On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, anti-poverty organizer and sociologist Lesley Wood talks about her new book, Crisis and Control: The Militarization of Protest Policing from Between The Lines Books.
Wood has been involved in struggles against poverty and for global justice for many years, and her teaching and research at York University have largely focused on social movements. In her new book, she looks at how the policing of protest in North America has shifted in recent decades. She points out that even those of us in movements who do pay some critical attention to policing don’t often do a good job of understanding in grounded ways how the police work as an institution. And given that we are in an era in which unmet human needs are growing while the willingness of state institutions to respond to popular demands by actually meeting needs is shrinking, as well as an era of repressive police response to popular protest in settings as varied as Toronto at the G20 summit in 2010 and Ferguson, Missouri much more recently, research liks Wood’s may just be what movements need to get a better sense of what exactly we’re up against. Wood talks with me about her research, about how police forces work, about the kinds of oppressive things they do both in their everyday presence in communities and in the face of popular protest, about how that has shifted in recent years, and about ways that movements can respond.
To learn more about Crisis and Control: The Militarization of Protest Policing by Lesley Wood, click here.
Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada. We give you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show in general, visit its website here. You can learn about suggesting topics for future shows here.
Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
