The Effects of Selective and Indiscriminate Repression on the 2013 Gezi Park Nonviolent Resistance Campaign

We investigate the differential effects of selective and indiscriminate repression on the rate of protest actions during the nonviolent resistance campaign in Gezi Park, Turkey, in 2013. After deriving theoretical expectations about how and why these forms of repression will influence protest actions, we test them with protest event data that were collected from a major local newspaper and subsequently validated through a comparison with two other independent Twitter datasets. Utilizing a Poisson autoregressive estimation model, we find that selective repression, as measured by the number of arrested activists who were detained while they were not demonstrating, decreased the rate of protest actions. Meanwhile, indiscriminate repression, as measured by the frequency of the government’s use of lethal and nonlethal violence against protesters during demonstrations, increased the rate of protest actions. Our findings support prior research on the influence of indiscriminate repression on backfire outcomes. They also provide evidence for the impact of selective repression on movement demobilization through the removal of opposition activists. Finally, the targeted arrest strategy of selective repression that was employed in the Gezi campaign has implications for the feasibility of the strategic incapacitation model of protest policing

Spartan Daily, March 22, 1988

Volume 90, Issue 35https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/7694/thumbnail.jp

A thin-slice of institutionalised police brutality: a tradition of excessive force in the Chicago Police Department

In the Chicago Police Department, a sustained tradition of tolerating violent conduct has contributed to the fostering of a police culture in which the use of force is celebrated. Evidence suggests that there has been a historical reluctance to take action to discipline officers accused of misconduct – many of whom are highly decorated veterans of the Chicago Police Department. It is the contention of this article that the long-standing endorsement of excessive force in Chicago policing has compromised officers’ ability to thin-slice, a psychological process in which people are able to draw on their experiences and socio-cultural context to make quick decisions under pressure. Instead, officers are instinctively drawn to engage in misconduct as a means to an end, with the confidence that their actions will not attract the sanction of their superiors

Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, 2011

The US national response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks accelerated the adoption and refinement of a new repertoire of protest policing we call ‘strategic incapacitation’ now employed by law enforcement agencies nationwide to police protest demonstrations. The occupation movement which formally began 17 September 2011 was the most significant social movement to utilise transgressive protest tactics in the United States in the last 40 years and posed a substantial challenge to law enforcement agencies. This research seeks to better understand the implementation of strategic incapacitation tactics through a detailed analysis of the policing of the first 2 months of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests in New York City. Original data for this study are derived from 2-week-long field observations made in New York City during the first and second month anniversaries of the OWS occupation in Zuccotti Park. These are supplemented by activist interviews, activist accounts posted on OWS websites, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds as well as news reports, official police documents, press releases and interviews with legal observers

Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street

In September 2011, waves of protests against mounting socioeconomic injustice broke out across the United States, capturing the attention of the country. The Occupy Wall Street movement, inspired by similar protests around the globe, used the occupation of public space and mass demonstrations to call attention to a wide array of shared concerns. The movement also used public assemblies to debate concerns and promote direct democratic participation. Within weeks of their emergence, the protests dramatically expanded and deepened U.S. political discourse around the widening gap between rich and poor, bank bailouts and impunity for financial crimes, and the role of money in politics. The response of U.S. authorities to the protests also received significant attention. Images of police using pepper spray on seated students, the arrests of thousands of peaceful protesters across the country, midnight raids on encampments, baton-swinging officers, marches accompanied by phalanxes of riot police, and officers obstructing and arresting journalists were beamed around the world. This is the first in a series of reports examining the responses of U.S. authorities to the Occupy protests. Through an eight-month-long study of the response in New York City, together with comparative data collected from cities across the United States, this report highlights major policy concerns and serious violations of the rights of protesters. Further detailed studies will be published in the coming months on the response of authorities in Boston, Charlotte, Oakland, and San Francisco. Government responses to Occupy Wall Street in the United States have varied significantly, both within and across cities. Indeed, there have been examples of good practice, including through welcoming assemblies, using modern democratic policing styles that promote negotiation to facilitate protests, and enforcing strict controls on any use of police force. But across the United States, abusive and unlawful protest regulation and policing practices have been and continue to be alarmingly evident. This report follows a review of thousands of news reports and hundreds of hours of video, extensive firsthand observation, and detailed witness interviews

From racist violence to re-humanization, mattering, and nonviolence : an analysis of the normative reasoning, communication, and resonance of Black Lives Matter in the wake of the death of George Floyd

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a leading force in the struggle for a re-humanization of Black lives. After George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer in the summer of 2020, BLM called for the mattering of Black lives and won increasing public support for its protests against the persistent police and state violence that disproportionately affect Black people. The aim of this Master Thesis research was to understand the normative reasoning, communication, and resonance of BLM, with particular attention to how these were evident in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Using a qualitative, grounded theory approach, online sources were analyzed in order to document, interpret and explain the normative views and positions of BLM; to show how these were communicated to advance a re-humanization of Black lives; and to explain how BLM’s thinking and strategy resonated in public discourse, meeting both support and resistance. The analysis and discussion were informed by two closely related perspectives on re-humanization, namely mattering and nonviolence. First, I demonstrate how BLM normative views and positions emphasized the lack of mattering extended to Black lives and opposed the violence that results from, and perpetuates, this unequal mattering. In this way, BLM insisted that an extension of mattering to include Black lives was necessary for re-humanization and racial equality. Further, I show how BLM communicated its demands through social media, direct action, and popular culture. I argue that through these forms of communication, BLM concretized its normative reasoning as the movement 1) embraced the rage that results from unequal mattering and practices of violence that distinguish between lives that matter and lives that do not, and 2) turned this rage into effective, nonviolent action through physically asserting claims to mattering. I explain how BLM thinking, strategy, and messaging evoked support across a broader public discourse than ever before, while also triggering various forms of social and official resistance. I conclude that, through its normative thinking and strategic communication in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, BLM successfully advanced a re-humanization of Black lives.M-I

Taking to the Streets in the Shadow of Austerity: A Chronology of the Cycle of Protests In Spain, 2007-2015

Based on theories of cycles of collective behavior, this piece establishes a periodization of the cycle of anti-austerity and anti-political status quo protests in the shadow of the Great Recession that Spain faced between 2007 and 2015. More specifically, it tries to explain why the peak of protests persisted for so long: radicalization was contained, institutionalization postponed and protesters’ divisions avoided. The crucial argument here, an innovation with regards to the classic theories of cycles, is that the high standards of mobilization persisted for a long time as the result of the issue specialization of a more gen-eral anti-austerity fight and the strategic alliances ––with varying degrees of formality–– that new civil organizations forged with the unions. For illustrating the longitudinal dynamics of the cycle of protests, we use original protest event dat

Spartan Daily, March 6, 2003

Volume 120, Issue 30https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9826/thumbnail.jp

Activist Reflexivity and Mediated Violence: Putting the Policing of Nuit Debout in Context

To better understand the historical trajectory of the policing of Nuit Debout, in this article we argue that the reflexive relationship between police and protest tactics is heavily mediated by the presence of the press and by the emergence of digital technologies. Our analysis focuses on three sets of reflexive activist practice: (a) challenging media representations—the adaptations and innovations that respond to dominant media framing of police–protester relations; (b) “sousveillance” and police monitoring—the recording and monitoring of police violence and the public education around the police’s use of force; (c) civic forensics and data aggregation—the gathering, analyzing, and collectivizing of citizen-generated data. Although not intended as a taxonomy, these groups of practices are offered as conceptual lenses for critically examining how activists’ tactical repertoires for protesting police adapt and evolve, building on each other to challenge the representational, legal, and material dimensions of state power as it manifests in police–protester relations