Women in politics

Farai Chideya, commentator, NPR, and author, The Color of our Future: Race in the 21st Century and Katha Pollitt, Columnist, The Nation and author, Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories on the impact of race and gender on the 2008 election

Race, gender, and the transformation of American politics

Farai Chideya, Susan Faludi, Katha Pollitt, and Dina Titus discuss \u27Race, Gender, and the Transformation of American Politics.\u27 Chideya is a multimedia journalist who has worked in print, television, and online. Her latest book is Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters. She currently hosts NPR\u27s \u27News and Notes.\u27 Faludi is the author of Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man and Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Her most recent book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, examines the post-9/11 outpouring in the media, popular culture, and political life. A regular columnist for The Nation, Pollitt\u27s writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper\u27s, Ms., and The New York Times, among other venues. Her volume of personal essays, Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories, just appeared in paperback. Titus, the event moderator, has taught American and Nevada government in the Department of Political Science at UNLV for 30 years. She was recently elected to the U.S. Congress as the representative for Nevada\u27s third congressional district

Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community

High-profile cases of police violence—disproportionately experienced by black men—may present a serious threat to public safety if they lower citizen crime reporting. Using an interrupted time series design, this study analyzes how one of Milwaukee’s most publicized cases of police violence against an unarmed black man, the beating of Frank Jude, affected police-related 911 calls. Controlling for crime, prior call patterns, and several neighborhood characteristics, we find that residents of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, especially residents of black neighborhoods, were far less likely to report crime after Jude’s beating was broadcast. The effect lasted for over a year and resulted in a total net loss of approximately 22,200 calls for service. Other local and national cases of police violence against unarmed black men also had a significant impact on citizen crime reporting in Milwaukee. Police misconduct can powerfully suppress one of the most basic forms of civic engagement: calling 911 for matters of personal and public safety