Abolishing Surveillance Digital Media Activism and State Repression by Chris Robé

Author:Chris Robé
Format: epub

FIGURE 3.13: A remarkable video shot by Copwatch Patrol Unit that shows women in a community intervening to stop an undercover police officer from arresting a teenage girl, forcing him to retreat to his car. (Copwatch Patrol Unit, 2015.)

Tellingly, however, only a few comments remark about the Black women’s strength in resisting the police. One person writes: “The women are doing the fighting while the men film and run their mouths.” Similarly, someone comments: “I notice that it’s Black women who protected those girls while Black men idly stood by.” It is interesting that the focus on the women’s strength is always mentioned in conjunction with the suggestion that the men failed in their gendered role as protectors. The comments in part reinforce the gendered assumptions illustrated within the “46 Pct CPU Confront” video where the male copwatchers aggressively confront the police. The absence of such posturing in the “30 pct.” video, on the other hand, is read as masculine failure rather than simply as another form of copwatching. Clearly, the psychic dimensions regarding masculine posturing and copwatching are far more complicated than I can address here. But such moments at least draw attention to how gender issues permeate copwatching.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.