(Coinciding with Trump’s first 100 days in Office — a period of time historically used as a benchmark to measure the potential of a new president — PRA will share readings, videos, and tools for organizing to inform our collective resistance based on principles for engaging the regime, defending human rights, and preventing authoritarianism. Daily readings will be posted on our Facebook and Twitter accounts and archived HERE.)
Week 8: Bigotry and ethnoviolence
Whether it’s a spree killing, a vandalized mosque, or a bias attack on a queer teen, Americans are quick to chalk it up to hate. The label “hate crime” invites us to blame overwrought individuals acting on extreme personal prejudice, making it seem as if a small cadre of social deviants is our main obstacle to a peaceful society. In fact, such individuals are products of a society that endorses all kinds of violence against the very same groups who are targeted in hate crimes. The perpetrators of these crimes are taking their cues from a society that embraces mass incarceration, militarized policing, the school-to-prison pipeline, and other forms of structural violence wielded disproportionately against people of color, queer and trans or gender non-conforming people, and the poor.
Featured resources
- Beyond the Hate Frame: An Interview with Kay Whitlock & Michael Bronskiby Lindsay Beyerstein
- Reconsidering Hate: Policy and Politics at the Intersection by Kay Whitlock
- Pro-LGBTQ Smokescreens for Anti-Muslim Attacks by Cole Parke
- The Internet Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Emma Grey Ellis
Engage
Click here for resources for bystander intervention and deescalation for those who wish to protect one other. Be aware that bystander intervention and deescalation strategies do not necessarily require physical force. Intervention and deescalation are first and foremost about securing a targeted person’s safety as well as your own.
