoiding potentially violent confrontations. He also illuminates how social media enables disenfranchised young men to build economic, cultural, and social capital that is otherwise unattainable for them.
