AJ's Lunch and Learn: Let’s break down the origins of policing together

Wednesday, April 27, 2022
12:30 PM 2:00 PM

COMMON POWER PO Box 51125 Seattle, WA 98115 United States (map)

Google Calendar ICS

This session will be a little heavy but so very important. Remember, the lunch and learn space is a safe space to be brave and have hard conversations with the community.

For most folks, there comes a time when you need to have important conversations with the young people in your life. For Black and Brown folks, one of the earliest conversations is usually about how to interact with the police. Before the pandemic, for hundreds of years, the movements of Black and Brown folks have been patroled in various ways. During enslavement, slave patrols and militias were used as a tool to make sure Black folks “stayed in their place” and similar methods are being used today.

For this session, we are going to look at the origins of policing in this country and how that ties into the treatment of Black and Brown folks today. Included in the materials is a short video of Black parents explaining how they navigate the inevitable conversation about how to interact with the police. One child is just 8 years old.

If we don’t find ways to have honest conversations about who is tasked with the safety of all of us and how that system is not fair or equal, we will see more human losses like that of Brianna Taylor, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Charleena Lyles, Tamir Rice (he was 12), Philando Castille, Oscar Grants and many more.

Origins of slave patrols/police and connection to today: