This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media often describe the country as being “roiled by” police brutality, or as “grappling with” racism in the criminal justice system. But when elites get to define the problem, they get to decide what constitutes solving it — and for many people, that makes for too shallow a conversation when it comes to policing. We’ll talk about the limits of police “reform” with Alex Vitale, associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, and author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics, and of the forthcoming The End of Policing.
We also take a look back at recent press, focusing on the airstrikes against Syria.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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