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Four years after the murder of George Floyd and the mass protests against policing that followed, corporate media claim that voters have turned on “defunding the police" - the movement to shift public resources away from policing and into other approaches to improving public health and safety. But what is fact and what is fiction when it comes to this issue, and where does the 'defund' movement stand? In this episode, three journalists reporting from the frontlines on matters of policing and prisons share what they see on the ground, within police departments, and in the media. Cerise Castle is a Los Angeles-based reporter who created “A Tradition of Violence”, a podcast about gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, based on an extensive investigation into more than five decades of terror, murder and abuse; Lewis Raven Wallace, of Durham, NC, is the author and creator of “The View from Somewhere”, a book and podcast about the problematic political history of journalistic objectivity, and the Abolition Journalism Fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, a multi movement resource hub for advocates, and Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, educator and photographer from Chicago. She also hosts the Truthout podcast “Movement Memos" and is co-author (with Mariame Kaba) of the book “Let This Radicalize You”. What is the corporate media getting wrong about the defund movement? All that, plus a commentary from Laura.
“I thought about my own vulnerability when doing this reporting. While I was still reporting my initial series on deputy gangs, I received several messages from people inside the department that they were in fear for my life . . . The repercussions have been very real for me, but it is not anything that would ever stop me from doing this work.” - Cerise Castle
“When I look at what's happening in Palestine and I see the AI targeting that's being used to select targets for assassination at an inhuman pace, . . . I see threats to all of us, things that we should all expect to be pervasive.” - Kelly Hayes
“We have to some extent defunded the police here in the city of Durham and . . . moved money out of the police budget and into a whole new city department that is geared toward community safety through non-police responses . . . People can call an alternative number and have trained crisis responders show up . . . and come without police.” - Lewis Raven Wallace
Guests:
Cerise Castle: Journalist, 2024 Poynter Fellow, Yale University
Kelly Hayes: Host, Movement Memos; Co-Author, Let This Radicalize You
Lewis Raven Wallace: Author, The View from Somewhere; Abolition Media Fellow, Interrupting Criminalization
🎧 PODCAST: Listen to this week's episode on major podcast platforms (Available 6/10): lauraflanders.simplecast.com/...
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“The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity” by Lewis Raven Wallace: bookshop.org/a/22992/97802268...
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Credits:
Executive Producer: Laura Flanders
Supervising Producer: Sabrina Artel
Senior Consulting Producer: Rory O’Connor
Consulting Producer: Jordan Flaherty
Senior Video Editor: David Neumann
Creative Designer & Video Editor: Nat Needham
Audio Director: Jeannie Hopper
Development Director: Sarah Miller
Communications Director: Janet Hernandez
Executive Assistant: Nady Piña
Photo of Lewis Raven Wallace by Bill Healy.