Voice of Consciousness

This clip of #DEMSinPHL provides an insight on Hillary Clinton's thinking regarding the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The entire time of the #DNC, Hillary Clinton's connection to people as a mother. This was no exception. Honestly, Sandra Bland's and Jordan Davis's mother said very touching words; my heart was stirred. However, I wondered the entire time as I watched and re-watched this clip if these Mothers really understood what it would take to bring justice to this nation, as this nation condones, invites, rationalizes, and excuses police violence. The difficulty to attaining transformative justice that these Mothers did not address is that police violence is a form of state-sanctioned oppression. Police are protectors of the State. They are gatekeepers of the criminal justice that enforce the laws of the nation-state and its derivatives. Attaining transformative justice in this nation-state will require more than God's favor. It will require more than

Watching the RNC intermittently this week, including Monday and Thursday night, I am ever more convinced that moderates and liberals need to get up off of theirselves and go out and vote! Monday after watching the RNC, I posted to Facebook regarding their slogan, "Make America Great Again" . Bane of my existence. *smh*   I make the argument in the post that we don't need to make America great again -- it's the greatest it has ever been, especially for nonwhite folks. No, we need to "Make America Just, NOW!" People pick up phrases like "Make America Great Again" partly because they believe it, partly because it resonates with their sociopolitical preferences, and partly because it's catchy. It may not be catchy to say, "Make America Just, NOW!" But that's what this country needs today. And, I am soundly convinced we will not get Just in a Trump America. So, I encourage you to go out and vote for Hillary Clinton come Nov

Wednesday evening I went to visit with a friend in DC, and ended up at a Black Lives Matter  protest . It is not the first time I have ended up at a protest in the name of friendship and love, but this protest I won't forget. It was not just peaceful; It was festive. This is a short unedited video of #BlackLivesMatter protesters dancing as the sun goes down.  #BlackLivesMatter DC occupied the National Fraternal Order of Police (#FOP) for approximately 17 hours, starting about 5am on Thursday and ending around 10pm. I came in around hour 14. The organizers ultimately decided to end the occupation with a party preceded by libations to the victims of (extra)legal brutality, including Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Amadou Diallo, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and many more. Black protesters were asked to stand behind a row of red cups laid out in the street. Each of the cups had a name of a victim written in black permanent ink. Protesters were asked to #SayTheirName after p

Researchers! We are looking for manuscripts at the intersection of race and policing. Authors must contribute themselves to the Race and Policing Research Repository ("opting-in"). To contribute to the Repository as an author, please send a publicly shareable version of an article you have written to theraceandpolicingproject@gmail.com  using the Send Email button at the top of our Facebook Page . PDFs preferred.  For guidelines on what formats of your manuscripts are shareable, see your journal or distributor at SHERPA/RoMEO . Note, the few journals/distributors allow the sharing of the final, formatted draft of the manuscripts. Please check with SHERPA/RoMEO to be clear about what version of your manuscript (e.g., peer-reviewed vs. pre-peer-reviewed; personal copies; open-access) you can share with us. By sending us this email, you are acknowledging that the version of the manuscript that we receive does not violate copyright infringement laws.  

The Race and Policing Research Library (#RxPRL) is live because of me watching the video #PhilandoCastile's death. I was so affected by the emotions behind the voices on the video  that I volunteered to assume responsibility for the collection when we received strong words of warning from well-intentioned lawyers. They were concerned that we were overreaching fair use precedent by providing public access to copyrighted papers at the intersection of research on race and policing. I have since sought legal counsel and restricted functionality of the Library following guidelines posted earlier this week . When the resistance came, I knew deep in my heart that I would do anything to make these files available to the Public. I had just come from Atlanta's #StrategyForChange Townhall meeting at the House of Hope in Decatur, GA, where the community explicitly called for information, education, and wisdom. editorialized versions of the Truth, which are prone to issues of bias and m

A morning read on Princeton's new Open-access policy gave me food for thought: It's not Open-access that's the mechanism of the revolution, but Ready-Access. Open-Access allows for authors to repost or archive their work. Ready-Access is a term developed by myself to refer to a third party (not the author or the publisher) being able to download copyrighted material. That is what the Race and Policing Research Library (#RxPRL) is trying to achieve. However, it appears -- according to sources versed in open-access policies -- that the #RxPRL will have to become #RxPRR, at least for now. #RxPRR stands for the Race and Policing Research Repository . This would be considered a subject repository , where authors opt-in to have their work archived in the database. For this moment, the repository is located within the library, where the library holds content that we, the Race and Policing Research Working Group, is creating (e.g., bibliographies, indexes) and the repository ho

I wholeheartedly disagree with the  FBI's finding  that the Pulse shooter was not motivated to attack because the club served a primarily gay clientele. Internalized homophobia is real and vindictive. In my opinion, the Pulse mass shooting was a hate crime. Here is my tribute to the victims of the  Pulse attack : numb stories inspiration

Update 2016-07-17 10:49  We are working on making #RxPRL a repository that authors can opt-into to share their manuscripts. For now, we have made the bibliography available via a CSV file, an ENDNOTE library, and a Zotero library. We have also made PDFs of manuscripts available from authors who have opted-into the library (now, repository) that were received in one of the formats approved for self-distribution. What an author can self-distribute varies by journal and publisher. See the guidelines set forth by SHERPA/RoMEO . If you are interested in posting content you created to the Repository (#RxPRR), please post a comment on the "Opt-In-To-Posting.docx" document on the base folder of the library that indicates: 1) the link to where you have self-distributed the document; and 2) whether the publication is a peer-reviewed scholarly article, non-peer-reviewed scholarly article, policy statement, report, or blog post. These represent the only documents we are considering ri

Thank you for your interest in the Race and Policing Research Library. The link and mechanism to access the Race and Policing Research Library have been updated due to concerns about fair use and copyright infringement. If you are looking for immediate access to the library, see this post at Voice of Consciousness . [ View the story "Publicly-Accessible Race and Policing Research Library" on Storify ] [ View the story "Updated Link to Race and Policing Research Library" on Storify ] Update 2016-07-13 08:27 You may also leave a comment on this blog post with a hyperlink to your email address, so that I can send you the password. My apologies, and definitely the Editorial Board would agree, for the inconvenience this has caused. Best, Abigail A. Sewell, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Sociology Emory University Update 2016-07-13 12:33 Due to concerns regarding the legality of posting ready-access PDFs of scholarship, the original

I went to the We Are Orlando vigil last Tuesday, June 14, 2016 at the Center on Human and Civil Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. I wrote this poem after listening to a speech by Simone Bell, the first African American lesbian to serve in a U.S. state legislature. She was an inspiration before I heard her speak, much more afterwards. iii. inspiration i am not so good with these words: words of inspiration weigh heavy on me. me just want to see myself in these vigils, vigils across the world tell me somebody is listening, listening but can they hear the unspoken words? words matter says the sign. signs up with their names plastered in black ink, ink running wild to tell us of Devin Diamond another black transwoman killed, killed by “blunt force trauma" body burned beyond, beyond recognition how are we to stand tall, tall in our fear or at all? all of the rhetoric subsides as your voice rises above, above, high

Last Monday, I was wrapped in grief. I still am. That evening I went to Making Space: A Community Writing Group for Activists, Healers, and Everyday Heroes at Charis Books and More at the encouraging of a dear friend of mine. After doing a  free write on my feelings surrounded the naming of the victims, I elected to go deeper, motivated the following quote by John Hodgman that was given to the entire group. For once stories were not a comfort.  ii. stories “Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.” — John  Hodgman if stories do us  the favor of ending, i must be the storyless because this hurt has no end Alejandro Tevin Luis will live  forever in my mind, bodies burning bright in the Florida nightclub air i can still smell  the smoke of the gun i can still hear the ring of the shot i can still see 

I lived in Florida for four years as an undergraduate at the University of Florida, from August 2001 until July 2005. Pulse was barely celebrating its 1 year anniversary when I left Florida; I never went. But, I partied in Orlando’s black gay and lesbian clubs many of times. Finding them in the pre-Facebook era was difficult, a task only for the most dedicated and the most desperate. Pride month was especially special for us because there were pop-up parties all over any city. It was queer folks' time to celebrate, to dance, connect, and hopefully meet that special someone (or, at least, someone to play with). As a wandering poet and an organizer with the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida and for my own personal gain, I regularly went to Prides in Jacksonville and Tallahassee, and I attended Pride and Black Pride in Orlando at least once. To say the least, in my college years, I was a club "head" to the fullest. I spent 2-3 nights a week in a club, somew

The second year of my tenure track in Sociology at Emory University has been an explosive year. The year began with my former Master's Thesis being picked up by over 45 media outlets and ended with 6 papers in print, 2 papers forthcoming, and 2 papers under review. Additionally, I was able to write enough to bring a manuscript in first draft form from my first year on the tenure track to a polished draft, to fully compose a first draft of a second paper, and to draft from scratch a paper that is currently under peer review. Not to mention, I have given 13 talks/presentation in the past 12 months. I've also been analysis happy. In this time frame, I completed analysis for two separate projects and am in the exploratory stage of four other projects. I realized these things as I filled out my end-of-the-year statements on teaching, service, and research. I would say my third and last year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania has been wildly successful. I a