Suhail Gharaibeh 1 Cw: Police Violence, Sexual Assault, Abuse, Anti-Blackness Table of Contents

Home , Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, Pittsburgh Police, Pittsburgh Police Chief, Robert McNeilly

MAKING FREEDOM ABOLITION GEOGRAPHY & THE MOVEMENT TO DEFUND PITTSBURGH POLICE

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY / PROF. DANIEL JOSLYN HISTORY OF AMERICAN RADICALISM / JUNE 2020

SUHAIL GHARAIBEH 1 CW: POLICE VIOLENCE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, ABUSE, ANTI-BLACKNESS TABLE OF CONTENTS

introduction 5

part I. pittsburgh’s police and prisons: a 7 people’s history

‘the land in the fork’: empire, 8 enslavement & industry in the making of the pittsburgh police

bootlegging, bribery, & 14 brutality: policing in pittsburgh’s long twentieth century

‘things will be great when you’re downtown’: pittsburgh police in the 21 post-ferguson era

part II. toward a 27 pittsburgh without police

reframing social harm 28

the world we want is the world we 31 need: thoughts & conversations

2 NOW, WHAT I HAVE SAID ABOUT HAR- LEM IS TRUE OF CHICAGO, DETROIT, WASHINGTON, BOSTON, PHILADEL- PHIA, LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRAN- CISCO--IS TRUE OF EVERY NORTHERN CITY WITH A LARGE NEGRO POPULA- TION. AND THE POLICE ARE SIMPLY THE HIRED ENEMIES OF THIS POP- ULATION. THEY ARE PRESENT TO KEEP THE NEGRO IN HIS PLACE AND TO PROTECT WHITE BUSINESS IN- TERESTS, AND THEY HAVE NO OTH- ER FUNCTION...SINCE THEY KNOW THAT THEY ARE HATED, THEY ARE ALWAYS AFRAID. ONE CANNOT POS- SIBLY ARRIVE AT A MORE SUREFIRE FORMULA FOR CRUELTY. THIS IS WHY THOSE PIOUS CALLS TO ‘RESPECT THE LAW,’ ALWAYS TO BE HEARD FROM PROMINENT CITIZENS EACH TIME THE GHETTO EXPLODES, ARE SO OB- SCENE. THE LAW IS MEANT TO BE MY SERVANT AND NOT MY MASTER, STILL LESS MY TORTURER AND MY MURDER- ER. TO RESPECT THE LAW, IN THE CONTEXT IN WHICH THE AMERICAN NEGRO FINDS HIMSELF, IS SIMPLY TO SURRENDER HIS SELF-RESPECT. --JAMES BALDWIN, “A REPORT FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORY,” 1966

3 ss

ALISHA B. WORMSLEY, 2018

4 INTRODUCTION

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, responding recently about clarifying the actual impact that various on Twitter to Minneapolis City Council’s decision strategies have, and recognizing that alternative to disband the Minneapolis Police Department, approaches to the ‘official’ solutions are alive, are as well as to growing local calls to defund the politically viable, and are being pursued by activists Pittsburgh Police, wrote: and organizations around the United States and beyond.”2 “Real change does not occur through extremist demands--no [sic] through the right, nor through American thinkers like Angela Davis, Mariame the left. Real change only happens when consen- Kaba, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore have argued for sus is earned, through listening, through under- decades not only that the US policing system dis- standing & through compassion. I ask all to Pray proportionately targets, harasses, and murders for Peace.”1 people of color, but furthermore that the system of policing should itself be historicized as a but- The deafness of this statement is astound- tress for the U.S.’ system of racial capitalism. ing--Mayor Peduto has evidently not internalized the BLM slogan, “no justice, no peace.” The idea As these abolitionist scholars continuously note, that only widely-shared, nonpartisan, “earned” the idea that de jure racism ended with the Civil beliefs can create societal change is utterly ahis- Rights Movement of the 1960s represents a fail- torical. A civil war was fought in this nation in no ure to fully comprehend the catastrophe of mass small part because the abolition of chattel slavery incarceration in this country. Indeed, we know was such a contested, “radical,” partisan idea. The now that the U.S. prison boom of the second half fall of Jim Crow apartheid in the South was not a of the twentieth century began in direct response consensus decision. to the leftist politics flourishing in the country and around the world at that time.3 As John Erli- Pathologizing a movement that aims to defend chmann, Richard Nixon’s domestic policy chief, black lives from police violence as “extremist” is admitted in a 1994 interview about the War on a convenient and weighty strategy, one that dates Drugs: back a long time, as we will see. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either Extrajudicial execution is extreme. The use of mil- against the [Vietnam] war or black, but by getting itary gear, ballistics, and chemical weapons against the public to associate the hippies with marijuana civilians is extreme. The almost-115 million dollar and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both Pittsburgh Police budget is extreme. Leon Ford’s heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We shooting by Pittsburgh Police was extreme. could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night If, as President Trump wants to claim, being an- on the evening news. Did we know we were lying ti-fascist makes one a “terrorist,” then we must all about the drugs? Of course we did.”4 be terrorists. If demanding the abolition of police and prisons is “extremist,” then we must embrace U.S. carceral geographies reproduce, via both extremism unreservedly. As Morgan Bassichis, judicial and extrajudicial regimes in the domes- Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade write in their important essay, “Building an Abolitionist Queer 2 Bassichis et al., “Building an Abolitionist Queer and and Trans Movement with Everything We’ve Got”: Trans Movement with Everything We’ve Got,” in Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, ed. Eric A. “This is less about creating false dichotomies Stanley and Nat Smith, AK Press, 2011, 17. between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ approaches, and more 3 See Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incar- ceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2012 for one of 1 Peduto, William (billpeduto). “Real change does not oc- many detailed accounts. cur...” 8 June 2020, 12:59 AM. Tweet, https://twitter.com/billpeduto/ 4 Baum, Dan, et al. “[Report]: Legalize It All.” Harper’s Maga- status/1269856636736286720. zine, 31 Mar. 2016, harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/.

5 tic sphere, the geopolitical projects of militarism and occupation that U.S. armed forces incur abroad. By manufacturing various “Wars On,” the state has funnelled increasingly massive portions of its own citizenry behind the walls of prisons.

Law enforcement professionals--from federal agents to suburban municipal police officers--are the foot soldiers in these wars. The “sanctuary city” movement (which aims to reduce ICE’s footprint in certain jurisdictions) is, in theory, an application of Gilmore’s concept of “abolition geography.” Pittsburgh claims to be a sanctuary city (despite, for example, Latinx community organizer Martin Esquivel-Hernandez’s eight-month detention and eventual deportation from the city in 2017 by ICE.5) Pittsburgh Police use tasers on protestors at a police recruitment event, 20 August 2005, as cap- The Defund movement asks--why can’t we also make tured by PIMC our city a sanctuary for Black folks? For working folks? For the differently abled? For our children?

Abolition means challenging the necessity of coer- cion; questioning the validity of codified, sanctioned, and even “common-sense” forms of social organization and disorganization; and pushing back against the incursions of the state--not only in a figurative sense, but also with embodied geopolitical struggle. In a 2015 presentation of her pathbreaking essay “Ab- olition Geography and the Problem of Innocence,” Ruth Gilmore gives us a critical outline of “abolition geography”:

“Abolition geography: how and to what end people make freedom provisionally, imperatively, imagining and practicing ‘home’ against the perpetually disin- tegrating grind of partition and repartition through Demonstrators face police during the Antwon Rose which capitalism (which is always and everywhere protests of 2018, from The Nation racial capitalism) concocts the means of its own val- orization.”6

Part political manifesto, part historical scrapbook, the purpose of this project is to document Pitts- burgh’s terrains of policing, incarceration, struggle, and resistance; to offer a historical sweep of how the Pittsburgh carceral complex developed; and to argue, then, that abolishing that complex as we know it today is not only politically viable, but is in fact vital, and already happening all around us.

Cops assaulting a young man outside the Wood Street T station, 2015. Recorded by Ryan Deto for the City Paper.

5 Blackley, Katie. “Despite Significant Support, Pittsburgh Im- migration Activist Is Deported To Mexico.” 90.5 WESA, 2017, www.wesa. fm/term/martin-esquivel-hernandez-0#stream/0. 6 “RUTH WILSON GILMORE.” YouTube, Institute for Geographies of Justice, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmjgPxElk7A&t=959s.

6 PART I. PITTSBURGH’S POLICE & PRISONS: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY

Like in most mid-sized American cities, violent “supply-side” economics, the weakening of labor crime in Pittsburgh has been generally falling unions, cuts to social spending, etc.) is always accom- steadily for around two decades. 2019 in par- panied by organized violence (surveillance, policing, ticular saw a dip in violent crime.1 Homicide incarceration, deportation). While social services rates were at historic lows,2 keeping on trend suffer and shrink, the police’s piggybanks are stuffed with a nationwide steady decrease in homicide. with more and more taxpayer dollars and federal grants. The most vulnerable people in our city, over- So why did the 2020 operating budget, drafted between whelmingly Black and working class, are perpetually City Council and Mayor Bill Peduto, boost the police’s forced into socioeconomic precarity and marginality. budget by 10.2 million dollars? Why did the budget in- clude plans for a new police station in the North Shore So how did we get here? We know that history has a stadium district, two new substations in Homewood tendency to radicalize, because unearthing history and Southside, and 24-hour staffing for the Down- unsettles our notions of what is necessary, possi- town substation, which itself was just opened in 2017? ble, and viable, reminding us that we are the prod- ucts of a genealogy, of a series of human actions and While departments specifically meant to improve reactions. I hope to illustrate what Ruth Gilmore Pittsburghers’ quality of life get slashed, or are means when she talks about “carceral geographies,” forced to keep subsisting on miniscule budgets, showing that the history of police and prisons in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police (PBP) receives in- Pittsburgh has its roots in imperialist, white suprem- creasingly exorbitant sums of municipal funding. acist, and capitalist violence. I also hope to remind us, then, that our city could always be another way. The bloating of the PBP, utterly disproportionate and largely unresponsive to Pittsburghers’ actual experi- ‘THE LAND IN THE FORK’: EMPIRE, ences of social harm, is indeed part of a broader eco- ENSLAVEMENT, & INDUSTRY IN THE nomic project of carceral neoliberalism (the current MAKING OF THE PITTSBURGH POLICE iteration of racial capitalism) whose effects have only recently become seen and called out in the public imag- From its very earliest history, the city of Pittsburgh ination--namely, via the Black Lives Matter movement. was founded on environmental mastery and resource extraction. While surveying the land that would be- As Ruth Gilmore has explained extensively in her come Pittsburgh in November 1753, militant colonist work, the rise of neoliberal capitalism is always ac- and slave owner George Washington commented, “I companied by a boom in police and prisons. The or- spent some time in viewing the rivers, and the land ganized abandonment of communities (via austerity, in the fork; which I think extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute command of both rivers.”1 1 Silver, Jonathan D. “Violent Crime Dips in Pittsburgh in 2019 Amid Decline in Homicides, but Trouble Spots Remain.” Pitts- Washington, of course, was part of a wave of French burgh Post-Gazette, 30 Jan. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime- courts/2020/01/30/pittsburgh-crime-statistics-2019-homicide-vio- and Anglo invasion that ultimately saw Delaware, lent-property-theft-rates/stories/202001300130. Shawnee, Iroquoian, Seneca, and other indigenous 2 Wimbley, Lacretia. “Report: 2019 Homicides in Pitts- peoples driven out of the region that is now Pitts- burgh Lowest in Two Decades; Rest of County Struggles to Match.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2 Jan. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/ burgh proper. Washington’s expeditions were ac- crime-courts/2020/01/02/Report-2019-homicide-rate-in-Pittsburgh- at-lowest-in-two-decades-Allegheny-County-struggles-to-match/sto- 1 Tarr, Joel A. Devastation and Renewal: an Environmental Histo- ries/202001020113. ry of Pittsburgh and Its Region. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005, 6.

7 companied by both enslaved and free Black men.2 ry. 5 Indeed, William Penn, the Quaker for whom Indigenous settlements along the three rivers the state of Pennsylvania is named, was himself a were ransacked and the territory seized perma- slave owner.6 In 1759, Commandant Hugh Mercer, nently,3 so the exploitation of the region’s copi- Washington’s close friend, wrote to the provincial ous natural resources--“progress”--could begin. secretary to request “two Negro girls and a boy about fourteen years old, to be paid for in fur.”7

Many wealthy and influential Pittsburgh whites held human beings in slavery.8 Isaac Craig (for whom Oak- land’s Craig Street is named) at one point owned eight enslaved people. The Winebiddle family (for whom Winebiddle Street is named) held five slaves on their farm in what is now the East End. In 1816, the Winebiddles’ 36-year-old son, Phillip, was tried for murdering an unnamed person whom his family enslaved. His defense team included Williams Wilkins (Wilkins Avenue) and Henry Baldwin (who later became a Supreme Court justice.) John McK- ee (for whom McKeesport is named) held several slaves throughout his life. William Croghan Jr., an- George Washington’s map of the Pittsburgh area, cestor of the Schenley family, owned two slaves. 1 January 1754 John Neville and his son Presley (for whom Nev- Coal seams were quickly discovered in the area. Man- ille Island, Neville Township, and Neville Street are ufacturers turned local clay deposits into pottery, and named) seem to have wanted to bring Virginia Pied- local sand into glass. Trees were felled for lumber and mont-style slavery to Western Pennsylvania. Cen- for fuel. Iron ore was dug up from nearby ridges and sus data from this period shows that the Neville made its way to the area’s foundries. Mines sprouted family held fifty-six enslaved people on their large up everywhere, large and small, to provide cheap acreage in Washington County--twenty-seven peo- energy for the settler-colonists. Indigenous people ple that they had bought at auction, and their twen- were forced into the hinterlands of Fort Pitt, rising ty-nine children. Eight of the twenty-one founding up occasionally only to be massacred by Anglo forces. trustees of the University of Pittsburgh were slave owners.9 The first sheriff of Allegheny County, Sam- In 1785, the first judicial execution west of the Al- uel Ewalt, enslaved two people. Allegheny County’s legheny mountains took place, when an indigenous first judge, George Wallace, enslaved four people.10 Delaware man known as Mamachtaga was hung after being accused of drunkenly murdering a white settler. Advertisements for the sale of enslaved people, as “This time,” remarked one Judge White at the Pitts- well as posters demanding the recapture of those burgh courthouse, “the majesty of the white man’s who had escaped, were commonplace in the city law was vindicated by the death of the red man.”4 until the 1810s.11 Founded in 1786, the Pittsburgh Gazette sold advertising space announcing boun- View of ties for runaway slaves, creating a legacy of white Pittsburgh, George Beck, supremacy and anti-Blackness that the newspaper 1803 still upholds today as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.12 Two of the paper’s earliest editors, Neville Craig Despite the pop- and John Scull, were directly related to slave owners, ular notion that and on at least one occasion ran “runaway slave” Pennsylvania, with its judicious 5 Trotter, River Jordan, 4, Quaker charac- 6 “Middle Passage to Early America.” Free at Last? Slavery in Pittsburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries, University of Pittsburgh, ter, was always an abolitionist stronghold, the truth exhibit.library.pitt.edu/freeatlast/middle_passage.html. is that hundreds of Black people were enslaved in 7 “George Washington and his soldiers at Fort Duquesne.” Free the Pittsburgh region during the city’s early histo- At Last? 8 “Slaveholders as recorded in slave and Negro birth regis- tries, the U.S. Census, and Allegheny County slave papers.” Free At Last? 9 Sostek, Anya. “Unearthing the Stories of Slaves in Pitts- 2 Trotter, Joe William. River Jordan: African American Urban Life burgh.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 19 Oct. 2008, www.post-gazette.com/ in the Ohio Valley. The University Press of Kentucky, 1998, 4. local/2008/10/19/Unearthing-the-stories-of-slaves-in-Pittsburgh/ 3 Blackley, Katie. “Who Lived Here First? A Look At Pittsburgh’s stories/200810190278. Native American History.” 90.5 WESA, 2018, www.wesa.fm/post/who- 10 “Slaveholders as recorded in slave and Negro birth regis- lived-here-first-look-pittsburgh-s-native-american-history#stream/0. tries, the U.S. Census, and Allegheny County slave papers.” Free At Last? 4 Henry Mann, editor. Our Police: A History of the Pittsburgh 11 Trotter, River Jordan, 4. Police Force, Under the Town and City, City of Pittsburgh, 1889. 12 “Middle Passage to Early America.” Free at Last?

8 ads on behalf of a family member. A 1795 ad offered Despite the sentiment of the last sentence, police “twenty dollars reward” for the return of “a Ne- were really only a hot-button issue for the burgeon- gro wench...twenty years of age, named Cate, very ing city’s ruling elite. The demand for a Pittsburgh black, short, well made, and very active.”13 Another police force had come from the top down when, in such Gazette ad in 1807 told readers to “take notice” 1802, a group of retiring burgesses admonished the of a young Black woman who had run away from city’s “growing number of complaints” and urged her Pittsburgh enslavers, describing her as a thief, their successors to establish a police force, referring liar, a “great monster in nature,” and a “plague.”14 to the “frequent complaints on the subject of boys and other disorderly persons disrupting the public peace on Sundays,” the “indecent practice of bathing publicly in daylight,” “the drunken and disorderly,” “the grave danger caused by those persons who gal- loped their horses through the streets at high rates of speed,” and “the matter of disorderly houses.”18

Despite the claims of the PBP’s current website (Pittsburgh Bureau of Police: Its a matter of pride! [sic]) there is no historical evidence that policing was established in Pittsburgh to deal with “murders, robberies, and other disorders.”19 In fact, this sentence on the PBP website was copied almost ver- batim from an essay by Pitt researcher Christine Altenburger, who wrote: “Twelve night watchmen were appointed and charged with caring for the oil, wicks, and utensils belonging to the city,”20 to which the City’s website conveniently added, “and the prevention of murder, robberies and other disorders.” The Pittsburgh Gazette, Saturday 7 November 1793 Eventually, state legislation gradually phased out Rather, the dozen or so policemen that were delegat- chattel slavery, stipulating that those who had been ed by the 1816 ticket spent their time addressing pet- born slaves after 1780 would be freed at age 28.15 ty issues of public “disorder” like the ones mentioned But while Pittsburgh Blacks were freed from hered- above, as well as maintaining the city’s oil lamps, alert- itary bondage, their place in a rising industrial city ing residents of fires, and publicly announcing the would be marked by other carceral geographies. weather and time of day. They carried no weapons besides a wooden stick. The first municipal police As is typical for the history of Northern cities, Pitts- budget was just three hundred dollars per year.21 burgh’s policing and carceral systems grew concur- rently with industry and manufacturing capitalism in In 1827, the Western State Penitentiary was built the nineteenth century. Explosions in technological along the Ohio near Brunot Island.22 Presumably capacity brought with them a penchant for similarly in- drawing inspiration from an Austrian-Dutch prison dustrial techniques of surveillance and incarceration.16 at Ghent and Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon design, the massive, fortress-like “Western Pen” was the first Pittsburgh was officially incorporated as a city in prison to be built west of the Atlantic seaboard.23 1816, when a “number of respectable citizens” gath- Pittsburgh, at the time, was seen as a “Gateway to ered at the Wood Street home of one Captain Jacob the West,” and southwestern Pennsylvania in general Carmack to draft the first City Council ticket, writing, still carried associations with the Whiskey Rebellion’s lawless libertarianism. The construction of an Eastern “Our city is as yet in its infancy. Its government is to state prison near Philadelphia and a Western one near be organized, its ordinances framed, its police estab- Library of Pittsburgh, web.archive.org/web/20081202145839/www. lished, and its general policy devised. In accomplishing clpgh.org/research/Pittsburgh/history/pgh1816.html. these important objects...the undivided support of 18 Altenburger, Christine. “The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police: all classes of the citizens [is] essentially necessary.” 17 Some Historical Highlights,” Western Pennsylvania History, Penn State University Press, January 1994, 20. 19 “History.” City of Pittsburgh Police Recruitment, pittsburghpa. 13 Mainwaring, Thomas W. Abandoned Tracks: The Underground gov/joinpghpolice/about/history.html. Railroad in Washington County, Pennsylvania, University of Notre Dame 20 Altenburger, “The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, “ 20. Press, 2018. 21 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 22 “Western State Penitentiary.” Register of Pennsylvania, vol. 5, 15 Trotter, River Jordan, 6. no. 11, Mar. 1830, 167–170. 16 Foucault’s Surveiller et Punir gives detailed accounts of this 23 Doll, Eugene E. “Trial and Error at Allegheny: The Western process--see, for example, page 175. State Penitentiary, 1818-1838.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History 17 “Pittsburgh in 1816.” Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie and Biography, vol. 81, no. 1, 1957, 3–27, 8.

9 Pittsburgh served to shore up the incorporated terri- only effective political strategy available to exploit- tory of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which it ed workers was what economic elites referred to had stolen from indigenous peoples some years prior. as ‘rioting,’ which was actually a primitive form of what would become union strikes against employ- ers. The modern police force not only provided an organized, centralized body of men (and they were all male) legally authorized to use force to maintain order, it also provided the illusion that this order was being maintained under the rule of law, not at the whim of those with economic power.”28

Although Pittsburgh’s Black residents were no longer subject to formal bondage after 1810 or so, Black people who escaped from enslavement just across Pennsylvania’s southern border--who were An 1857 illustration of the Western Pen on the run, having been accused of stealing their own bodies--were not safe in Pittsburgh. South- Sentenced prisoners from the western half of the western Pennsylvania was still a hostile borderland state were to be housed in the new complex, which between slaveholding territory and the “free” North. soon became plagued by issues with ventilation, sew- The Ohio River was known as the “River Jordan” age, and lighting.24 At first, the prison’s authorities by people escaping bondage and those involved in tried to enforce hard labor in solitary confinement, the Underground Railroad.29 Black communities in but this strategy was eventually found to be inef- Pittsburgh, like many Northern and OhioValley cities, ficient in terms of production--so, starting in the had developed a safety net consisting of churches, 1860s, forced labor in group workshops became newspapers, literary and education societies, reform the norm, and by the early 1870s, the prison had groups, and masonic lodges.30 These early pro-Black developed a complex industrial program that pro- institutions provided a critical infrastructure for refu- duced “shoes, cocoa mats, hosiery, and brooms.”25 gees fleeing slavery in the South. A significant portion of Pittsburgh’s Blacks had arrived in the city after The Western Pen’s convict dockets from this pe- escaping slavery, and were absorbed and protected riod26 show that, throughout the nineteenth cen- by existing Black populations.31 While some stayed, tury, the vast majority of people imprisoned there others were helped to flee further north. Vashon’s were working-class folks, including recent immi- Bathhouse and Peck’s Oyster House, two Down- grants and free Blacks,27 who had been convicted town black-owned businesses, collaborated with the of nonviolent offenses and property crimes. Many Black waitstaff at the high-end Monongahela House of the convicts’ job descriptions simply read “La- hotel (on the corner of what is now Smithfield and borer” (if not a specific craft like “Blacksmith” or Fort Pitt Boulevard) to harbor those fleeing slavery. “Baker”). Their crimes were things like “horse stealing,” “burglary,” “forgery,” and “larceny.” Some charges are less specific--“riot” and “mayhem.” Po- Martin R. Delany’s lice historian Gary Potter explains of this period: mother was one of a small but remarkable number of Afro-Americans who sued “Maintaining a stable and disciplined work force for her enslavers for her own the developing system of factory production and freedom--and won. ensuring a safe and tranquil community for the con- She relocated the family to the Pittsburgh area, duct of commerce required an organized system where Black education was of social control...Inequality was increasing rapidly; not criminalized. the exploitation of workers through long hours, dangerous working conditions, and low pay was en- The positions of white demic; and the dominance of local governments by Pittsburghers were not so economic elites was creating political unrest. The clear. While some white 24 “Prison Records.” Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Com- folks became vocal mem- mission, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, www.phmc.pa.gov/Archives/ Research-Online/Pages/Prison-Records.aspx 28 Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States, 25 “A Historical Overview of Inmate Labor in Pennsylvania.” Part 2.” Eastern Kentucky University, Police Studies Online, 2013, plson- Department of Corrections, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, www.cor. line.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-2. pa.gov/PCI/Pages/History.aspx 29 Trotter, River Jordan, 1. 26 See “Convict Docket (PA) 1826-1859” among others, Power 30 Blackett, Richard J.M. “...Freedom, or the Martyr’s Grave: Library, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, digitalarchives.powerlibrary. Black Pittsburgh’s Aid to the Fugitive Slave.” Western Pennsylvania org/psa/islandora/object/psa%3Acdpa1826-59. History, Penn State University Press, April 1978, 117-122. 27 Trotter, River Jordan, 19-29. 31 Ibid.

10 bers of abolitionist societies, others had direct ties leaving with Woodson, but were stopped by police.37 to slavery. As pioneering Black Pittsburgh abolitionist Martin R. Delany observed in 1848, Pittsburgh’s trade was deeply linked to other cities in the Mississippi river system, such as Louisville, St. Louis, and New Orle- ans, whose economies depended on chattel slavery. Wealthy dynasties were intermarried and mercantile interests were deeply allied between the cities.32

“The judges of Pennsylvania courts,” Delany wrote in the North Star, “are but the pledged minions of the slave power in this country.”33 Slave catchers looking for their targets in Pittsburgh or Alleghe- ny could--and did--enlist the help of local police.34

In March 1847, a slaveholder from Mississippi Monongahela House, from the Post-Gazette archives docked at the Monongahela wharf with four enslaved people. Immediately the underground infor- In July 1850, John Drennen and his wife mation network lit up, and a crowd of Black Pitts- signed into the Monongahela House after a long burghers showed up at the wharf and began calling journey from Arkansas. A fourteen-year old Black for the enslaved people to disembark and abandon girl whom they enslaved trailed them, wheeling their their enslaver. One of them agreed immediately luggage in on a dray. The hotel’s staff quickly invited and was absorbed by the crowd, but three others the girl down to the servants’ quarters--and while the hesitated. Soon, Pittsburgh Police showed up and Drennens were at dinner, they told the girl that she was blocked the crowd from rushing the boat, prevent- no longer subject to slavery, and that Pennsylvania had ing the rescue of the last three enslaved people.35 long since abolished the practice. The girl walked out of the hotel’s rear door, and was never seen again.38 Just one month later, in April 1847, Daniel Lock- hart, who had escaped to Pittsburgh from slavery The Monongahela House staff became well-known in Virginia years earlier, was approached by an un- for these ingenious abolitionist operations, sneak- known white man, who hired him to carry a trunk ing enslaved people into carriages, through hidden to the Monongahela House. When he arrived at passageways and out of service doors; disguis- the hotel, he was immediately seized upon by his ing them and hiding them inside suitcases. Wait former owner and two policemen accompanying staff at other hotels and dining halls began to fol- him from Virginia. Lockhart put up a fight, scream- low suit--and soon, slavers were wary of bringing and catching the attention of the hotel’s staff. A ing enslaved people into Pittsburgh with them.39 group of them immediately ran to his aid, attack- ing his former owner and the officers. Hotel staff Local judges disdained the abolitionists’ behavior, blocked the exits so that they could not escape with which they described as “extremist” and “fanatical.” Lockhart. He was successfully taken into hiding by They refused to charge slave catchers with kidnap- the staff, and they later helped him flee to Canada.36 ping and typically insisted on enforcing the federal Fugitive Slave Act.40 One Judge Grier for the Circuit In March 1850, two slave catchers arrived from Lou- Court in Pittsburgh blamed abolitionist activists isville, saying they were searching for a Black man for using “means of intimidation against the hon- named Woodson living in Beaver. Pittsburgh Police est and sane portion of the community,” charac- Commissioner Sweitzer issued a warrant for Wood- terizing them as “diseased members of the body son’s arrest. He was captured and held in jail until his politic” and “mobs of negroes” who were “urged trial before a Judge Thomas Irwin, who decided (as on to madness, and counselled to arm themselves he usually did) in favor of the slavers. They were even for the purpose of rebellion against the laws, given special protection by Pittsburgh Police, who and were hounded on to murder its officers.”41 escorted the enslavers and the recaptured Woodson back onto their steamboat. Again, a huge crowd gath- In the years after the Civil War, industry played an ered at the wharf and tried to prevent the slavers from even larger role than before in the development of Black life in Pittsburgh. With the South’s chat- 32 Ibid, 121. 33 Ibid. 34 Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania, 37 Blackett, “...Freedom” 132. Stackpole Books, 2001, 82-90. 38 Ibid, 89; “Fugitive Laws,” Free At Last? 35 Blackett, “...Freedom” 134. 39 Blackett, “...Freedom,” 130. 36 Switala, Underground Railroad, 82-90; “Fugitive Laws,” Free At 40 Ibid, 122. Last? 41 Ibid, 123.

11 tel economy shut down, Pittsburgh increasingly BOOTLEGGING, BRIBERY, & became a hub for industrial jobs. Investments in BRUTALITY: POLICING IN mills, plants, forges, and furnaces were booming. PITTSBURGH’S LONG TWENTIETH Monopolies like the giant U.S. Steel Corporation CENTURY arose and began to dominate the region’s economy, and Euro-American elites like the Carnegie, Frick, Labor organizations like the Knights of Labor and Phipps, Hillman, and Mellon families solidified their the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel fortunes.42 Industry in Pittsburgh grew to staggering Workers levied powerful challenges against Pitts- proportions--an environmental catastrophe which burgh’s exploitative industrial capitalism--most no- still hurts Pittsburghers today. In an 1868 Atlantic tably with the Railroad Strike of 1877, the infamous article titled “Pittsburg,” Anglo-American biog- Homestead Strike of 1892, the Pressed Steel Car rapher and travel journalist James Parton wrote, Strike of 1909, the Westmoreland County “Slovak Strike” of 1910-11, and the Steel Strike of 1919. “The entire space lying between the hills was filled with blackest smoke, from out of which the hidden chimneys sent forth tongues of flame, while from the depths of the abyss came up the noise of hundreds of steam-hammers...If any one would enjoy a spectacle as striking as Niagara, he may do so by simply walking up a long hill to Cliff Street in Pittsburg, and looking over into--hell with the lid taken off.”43

Militiamen arrive to quell the Homestead Strike of 1892

Early Oakmont policemen, 1914.

State police driving people off the streets during the Great Steel Strike of 1919

All of these labor demonstrations were eventually broken up by some combination of local police, Pinkerton agents, and government militias, sent in at the behest of plutocrats like Henry Clay Frick. Dozens of labor activists died in these bloody gun battles against the police and paramilitary. The violent crackdowns on strikes caused union membership to plummet. As Gary Potter has pointed out,

Mills at Night in Pittsburgh, Aaron Harry Gorson, “In the post-Civil War era, municipal police depart- c. 1910 ments increasingly turned their attention to strike- breaking...Because the police were primarily engaged 42 Trotter, River Jordan, 55. in enforcing public order laws against gambling and 43 Parton, James. “Pittsburg.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media drunkenness, surveilling immigrants and freed slaves, Company, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1868/01/pittsburg/536130/. and harassing labor organizers, public opinion fa-

12 vored restrictions on the use of force. But the value storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright of armed, paramilitary presence, authorized to use now, women will smile and children will laugh.”6 deadly force, served the interests of local economic elites who had wanted organized police departments in the first place. The presence of a paramilitary force, occupying the streets, was regarded as essential because such organizations intervened between the propertied elites and propertyless masses who were regarded as politically dangerous as a class.”1

The formation of a statewide Pennsylvania Police was also an effort to enforce the political demands of imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. While new state police forces on the Eastern seaboard focused on increased immigration “issues,” and state police on the Western frontier on “marauding Indians,” the Pennsylvania State Police’s main per- ceived “problem population...was striking workers Pittsburgh c. 1920 and their open conflict with iron and coal police.”2 Unfortunately for Billy Sunday, we know now that President Theodore Roosevelt--himself a former alcohol was not actually the issue, but rather the cop superintendent in New York--condemned the criminalization of alcohol, which both bolstered lack of “effective police in the coalfields.” In re- the carceral system and provided organized oppor- sponse, the governor of Pennsylvania, Samuel Pen- tunities for elites to earn some (dirty) money. In- nypacker, created the Pennsylvania State Police in deed, Sicilian-American mafiosos “virtually owned 1905. He modelled the force after the Philippine police and politicians” in blue-collar communities Constabulary, the paramilitary police of the Amer- like Wilmerding, Braddock, New Kensington, and ican colonial regime in the Philippines, which had Wilkinsburg during the Prohibition era. James Volpe, been created by the occupying U.S. government a one of the eight racketeering Volpe brothers, even few years earlier to quash the last of the anticolo- served on Wilmerding’s City Council.7 While some nial revolutionaries and impose “law and order.”3 police and city officials made a show of enforcing Prohibition, some were indifferent--and some Pittsburgh’s steel, iron, and coal economies kept were indeed involved in the liquor trade. The largest bustling even though union membership had been of the corruption scandals came in 1928, when a crushed. And while Pittsburgh’s industries boomed grand jury indicted 167 Pittsburghers for dealing in during the Prohibition era, so did its black market. Lit- liquor. Pittsburgh magistrates, ward chairs, lieuten- erary Digest described Prohibition Pittsburgh as “wet ants, and inspectors were all netted in the scandal. enough for rubber boots,” as the trade and consump- tion of alcohol thrived in spite of the extremely unpop- It turned out city officials had played key roles in ular bans.4 The term “speakeasy” is even said to have the city’s alcohol racketeering. For example, po- originated at the Blind Pig, a McKeesport bar owned lice inspector John J. McArdle and ward chairman by one Kate Heston, who would tell her patrons to Francis Kerley were responsible for approving new “speak easy” to avoid attracting police attention.5 service establishments in the South Side. McArdle, after approving a new restaurant or cafe, would tip Some Pittsburghers of this era felt that once the off the bootlegging Meyers brothers, who would “alcohol problem” was solved, we would have a secretly offer to sell the new owners moonshine new lease on life as a city. Billy Sunday, an evange- if they agreed to buy exclusively from them. If the list and baseball player for the Alleghenys, predict- business owners ever bought from other boot- ed that “the slums will soon be a memory...We will leggers, the Meyers would in turn notify McArd- turn our prisons into factories and our jails into le, and the place would be shut down by police.8

1 Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States, Even the police superintendent Peter Walsh was net- Part 3.” Eastern Kentucky University, Police Studies Online, 2013, plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-3. ted in the scandal. Walsh had been hired by Charles H. 2 Winfree, L. Thomas, et al. Introduction to Criminal Justice: the Kline as part of one of the most notoriously corrupt Essentials. Wolters Kluwer, 2019, 109. 3 Ibid. 4 Toland, Bill. “Prohibition Ended 80 Years Ago Today, but the 6 Ibid. Dry Movement Never Worked Here.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 Dec. 7 Ove, Torsten. “Mafia Has Long History Here, Growing from 2013, www.post-gazette.com/life/2013/12/05/Hic-hic-hooray/sto- Bootlegging Days,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2000, old.post-gazette.com/ ries/201312050249. regionstate/20001106mobhistory2.asp. 5 Ibid. 8 Toland, “Prohibition Ended.”

13 administrations in Pittsurgh’s history.9 Walsh, dubbed In an ostensible response to the corrupt, inef- the “Czar” of Pittsburgh police, allowed rackets to fective “machine era” of municipal politics, David flourish under his nose while at the same time being L. Lawrence declared his postwar regime (1946- notoriously brutal toward Pittsburgh’s civilians. In 1959) a Renaissance. Today he is venerated for his 1927, after a massive explosion caused by a gas leak beautification of the city--sandblasting buildings, on the North Side, Walsh told policemen to “shoot to for example, and enforcing smoke ordinances. kill” anybody who came to the disaster zone to“loot.” 10 These solutions, like all of Lawrence’s solutions, were aesthetic rather than substantive. Under his administration, the police and other city departments became “professionalized” (i.e. bureaucra- tized) in a process legal scholar Sid Harring has called the “Taylorization” of police.12 Police cruisers became widely used, extending police’s beat and depersonalizing them from the territory and people they patrol. Concurrent with this professionaliza- tion of police, Lawrence’s Renaissance included the widespread displacement of thousands of working class Black folks through “urban renewal” efforts in the North Side, East Liberty, and the Lower Damage on Reedsdale St. in Manchester after the gas explosion, 15 November 1927 Hill. The planned “cultural centers” that were supposed to replace these communities were largely These are just a handful of examples to character- never even built, or have since been demolished.13 ize this era in American police history--to which As James Baldwin astutely put it in 1963, “urban re- Pittsburgh was no exception. The corruption and newal...means Negro removal.”14 Pittsburgh’s lit- sprawl of the police, combined with the first wave tle-known Chinatown was paved over to widen the of the Great Migration from 1910-1940 (in which Boulevard of the Allies and to create parking lots.15 millions of southern Black folks migrated to meet Northern demand for industrial labor and to seek Pittsburgh’s small asylum from state and vigilante terrorism in the Chinatown coalesced South) begins to give us a picture of modern polic- Downtown on Second and Third Avenues ing. As Gary Potter has written, “Police had virtual between Ross and carte blanche in the use of force and had as their Grant. primary business not crime control, but the solic- Beginning in the itation and acceptance of bribes. It is incorrect to 1920s and continu- say the late 19th and early 20th century police were ing through Law- corrupt--they were in fact primary instruments rence’s mayoralty, 11 the Chinese com- for the creation of corruption in the first place.” munity was slowly pushed out in the name of “urban redevelopment.”

While Black neighborhoods were razed, the prison system was gearing up to absorb these surpluses of socioeconomically marginalized Black people.

12 Harring, Sid. “Taylorization of Police Work: Prospects for the 1980s.” Insurgent Sociologist 11, no. 1 (July 1981): 25–32. Mayor Charles H. Kline and other officials swearing doi:10.1177/089692058101000403. in new policemen, 1 January 1930 13 Fitzpatrick, Dan. “The Story of Urban Renewal.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2000, old.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20000521east- 9 Gazarik, Richard. Wicked Pittsburgh. The History Press, 2018. liberty1.asp. 10 Samuelson, Wayne. “Czar of Pittsburgh Police.” Old Pitts- 14 Graham, Vince, user. Urban Renewal...Means Negro Removal. ~ burgh Photos and Stories | The Digs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 23 Dec. James Baldwin (1963), PBS, 1965, www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Abh- 2014, newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2013/12/16/czar-of- j17kYU. pittsburgh-police/. 15 Kelly, Grace. “Pittsburgh’s Chinatown and how it disap- 11 Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States, peared.” Old Pittsburgh Photos and Stories | The Digs, Pittsburgh Part 4.” Eastern Kentucky University, Police Studies Online, 2013, plson- Post-Gazette, 7 Mar. 2015, https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/ line.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-4. thedigs/2015/03/04/pittsburghs-chinatown-and-how-it-disappeared/.

14 era, of course, saw the development of neoliberal capitalism in America (i.e. Reaganomics), a system marked by extremes: economic stimulation for the most wealthy combined with economic devastation for the most poor; unprecedented “free” market policy combined with unprecedented incarceration.

Truck- loads of National Guards- men lined up outside the new Beginning in 1955 with $17 million in federal Civic grants, the “redevelopment” of the working-class Arena, Black community in the Lower Hill demolished April 1,300 residences and 413 businesses--and dis- 1968 placed 8,000 people. The layered injustices of racial capitalism--underemployment, segregation, displacement, disfranchise- ment--came to a head in 1968, when Black Pittsburgh rose up in reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Black University of Pittsburgh stu- “Police brutality” as such re-entered the national dents immediately gathered in an office on Craig spotlight with the Rodney King case in 1991-92. And Street to form the Black Action Society.16 Freedom in 1995, Pittsburgh was rocked by its own experience fighters like Sala Udin, Byrd Brown, Ellen Speed Fox, of police brutality: the murder of Jonny Gammage. His and Tamanika Howze, among so many others, im- case is sadly familiar to those of George Floyd and mediately mobilized. The Pittsburgh Courier; Black Eric Garner. Gammage was only thirty-one years old churches such as Ebenezer Baptist Church; and the when he was suffocated to death by a group of Brent- local NAACP chapter all provided critical infrastruc- wood, Baldwin, and Whitehall police officers during a ture. The people marched, chanted, and rose up, de- traffic stop. His three murderers got off scot-free in a spite Pittsburgh Police’s efforts to nip the move- series of mistrials and acquittals, and the Department ment in the bud, and despite the National Guard of Justice (DOJ) refused to investigate further.18 His riding around the city in army trucks and setting last words were said to one of his murderers, Sergeant up military-style checkpoints in the Hill District.17 Keith Henderson: “Keith, Keith, I’m 31. I’m only 31.” Keith Henderson is now chief of Whitehall police.

Fire at a lumberyard during the 1968 uprising, with Homewood Avenue on the right (from the Post-Gazette archives) These fires have not dimmed since. Black Pitts- Jonny Gammage (1964-1995) burghers continued to demand justice and make freedom where they could, even after movement The same year as Jonny’s murder, a much less-publi- leaders were killed or jailed, and the political en- cized killing also took place: the murder of Jerry Jack- nui of the late seventies and eighties rolled in. This son. Jerry was killed by a barrage of at least 51 bullets in the Armstrong Tunnel during a chase that began after 16 Ribeiro, Alyssa. “‘A Period of Turmoil’: Pittsburgh’s April 1968 Riots and Their Aftermath.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 39, no. 2, Mar. he drove the wrong way down a one-way street in a Hill 2013, pp. 147–171, doi:10.1177/0096144211435123. 17 Mellon, Steve, and Julian Routh. “The Week the Hill Rose 18 “Timeline: events in the Jonny Gammage case.” Pittsburgh up,” News Interactive, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2018, newsinteractive. Post-Gazette, 2005, https://old.post-gazette.com/pg/05285/586622. post-gazette.com/the-week-the-hill-rose-up/. stm.

15 District housing project. The only officer charged was rect suspect, but claimed that they fired only after Pittsburgh Housing Authority officer John Charmo, Hunter pulled a gun on them--despite the fact that he who was sentenced to less than a year in county jail.19 was shot in his side and the back of his leg.25 One of his murderers, Scott Love, was later accused of brutally In 1997, the DOJ finally joined a class action law- beating and using ableist slurs against a man walking suit filed by the ACLU and NAACP that alleged, home from a bar.26 In 2014, Bill Peduto promoted “There is a pattern or practice of conduct by law another of Hunter’s killers, Marty Devine, to Lieu- enforcement officers of the Pittsburgh Bureau tenant at a ceremony in the City-County building.27 of Police that deprives persons of rights, privileg- “It’s just the same old story. An African-American male es, and immunities secured and protected by the cannot survive this USA,” said a relative of Hunter’s at a Constitution and laws of the United States.”20 press conference. “My feeling is that there is something A letter sent to the city by the DOJ in January of wrong in this country when an Afro-American male, a the same year alleged “use of excessive force young man, cannot get a fair trial, cannot get justice.”28 by the Pittsburgh police, false arrests, improper searches and seizures, failure to discipline officers Then, in 2003, Pittsburgh Police murdered 17-year- adequately, and failure to supervise officers.”21 old Dion Hall, a student at Langley High School. Dion was covered with a blanket, inside a closed Despite this clear pressure from the DOJ to review van, when police fired at least three shots into the ve- its practices, police kept on killing Black people in hicle, striking and killing Pittsburgh. In 1998, 32-year-old Deron S. Grimmitt Dion immediately.De- was murdered by City policeman Jeffrey Cooper- spite police’s claim that stein on Second Avenue near the Allegheny Coun- Dion Hall shot himself, ty Jail. Cooperstein shot Deron in the head while People Against Police he was trying to drive away.22 Cooperstein was, of Violence and Hall’s rela- course, ultimately acquitted--and even later won tives both say it was most $200,000 in a civil suit for wrongful termination.23 likely that Hall was sleeping inside the van when Soon the City reached an agreement with the DOJ the shooting occurred.29 in district court known as a “consent decree,” un- His murderers have der which the City did not have to admit any guilt still not been identified. for the unconstitutional treatment of its citizens, but did have to submit to some court-mandat- The Post-Gazette’s head- line on the Dion Hall case, ed procedural changes. The mandate for these an example of mainstream 24 changes, however, was set to expire in 2002. press’ disproportionate willingness to trust And indeed, in November 2002, Pittsburgh Police police accounts without gatekeeping their infor- murdered 24-year-old Michael Hunter Jr. on a base- mation or engaging in in- ball field in Manchester after he allegedly sold heroin dependent investigative to a teenager nearby. Three officers fire 19 rounds at research. him, killing Michael and wounding a woman nearby who was sitting on her porch. The officers admitted A 2005 study by the that they didn’t even know whether he was the cor- Vera Institute of Jus- tice found that 63% 19 McNulty, Timothy. “Officer takes plea in tunnel shooting.” of Pittsburghers said Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2001, https://old.post-gazette.com/region- Pittsburgh police stop state/20011012charmo1012p2.asp. 20 Department of Justice. United States of America v. City of Pitts- people without a good reason, 51% said the po- burgh, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, and Department of Public Safety. web. archive.org/web/20080514213445/http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/split/ 25 McKinnon, Jim. “Inquest: Police Fired 19 Shots at Suspect in documents/pittssa.htm. North Side Shooting.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2002, old.post-gazette. 21 Davis, Robert C. et al. “Can Federal Intervention Bring Last- com/neigh_city/20021105inquest1105p2.asp. ing Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent Decree.” 26 City of Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board. Findings & Vera Institute of Justice, April 2005, 3. Recommendations, CPRB Case # 208-13 (Scalese v. Henson #4033, Love 22 Ove, Torsten and Rona Kobell. “City officer who fired fatal #3772). 2015, 1-8. shot was on foot,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1998, http://old.post-gazette. 27 Harding, Margaret. “2 Pittsburgh police sergeants promoted com/regionstate/19981224chase4.asp. to lieutenant.” City Paper, 29 March 2014, https://archive.triblive.com/ 23 Deitch, Charlie. “Antwon Rose II May Have Been Killed local/pittsburgh-allegheny/2-pittsburgh-police-sergeants-promot- In 2018, But The Officer’s Acquittal Was 20 Years In The Making.” ed-to-lieutenant/. Pittsburgh Current, 2019, https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/ant- 28 McKinnon, Jim. “Wecht says police had cause in shooting won-rose-ii-officers-acquittal/. death of man, 24.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 February 2003, http://old. 24 Department of Justice. United States of America v. City of Pitts- post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20030205inquest0205p3.asp. burgh, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, and Department of Public Safety. web. 29 McKinnon, Jim. “Inquest begins in Sheraden shooting.” archive.org/web/20080514213445/http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/split/ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 26 June 2003, http://old.post-gazette.com/ documents/pittssa.htm. neigh_city/20030626inquestc4.asp.

16 lice use offensive language, and 67% said the police at home. In 2001 his now ex-wife pressed charges are verbally or physically abusive with citizens.30 against him for seriously injuring and threatening to kill her.37 Unfortunately, the research shows that On the back end of policing, the turn of the millenni- this experience is common for those living with um also heralded a wave of new Pennsylvania State law enforcement officials--two to four times more Correctional Institutions (SCIs). While public housing common, in fact, than for the general population.38 projects were demolished, big new prison complexes popped up in rural Pennsylvania--Fayette, Marienville, It should have come as no surprise, then, when it Laurel Highlands, Somerset, Cambridge Springs.31 was revealed in 2004 that Chuck Graner was one of SCI Greene, a “supermax” security prison near over a dozen guards torturing, raping, and murdering Waynesburg, inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In fact, he was opened in 1993. described as the ringleader of the contingent of U.S. soldiers and other agents that engaged in nightmar- State ish experimentation on Iraqi prisoners, not so far Correctional 39 Institute from what he had been accused of at SCI Greene. Greene, Franklin After committing Township these war crimes, Chuck Graner was Charles sentenced to ten years “Chuck” Gra- in prison--and got out ner, born and raised in Baldwin, PA, started working at after just six and a half. SCI Greene as a corrections officer in 1996.32 Graner had earned a “no-nonsense” reputation while work- Chuck Graner poses over the body of ing at Fayette County Prison, where he was known Manadel al-Jamadi to beat prisoners and had once put mace in a new after he was tortured coworker’s coffee.33 Graner’s penchant for abuse to death by the CIA at would find an outlet in Greene, a prison where 90 Abu Ghraib prison, 4 percent of staff were white and 70 percent of inmates November 2003 were Black. The staff often engaged in horrific and violent rituals. Graner and others beat and sexually Graner’s despica- assaulted inmates. Once, after beating a prisoner, ble life is just one they wrote “KKK” on the wall with his blood. In 1998 representation alone, two guards were fired and twenty were oth- of the destructive rot of militarism and po- erwise sanctioned for abuse. The same year, Graner licing. Graner never acted in isolation. and three other guards were accused of putting a He acted in groups of officials, sanctioned by their status razor blade in an inmate’s food, then beating him as agents of the state and protected by codes of silence. and using racial slurs when he asked for medical attention.34 Graner once told a Muslim inmate he had This is what our fetishization of militarism and po- rubbed pork all over his tray of food.35 “The Christian licing has done. After the tragic crisis of 9/11, we in me says it’s wrong,” Graner was quoted as saying were told a War abroad was the solution. This was about his behavior. “But the corrections officer in a lie. U.S. involvement in the Middle East, of course, me says, ‘I love to make a grown man piss himself.’”36 has never really sought to accomplish anything ex- cept to nullify threats to American capitalism and Graner’s violence toward the subjects of the state in to advance the surveillance capabilities of Ameri- prison was mirrored by violence against his partner ca and its allies. After the unrest we saw in Amer- ican cities in the late sixties, we were told a War 30 Davis, Robert C. et al. “Can Federal Intervention Bring Last- on Drugs was the solution. This was a lie. Mass in- ing Improvement in Local Policing?” 38. carceration in America has always been about the 31 Wright, Anne. “Stories: Pittsburgh.” EarthTime, CMU CREATE Lab, earthtime.org/stories/pittsburgh. management of “problem populations”--not crime. 32 Dao, James. “Guard Left Troubled Life for Duty in Iraq.” The When the War on Drugs put Chuck Graner in a New York Times, 14 May 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004/05/14/world/ correctional officer’s uniform, he tortured Black the-struggle-for-iraq-the-jailer-guard-left-troubled-life-for-duty-in- iraq.html. Americans--and when the War on Terror put him in 33 Finkel, David, and Christian Davenport. “Records Paint Dark a soldier’s camo, he tortured Iraqis. These Wars do Portrait Of Guard.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 5 June 2004, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16832-2004Jun4.html. 37 Ibid. 34 Lieberman, Paul, and Dan Morain. “Unveiling the Face of 38 Friedersdorf, Conor. “Police Have a Much Bigger Domes- the Prison Scandal.” Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2004, https://www. tic-Abuse Problem Than the NFL Does.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-19-na-graner19-story.html. Company, 4 Oct. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/ 35 Finkel and Davenport, “Records.” police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/. 36 Ibid. 39 Finkel and Davenport, “Records.”

17 nothing but multiply the surveillance, endangerment, his head.44 Just a few weeks earlier, the same three manipulation, and murder of civilian populations. officers had carried out a similarly vicious attack on a man named Lamar Johnson--and just a few Pipelines like the 1033 program funnel military weeks before that, they had been reprimanded by personnel and equipment into even the smallest of a superior for their chronic malfeasance when it southwestern Pennsylvania’s municipal police de- came to stops and searches. The police say Jordan partments.40 Forging the bonds of militarism, occu- and Lamar were both suspected of possessing drugs pation, and apartheid between U.S. police and the when they were attacked. All three assailants--Rich- Israel Defense Forces, the Jewish Institute for the ard Ewing, Michael Saldutte, and David Sisak--are National Security of America (JINSA) launched its still patrolling officers in the Pittsburgh region. Law Enforcement Exchange Program (LEEP) shortly ACLU director for Pennsylvania Vic Walczak said after 9/11. The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police was among the cases were reminiscent of the “jump squads” many departments nationwide to send delegates to of the 1990s, in which plainclothes police detained train in Israel. Robert McNeilly, Chief of Pittsburgh huge numbers of Black men, arresting them if they Police from 1996-2006, attended a LEEP trip to Is- had any justification, and simply driving away if they rael in 2005. According to RAIA’s Palestine Is Here did not.45 These types of secret police have no place database, ”McNeilly went on to serve as Chief of the in our communities. They are not accountable for Elizabeth Township Police Department in New Jersey their actions. Their only possible function is to en- from 2006 to 2014, when he resigned after he was put snare people in the violent net of the criminal jus- on administrative leave and more than half his squad tice system who would not otherwise be there. had quit or taken him to court. He was investigated by the FBI over a police financial investigation.”41 In November 2012, 19-year-old Leon Ford was shot multiple times by Pittsburgh Police during a In 2006, Nate Harper became Chief of Pittsburgh traffic stop in Highland Park. He was unarmed. His Police. Alpha Outfitters (Harper’s wife’s former family was not allowed to see him in the hospi- employer) soon won a $337,000 contract to install tal--and as soon as doctors stabilized him, he was radios and computers in city police cars, a deal that arraigned on charges of aggravated assault against was of course later exposed as having been rigged a police officer.46 He ultimately survived but would by city employees.42 According to a 2013 indictment, never walk again. None of his attempted mur- Chief Harper instructed staffers at the Police De- derers have ever been charged for his shooting.47 partment to divert over $70,000 in funding from businesses and institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, Giant Eagle, W.J. Beitler, and Botero De- velopment. From 2008 to 2012, hundreds of dollars were spent from these phony accounts at places like Nakama, Hofbräuhaus, Hokkaido, and Sam’s Club.43 As we have seen, the Nate Harper scandal was just an update on the revolving door between Pittsburgh Police and Pittsburgh business interests that has been revolving since the city’s very beginning.

On a cold night in January 2010, Jordan Miles, then a student at Pittsburgh CAPA, was walking home when three plainclothes Pittsburgh Police officers jumped out of an unmarked car, unannounced, and tackled him, beating and severely injuring his face and body and ripping several of his dreadlocks from Leon Ford (from the Associated Press)

44 Mayo, Bob. “Police Officer Testifies Jordan Miles to Blame for 40 Silver, Jonathan D. “Little Pennsylvania Communities Get Big Own Injuries.” WTAE, 11 Oct. 2017, www.wtae.com/article/police-officer- Weapons from U.S. Military Surplus. “ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 13 Dec. testifies-jordan-miles-to-blame-for-own-injuries/7465392. 2014, www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2014/12/13/Little-commu- 45 Zimmerman, Alex. “99 Problems: Run-in with Jordan Miles nities-get-big-weapons-from-military-surplus/stories/201412130053. Wasn’t First Controversial Incident for Three 99-Car Cops.” Pittsburgh 41 “Pittsburgh Police Department.” Palestine Is Here, pales- City Paper, 17 Dec. 2014, www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/99-prob- tineishere.org/places/united-states/pennsylvania/philadelphia/police/ lems-run-in-with-jordan-miles-wasnt-first-controversial-incident-for- pittsburgh-police-department/. three-99-car-cops/Content?oid=1797137. 42 “Timeline: Nate Harper’s Career as Pittsburgh Police Chief”. 46 “Police: Teen Shot after Dragging Officer with Car.” WTAE, 7 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 21 Feb. 2013, www.post-gazette.com/local/ Mar. 2013, www.wtae.com/article/police-teen-shot-after-dragging-offi- city/2013/02/21/Timeline-Nate-Harper-s-career-as-Pittsburgh-po- cer-with-car-1/7460219. lice-chief/stories/201302210432+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=- 47 Mock, Brentin. “How Leon Ford Survived Being Shot by clnk&gl=us. Pittsburgh Police.” Bloomberg, 4 May 2018, www.bloomberg.com/news/ 43 United States District Court for the Western District of Penn- articles/2018-05-04/how-leon-ford-survived-being-shot-by-pitts- sylvania. United States of America v. Nathan E. Harper. 22 Mar. 2013. burgh-police.

18 “THINGS WILL BE GREAT WHEN Later that day, Lynch addressed Chief McLay, May- YOU’RE DOWNTOWN”: PITTSBURGH or Peduto, and a room full of cops at the national POLICE IN THE POST-FERGUSON ERA conference of the Fraternal Order of Police with a laudatory speech, saying: Let us end in the center. “You serve on the front lines of our fight for national The Downtown area (famously “Dahntahn” in Pitts- security, identifying and neutralizing threats as they burghese) is a compact triangle of offices, theatres, emerge...Thank you for working to maintain the historic buildings, hotels, hip new fusion restaurants, peace when many around you have no peace in their and several schools at the confluence of the Alleghe- hearts. Thank you for holding our safety in the palm ny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers. It’s officially known of your hand. Thank you for being the peacemakers.”1 as the Central Business District. You will find the City-County Building (Pittsburgh’s seat of govern- After this trip to Pittsburgh, Lynch announced that ment, where our municipal budget is deliberated on she would be giving the PBP more federal grant mon- each year) and the Allegheny County Courthouse, ey to implement “procedural justice and implicit bias and the office of District Attorney Stephen Zappala. training.”2 You will find commuters transferring from bus to bus, suited businessmen crossing the street towards Not only had this visit from the head of the Depart- PNC Plaza, uniformed students emerging from the ment of Justice failed to address even the most basic McDonalds on Wood Street with ice cream cones, concerns of the community, it in fact quietly served houseless folks sleeping outside the Sally’s Beauty- to fortify and even expand the very system we were -and, most likely, more than one Pittsburgh Police struggling against. officer. Perhaps even fleets of them, standing next to their bicycles. Perhaps even one riding a horse. In October of the same year, reformist policy group Black Women for Positive Change, along with City Student activists have advocated against increasing Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak, Superintendent Linda police presence Downtown since at least 2015. That Lane, and Chief McLay held a town hall called “Youth year, as a response to renewed unrest in Ferguson on Speak, We Listen” at CCAC’s Allegheny Campus. the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s murder, Despite its name, the meeting was held in the middle U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch visited my high of a school day, making it impossible for most youth school Downtown, Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12. to attend. A contingent of us from CAPA and a few other schools had to be given special permission from our principals to be there. When we arrived, adults far outnumbered youth. A press conference was being held to document the event.

The town hall began normally, though it was not exactly the police-community dialogue we were ex- pecting. But outrage grew after a young white female- -who, unlike us, had been officially invited to speak on the panel--cited hip-hop lyrics as a main driver of violence in Black communities. We booed the young woman’s ignorant statement--and, also despite the name of the town hall, microphones were quickly taken away from the audience once they saw that we A.G. Lynch at CAPA, from the Post-Gazette were growing “unruly.”

She brought with her Police Chief Cameron McLay. One of the microphones stayed in the hands of a A group of us students joined them at a roundtable young comrade of mine for a moment longer. She discussion, surrounded by throngs of local reporters. addressed Chief McLay directly, asking the simple At this point we were still working under the frame question, “What happened to Teaira Whitehead?” of “police-community relations.” Abolition was not We all wanted to know the Chief’s answer. White- fully on our mental maps. We forcefully and earnestly told Lynch and McLay that young people, especially 1 “Full Text: Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Remarks at the Downtown students, felt criminalized and misrecog- National FOP Conference in Pittsburgh.” WTAE, 10 Aug. 2015, www. nized by police, not protected or served. We said we wtae.com/article/full-text-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-s-remarks- at-the-national-fop-conference-in-pittsburgh/7472984. felt there were too many police Downtown, and that 2 Mayo, Bob. “Attorney General Praises Police as ‘Peace- we’d seen people get harassed for no reason. We told makers’ in Pittsburgh Speech.” WTAE, 10 Aug. 2015, www.wtae.com/ them that they needed to do better. article/attorney-general-praises-police-as-peacemakers-in-pittsburgh-speech-1/7472978.

19 head, a sixteen year old Black girl from Homewood, the Pittsburgh Downtown Safety Coalition (PDSC). had been found dead, naked, and doused in bleach by Coming from the anti-racist organizing environment joggers in North Side’s Riverview Park. Her death we students had cultivated at CAPA (against the odds was--and is--highly suspicious, but was almost imme- of Principal Melissa Pearlman’s repressive power diately abandoned by police. Chief McLay made no at- trips), we were pretty clear about our agenda. We tempt to respond. Event organizers, realizing that the wanted less policing downtown and less harassment audience was buzzing with discontent, quickly moved and arrests of students. In a broad sense, we wanted to shut the meeting down. In an apparent attempt to to put a stopper in Downtown’s school-to-prison quiet the audience, McLay stood up brusquely with pipeline. his hand on his holster. We jeered until he resumed his seat. None of this, of course, was recorded in the A group of us would go to the office of the U.S. At- official minutes of the CCAC board of trustees.3 torney after school. We had to show ID, pass our bags through scanners, and go through metal detectors. Afterwards, I was approached by a community re- The conversations between youth and police--usu- lations staffer from the U.S. Attorney’s office. I was ally very awkward and sometimes ending in rather initially reluctant to join her project to put young, tense impasses--accomplished nothing tangible. We concerned Pittsburgh residents at more roundtables were still arguing with the police officers until the last with police officers. I sat out the efforts for a year or meeting over what our fundamental goals should be. so. But as young activists being radicalized at lightning speed by the burgeoning Black Lives Matter move- For example, we learned from the police and the oth- ment, we were eager to have our voices heard by the er adult liaisons at the meetings that Downtown busi- powers that be. We wanted to tell the police they ness owners felt that there was too much loitering were failing, that we voted no confidence--and we did. happening--kids filling their lobbies and restaurants But nothing changed. and convenience stores after school. We suggested

A City cop intimidates the prospect of opening a space for after-school pro- an onlooker filming the gramming, and were told that we were not offering scene at Wood St. and realistic solutions. Liberty Avenue on the afternoon of December 16, 2015 We know now that these types of police reform efforts were doomed from the beginning. The community leaders, “stakeholders,” law enforcement In December of the officials, and legal professionals that had convened very same year, chaos the Coalition had a fundamentally different under- broke out outside the standing of the problem than we did. We were goaded Wood Street T station into attending under the idea that we were entering when Port Authori- a dialogue on equal footing, that we were going to ty Police, Pittsburgh be discussing important issues of policing, crimi- Police, and Allegheny nalization, and incarceration. A look at the way the County Police attacked a high school-age boy after he Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (PDP) website allegedly pressed the emergency shut-off buttons of described the Coalition confirmed our suspicions an escalator inside the station. Three officers shoved that we were not all on the same page: him down, pressed him to the ground, and tazed him. The officers’ accomplices from various police and se- “The officers of Zone 2 at the Pittsburgh Bureau of curity agencies intimidated and harassed onlookers, Police and Port Authority have risen to the occasion blocking people from recording footage of the event. and in partnership with Pittsburgh Public Schools have initiated outreach efforts in schools throughout The kid who had allegedly pressed the escalator the City...reducing the anonymity of students, and button was arrested (it’s still unknown what exactly hopefully leading to great behavior by teens in and for) along with a 19-year-old boy who witnessed around major transit corridors. As a way to incentive the attack. They apprehended and cited three other [sic] good behavior among students, law enforcement juveniles in the onlooking crowd.4 and school officials were provided with coupons to local businesses that were given to students demon- I became part of a group convened in 2017 called strating strong leadership and good decision-making skills.”5 3 “CCAC Board of Trustees Meeting, November 5, 2015.” Com- munity College of Allegheny County, 2015, https://ccac.edu/president/ board-of-trustees/_bot-minutes-pdfs/2015/bot-nov-2015.pdf. 4 Deto, Ryan. “Update: Pittsburgh Police Chief Promises Inves- 5 “Downtown Safety Coalition - Making Downtown a Commu- tigation of Wood Street T Activities.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 17 Dec. 2015, nity for All.” Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, 6 Oct. 2017, downtown- www.pghcitypaper.com/Blogh/archives/2015/12/17/details-released- pittsburgh.com/2017/09/25/downtown-safety-coalition-making-down- of-arrests-at-pittsburghs-wood-street-t-station. town-community.

20 They had not, in fact, risen to the occasion--that was vestment, increase footprint, increase functions, why we were in the meetings in the first place. The increase technology, increase revenue. This is not issue was not “reducing the anonymity of students.” a social service model. This is simply a fusion of lo- The issue was not incentivizing “good decision-mak- cal political-economic interests with an organized ing skills.” All of this language was deeply paternalistic. police regime. This is the catastrophe of carceral We did not want police surveillance, period. neoliberalism.10

While police officers whined to us during the round- On the night of June 19, 2018, 17-year-old Antwon tables that students were “rude” and “disrespectful” Rose, Jr. was murdered by East Pittsburgh Police to them, we were genuinely trying to save kids our officer Michael Rosfeld during a traffic stop. He was age from being funnelled into the criminal justice shot three times in the back, head, and arm while system by Downtown police. Our struggles were trying to run away from Rosfeld. Ultimately, Rosfeld almost comically unrelated. was acquitted after a 4-day trial.11

Over and over again, the city, the police, Downtown businesses, and organizations like the PDP and the Cultural Trust allied to mutually support one another’s efforts, without ever actually responding to community wants and needs. Their “official” solution, as always, involved throwing capital at the source of the problem. They invested more and more money and time into revamping policing, while we were fundamentally skeptical of the necessity of police in the first place. As Alex S. Vitale has put it, “these reforms were mostly ridiculous and had no possibility of working because they completely misunderstand the nature of the problem.”6

“Police-community relations” programs have been widely implemented across the country since as early as 1968, when the Johnson administration signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act into law. Then, as now, the solution is cosmetic rather than substantive. It is about press, not social responsibility.7

The very same year the PDSC was convened, the same year we held all those meetings, Mayor Peduto unveiled a brand new police substation Downtown. Poetry by Antwon Rose, from 2 years before his When it “opened up for business” in November (as murder one Post-Gazette reporter put it in a bizarre Freud- ian slip8), Zone 2 Commander Cristyn Zett, who had Just a day after Antwon’s murder, Mayor Peduto, attended many of the PDSC meetings and knew well unsolicited, took to Twitter to repeatedly clarify the of our discontent, described the grand opening as “an difference between Pittsburgh and East Pittsburgh.12 exciting opportunity for the police to have a stronger He wrote to a Twitter user who had shared a video presence in the Downtown area.”9 of Rose’s murder, with the caption locating it in Pittsburgh. Flustered, Peduto replied, “It wasn’t in These negotiations are not about dedication to public Pittsburgh. It was in the suburbs of East Pittsburgh. service or even public safety. Rather, they read more Not part of the city. Not Pittsburgh Police. Not like business models, always looking to increase in- Pittsburgh. Please clarify.”13 Once again, Peduto’s ut-

6 Hersh, Joshua. “Why Defunding the Police Isn’t Such a Radi- 10 Thank you to Dr. Gretchen Generett for her fruitful com- cal Idea.” VICE, 2020, www.vice.com/en_us/article/889qvp/why-defund- ments on this point. ing-the-police-isnt-such-a-radical-idea. 11 Hassan, Adeel. “Antwon Rose Shooting: White Police 7 Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States, Officer Acquitted in Death of Black Teenager.” The New York Times, 23 Part 6,” Eastern Kentucky University, Police Studies Online, 2013, plson- Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/antwon-rose-shooting. line.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-6. html. 8 Federkeil, Jessica. “Pittsburgh Opens New Police Substa- 12 Deto, Ryan. “Yes, Antwon Rose Jr. Was a Pittsburgher.” tion in Downtown’s Cultural District.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 Nov. Pittsburgh City Paper, 1 July 2020, www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/ 2017, www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2017/11/20/Pittsburgh-Po- yes-antwon-rose-jr-was-a-pittsburgher/Content?oid=9096610. lice-open-substation-Downtown-Zone-2-Cultural-District/sto- 13 Peduto, William (billpeduto). “It wasn’t in Pittsburgh.” ries/201711200160. 20 June 2018, 12:39 AM. Tweet, https://twitter.com/billpeduto/sta- 9 Ibid. tus/1269856636736286720.

21 ter lack of compassion is both baffling and infuriating. wall” of police silence. “Romir has been painted to His attempt to use municipal boundaries as a public be an aggressive and violent young Black man, but relations shield betrays his shallow understanding, or he was a beautiful, bright young man that the system willful ignorance, of the issue at hand. Antwon Rose failed,” Ms. Latasha Talley, Romir’s mother, said days was a Pittsburgher. after his murder. “My heart is broken. Our family On June 23, Peduto tweeted, “One issue that all of wants justice.”18 us in Allegheny County need to address is having 100+ police departments in one county. The need for Since the end of May 2020, Pittsburgh has been show- merging & mutual training is needed.”14 Peduto and ing out for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Bre- the people do not share this dream for a countywide onna Taylor. This Pride month, we have honored Tony coalition of police. The system that allowed Antwon McDade. We have honored murdered Black women Rose to be shot is the problem in itself. and femmes like Dominique Fells, Riah Milton, Nina Pop, Oluwatoyin Salau, and countless others. As ex- As of July 2019, Pennsylvania had the most ICE arrests pected, the cops have shown up en masse to surveil, of anywhere in the country. Allegheny County Jail is harass, and repress demonstrators. not included in Peduto’s idea of a “sanctuary city,” as the jail allows ICE free access to detainees.15 One June 1, marching demonstrators were attacked by a line of police officers in riot gear at the inter- As we move into the second decade of the new section of Centre and Negley Avenues. Protestors millennium, our concern for the humans getting have since filed a class action lawsuit in district court sucked into various carceral systems is multiplied against the City of Pittsburgh and the officials in- and complicated by new technologies--most notably volved, including Mayor Bill Peduto, who attempted to facial recognition and other biometric technologies. cover up the unconstitutional police terror on cable Tech ghouls love to sell their softwares and devices news later that night, rehearsing the “out-of state” to cities like Pittsburgh--D.A. Zappala, working with agitator myth among other glaring inaccuracies.19 facial recognition firm Biometrica, has set up a vast Wilson, 23, tells me: surveillance network with thousands of cameras across the region.16 Amazon is selling cameras with “No one thought we were about to be violently dis- facial recognition technology to at least five other persed. It was well over an hour before the city cur- police departments in the greater Pittsburgh re- few began and no ‘looting’ was happening as the local gion.17 news would have you believe. Nearing Negley Ave, and therefore a connection to Shadyside, a wealthy and mostly white neighborhood, the cops started lining up. Batons in hand and gas masks on, they were ready for action. Over a loudspeaker, they declared the assembly unlawful and ordered everyone to leave. Mostly confused and angered by this arbitrary repres- sion of our First Amendment rights, we stayed. Many were chanting ‘this is not a riot!’ and ‘hands up, don’t shoot!’ It wasn’t a riot. It wasn’t unlawful. It wasn’t violent. After a few long moments, canisters of tear gas were thrown. As the air filled with chemicals and Facial recognition cameras on E. Carson St. loud bangs of flash grenades, we heard the first ‘less lethal’ rounds ring out. We felt them. I was hit with In December 2019, 24-year-old Romir Talley was four rubber bullets on my back and legs as I tried to shot seven times by an unnamed Wilkinsburg police get away. Everyone was running. I wondered if the officer. His family is demanding justice to this very day, police could even see where they were shooting with and are still being refused transparency by the “blue the clouds of gas covering everything... 14 Deto, “Yes.” 15 Deto, Ryan. “Pennsylvania Has the Most ICE Arrests in the [I witnessed] arbitrary arrests. A man shot in the head Country.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 2 July 2019, www.pghcitypaper.com/ with a rubber bullet, in and out of consciousness, pittsburgh/pennsylvania-has-the-most-ice-arrests-in-the-country/Con- tent?oid=15323545. 16 Wereschagin, Mike. “In Focus: Pittsburgh and Lancaster’s Ap- 18 Taylor, Rob Jr. “Family of Romir Talley, shot by Wilkinsburg proaches to Facial Recognition Technology.” Lancaster Online, 28 Jan. police, wants answers.” New Pittsburgh Courier, 1 Jan. 2020, https:// 2020, lancasteronline.com/news/politics/in-focus-pittsburgh-and-lan- newpittsburghcourier.com/2020/01/02/family-of-romir-talley-shot-by- casters-approaches-to-facial-recognition-technology/article_ff528c0c- wilkinsburg-police-wants-answers/ 4133-11ea-86a2-071fe02dd21e.html. 19 “TIMELINE: 9 Officers Injured, 20 People Arrested When 17 “Active Agency Map.” My Maps, Google, 2020, www.google. Violence Erupted after Peaceful Protest Monday.” WPXI, 2 June 2020, com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1eYVDPh5itXq5acDT9b0BVeQwmES- www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/live-updates-several-businesses-van- Ba4cB&ll=36.19459170250789%2C-103.96982876449249& dalized-numerous-arrests-made-after-3rd-day-unrest-pittsburgh/BLE- ;z=4. TYCTT7JFAJNTYC4XY44FS6U/.

22 rushed to the hospital by a friend. A 13-year-old boy and his parents tear gassed while walking to their car. Onlookers falsely accused of throwing things from balconies were intimidated by police.

That night, Mayor Peduto would go on record to praise the police. He’d say the violent looters were dispersed only with ‘smoke.’ As someone who witnessed the events of that evening firsthand, Peduto’s and the Pittsburgh Police’s statements were particu- larly outrageous. There was no ‘looting.’ There were no ‘volleys of bricks.’ Claiming that only ‘smoke’ was used to disperse the protestors was a blatant lie. We shouldn’t be surprised about the police; we know they lie. We shouldn’t even be surprised by the May- or; his ongoing funding increases and commitment to the institution of the police should tell us which side of this he’s on. We shouldn’t be surprised here, but outraged. We must understand the danger of the misinformation they’re using to justify the police’s violence against people protesting police violence. We must understand that Peduto and the Police Chief’s occasional acts of performative allyship are empty. That evening in East Liberty went to show how far they’ll go to maintain their power. They’re using intimidation and force to squash the momen- tum of this movement, even as they claim to align themselves with Black Lives Matter. They know that calls to defund the police are gaining ground. They are the ones who are scared, not us.”

E. Liberty, 1 June 2020, from the Post-Gazette

Police pin a woman to a wall on Beatty St. while arresting her on 1 June 2020

23 PART II. TOWARD A PITTSBURGH WITHOUT POLICE

Here we are today. We have hewn a big, sprawling John E. Drabinski has called one of America’s “found- web of human settlements out of the “land in the ing wounds.”2 A twenty-first century abolitionist fork”--Pittsburgh. Yet we have still so egregiously movement is an absolutely indispensable part of failed to pay justice to that land. We still exploit our reparations, not only because America’s police and environment and violate the humans that inhabit it. prisons have expanded exponentially over the last forty years, to the detriment of Black people, but Bogus efforts at police reform have been implement- also because America’s education, arts, healthcare, ed in municipalities like Pittsburgh for years now-- public housing, welfare, and other social programs body cameras, training sessions, town halls, hiring have all been slashed by huge scores since the rise of more officers of color. We have no evidence that any neoliberalism--again, to the disproportionate detri- of these efforts have affected police use of force or ment of Black people.3 the disproportionate criminalization of Black people. With these reforms, the unruly expansiveness of the Some folks are very fearful about the idea of defund- American police state, which subjects Black people ing. Frightened, they wonder who will save them in a to its ruinous projects, is not challenged, blocked, or dangerous situation (even if they have only a vague diminished. Quite the opposite, these reform efforts notion of what this “dangerous situation” would even hand more money and legitimacy over to police. be.) Fox News pundits warn defunding the police will turn our cities into “war zones.” But they don’t In other words, the issue is not that police are not ever criticize their own notions of who the enemy “advanced” enough to serve our communities. The is, who the Other is. The state declared its wars on issue, rather, is that police are too advanced, too Black bodies a long time ago. Wealthy and/or white large, too militarized, too aggressive, too repressive, notions of “peace” and “safety” are rooted in the too murderous. The Defund movement says no to making-invisible, the making-unsafe of Black and poor all of this excess. people through geographies of incarceration and apartheid. As Ruth Gilmore put it in a 2018 lecture, Bourgeois and/or white folks often misunderstand the work that “reparations” really do. Reparations “Those who feel, in their gut, deep anxiety that aboli- are not about saying sorry for slavery. They are not tion means we knock it all down, do scorched-earth, simply about atonement or magnanimously making and then start something new--let that go. That’s not up for a past wrong. What “reparations” refers to, what it is. It’s building the future from the present in rather, is a dynamic political and economic effort all of the ways we can.”4 to systematically reverse the long-term effects of enslavement and white supremacy that continue to So what does this transformation look like? What differentially expose the Black diaspora to precarity 1 and premature death. 2 Drabinski, John E. “Reconciliation and Founding Wounds.” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4, no. 1 (2013): 117-132. doi:10.1353/hum.2013.0010. Police violence is perhaps the most spectacular form 3 This pattern is documented thoroughly in Center for Pop- of anti-Blackness in America, but it is only one part of ular Democracy, et al. “FREEDOM TO THRIVE: REIMAGINING SAFETY the all-encompassing legacy of slavery, the institution & SECURITY IN OUR COMMUNITIES,” populardemocracy.org/ sites/default/files/Freedom%20To%20Thrive%2C%20Higher%20 Res%20Version.pdf. 1 Darity, William A., and A. Kirsten Mullen. From Here to 4 Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. “Normalizing the In/Security State: Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. The Police and Prisons.” YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJz_FQBTP- University of North Carolina Press, 2020. mY.

24 do we need to build Pittsburgh’s future from the REFRAMING HARM present? I won’t pretend to fully answer these questions--but I would like to open them up further. Since Peduto was inaugurated in 2014, the police’s budget has ballooned by over $42 million, bringing the PBP to a 2020 grand total of $114,787,000.1 That’s almost 19% of our city’s budget. For comparison, Hu- man Resources and Civil Service, which got slashed by over $14 million in 2020, takes just around 7%. Environmental Services takes only 3%. Parks and Recreation, just 0.78%. The Citizen Police Review Board, a measly 0.1%.

Who--or what--is the City so afraid of? When it comes to the impact of policing on our communities, the data speaks for itself. We’ve been socialized to think of police as a superheroic profession. Our The popular “Lend Me Your Ears” mural in East Lib- cultural notion of cops as action figures has served erty, before it was painted over by real estate to shore up police’s legitimacy even as they become developers in 2015 more and more illegitimate.

The Pew Research Center has noted that despite Donald Trump’s repetitive, fearmongering promises to be America’s “law and order President,” violent crime is less of an issue now than it ever has been in America. Both violent and property crimes have been steadily decreasing for two decades. Despite the drop in crimes actually being committed, however, Americans still tend to believe crime is increasing nationally. And police departments’ budgets continue to expand endlessly, largely unquestioned by the public--until now.2

Nine out of ten times police are called to action, it is to respond to a nonviolent situation (i.e., where A line of police in riot gear, flanked by armored no person is being harmed). And over ninety-five County Police and SWAT trucks, terrorize protes- percent of arrests made by police each year are for tors in East Liberty, as recorded by the Pitts- nonviolent offenses.3 burgh City Paper, 1 June 2020 Most violent crimes in America go unreported to police. This is not surprising when you consider police’s ineffectiveness in actually solving crime. Less than half of all crimes that get reported to the police actually get solved. Only 46 percent of violent crimes ever result in arrest. An even smaller fraction of cases are actually prosecuted.4

Furthermore, Black Americans are up to six times more likely to be killed by police than others--espe-

1 City of Pittsburgh. “2020 Operating Budget & Five-Year Plan,” 2019, https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/redtail/images/8055_Op- erating_Budget_as_approved__by_Council_12-17-19(3).pdf and City of Pittsburgh, “2014 Budget,” https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/cbo/2014_Op- erating_Budget.pdf. 2 Gramlich, John. “5 Facts about Crime in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact- Pittsburghers take to the street after Antwon Rose tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/. II’s shooting (from TribLive) 3 “Persons Arrested.” Uniform Crime Reporting, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 21 Aug. 2018, ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime- in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/persons-arrested. 4 Ibid.

25 cially in the Midwest and Northeast.5 Of the 1,944 fact, when the NYPD went on a work slowdown in police killings documented by Mapping Police Vio- the midst of a political fight over the Eric Garner lence from 2013-2019, only 3% resulted in charges uprising in 2014-15, the city’s crime rates dropped being brought against police. And fewer than 1% of significantly.14 cases ever reached conviction.6 As Brookings Insti- tute researchers Andre Perry, David Harshbarger, Tax dollars are the primary source of funding for Carl Romer, and Kristian Thymianos argued recently, the police’s ever-widening budget. Our city budget is supposed to be a reflection of our values. Do we “The failure to prosecute murderous police typifies really want to see Pittsburgh spiral further down a bad overall track record with solving violent crimes: the path of carceral capitalism--inflating police and approximately 38% of murders, 66% of rapes, 70% prisons while doing nothing to heal unemployment, of robberies, and 47% of aggravated assaults go un- houselessness, underfunded schools, hunger, and cleared every year.”7 illness?

For Black Pittsburgh, these numbers are largely even It’s not that communities don’t face serious prob- worse. Black people consistently make up the over- lems--but the simple fact is that stuffing more money whelming majority of murder victims in the Pitts- into police coffers does not make us safer. An analysis burgh metro area, despite making up only a quarter by the Washington Post using 60 years of national data of the city’s population. In 2012, for example, 100% found that increases in police funding did not cor- of Pittsburgh murder victims under 18 were Black.8 relate in any significant way with decreases in crime.15 From 2010 to 2015, 85% of all murder victims in Pittsburgh were Black.9 Pennsylvania’s Black homi- Police’s countless murders of Black people, com- cide rate is almost seven times the national overall bined with their utter inability to solve crimes that average.10 But these victims and their families rarely already happened receive legal justice, let alone deep healing--97% of --let alone to prevent future crimes--mean that the unsolved murders in Allegheny County are of Black police have a net negative effect on our society. For victims.11 When studying gun violence in Pittsburgh, Black America, this is no news flash. researchers T. Rashad Byrdsong, Angela Devan, and Hide Yamatani concluded that “over-reliance on law Consistently, the sociological literature tells us that enforcement to control violence invites further af- the single most effective way to reduce crime is to fliction among Black youth and adults.”12 improve social programs--namely, education and employment.16 Black, brown, and working class Pitts- The last few decades have demonstrated that in- burghers have been systematically denied human creased numbers of police do not have any reliable rights, through multiple types of violence, including effect on preventing crime, let alone on the rate at but not limited to: which violent crimes are investigated or solved. Over and over again, experts have told us that the quantity • Police terrorism and malfeasance of police has no effect on the quality of policing.13 In • Mass incarceration and carceral pipelines such

5 Marshall, Michael. “US Police Kill up to 6 Times More Black marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean-less-crime-experts- People than White People.” New Scientist, 24 June 2020, www.newscien- say/2818056002/.; Kleck, Gary, and J. C. Barnes. “Do More Police Lead tist.com/article/2246987-us-police-kill-up-to-6-times-more-black-peo- to More Crime Deterrence?” Crime & Delinquency 60, no. 5 (August ple-than-white-people/. 2014): 716–38. doi:10.1177/0011128710382263; and Sampson, 6 Bult, Laura. “A Timeline of 1,944 Black Americans Killed Robert J., et al. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel by Police.” Vox, 30 June 2020, www.vox.com/2020/6/30/21306843/ Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science, American Association for the black-police-killings. Advancement of Science, 15 Aug. 1997, science.sciencemag.org/con- 7 Perry, Andre M., et al. “To Add Value to Black Communities, tent/277/5328/918. We Must Defund the Police and Prison Systems.” Brookings, 11 June 14 Sullivan, Christopher M., and Zachary P. O’Keeffe. “Evidence 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/06/11/to-add-val- That Curtailing Proactive Policing Can Reduce Major Crime.” Nature, 25 ue-to-black-communities-we-must-defund-the-police-and-prison-sys- Sep. 2017, www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5. tems/. --My emphasis. 15 Bump, Philip. “Over the Past 60 Years, More Spending on 8 “Pittsburgh’s Racial Demographics 2015: Differences and Police Hasn’t Necessarily Meant Less Crime.” The Washington Post, WP Disparities.” Center on Race & Social Problems, University of Pittsburgh, Company, 7 June 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/ 2015, http://www.crsp.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/REPORT.pdf. over-past-60-years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant- 9 Benzing, Jeffrey. “Pittsburgh’s Repeating Tragedy of Unsolved less-crime/. Black Homicides.” PublicSource, 21 Feb. 2018, www.publicsource.org/ 16 See, for example, Danley, Stephen. “Camden Police Reboot pittsburghs-repeating-tragedy-of-unsolved-black-homicides/. Is Being Misused in the Debate over Police Reform.” The Washington 10 Byrdsong, T. Rashad, Angela Devan & Hide Yamatani. “A Post, WP Company, 16 June 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/out- Ground-Up Model for Gun Violence Reduction: A Community-Based look/2020/06/16/camden-nj-police-reboot-is-being-misused-debate- Public Health Approach,” Journal of Evidence-Informed Social Work, 13:1, over-police-reform/; Lochner, Lance, and Enrico Moretti. “The Effect 76-86, 2016, DOI: 10.1080/15433714.2014.997090. of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and 11 Benzing, “Pittsburgh.” Self-Reports.” The American Economic Review, Mar. 2004, https://eml. 12 Byrdsong et. al., “A Ground-Up Model.” berkeley.edu/~moretti/lm46.pdf; and Uggen, Christopher, and Sarah 13 See, for example, Weichselbaum, Simone, and Wendi C. K.S. Shannon. “Productive Addicts and Harm Reduction: How Work Thomas. “More Cops. Is It the Answer to Fighting Crime?” USA Today, 13 Reduces Crime–But Not Drug Use.” Social Problems, vol. 61, no. 1, 2014, Feb. 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/ pp. 105–130., doi:10.1525/sp.2013.11225.

26 as school policing what we now call “essential jobs”) are dispropor- • Immigration detention and deportation tionately filled by Pittsburgh’s Black population • Disproportionately unsolved murders • Pittsburgh has more Black women out of the • Unemployment and underemployment labor force than 97% of American cities • Residential segregation, displacement, and gen- • Pittsburgh’s Black adult women are 5x more likely trification to live in poverty than white adult men • Educational disparities • Pittsburgh’s Black adults are more likely to die of • Medical neglect and malpractice heart disease and cancer than whites • Environmental injustices, including lack of access • The mortality rate for Black adults is higher in to clean water and air Pittsburgh than in 98% of similar cities • Hunger and food desertion We are not the most livable city. We are the most Pittsburgh is known today as having safely overcome lethal city. All of these various systemic violences a near-disastrous environmental past, emerging tri- layer together to rob Black Pittsburghers of life and umphant from the rubble of deindustrialization with freedom. The deadliness of this city is stressful and a thriving new “Eds and Meds” economy to boot. traumatizing in itself. So when we talk about “crime,” Pittsburgh loves to tell this story about itself. we need to have a holistic picture of all these systems. We should perhaps think about social harm and social But the problem is that this story deliberately erases justice rather than crime and punishment.18 the experience of the city’s Black residents. It is true that Pittsburgh provides some of the best quality of “Crime” is never politically neutral as a category--it life among peer cities--for White people. For Black always carries certain value-laden judgments of who people, in fact, Pittsburgh is an especially precarious and what should be considered “criminal.” Consid- and unsafe place to live. This “tale of two cities” is ering harm, on the other hand, recenters us on con- not uncommon in cities like Pittsburgh--cities left sciously addressing all of the forces that are tangibly scarred by the redlining of the New Deal era, that are damaging people and our planet every day--not just still today separate and unequal as a matter of fact. the actions that the state deems “criminal.” Address- An important 2019 report from Pittsburgh’s Gender ing harm means following destructive forces to their Equity Commission found that, when compared to very roots, and healing from there outward. similar cities, rates of livability for white men and women were quite high in Pittsburgh--but for Black The Defund movement could just as easily be called men and especially Black women, they are shockingly the “Divest/Invest” movement, or the “Redistrib- low.17 Here are just a few of the findings: ute” movement (but obviously, “Defund” is more punchy.) What Defund supporters are asking for is • Pittsburgh’s Black maternal mortality rate is high- not simply a unilateral slashing of police--but rather, er than those in 97% of similar cities the dismantling of police via the transferral of their • Black children in Pittsburgh are up to 3x more resources and functions to community institutions likely to die under 18 than white children that are life-affirming and socially supportive. The • Pittsburgh has more Black children growing up Defund movement is transformative justice in action. in poverty than 95% of similar cities • Black students in Pittsburgh are less likely to pass AP exams, less likely to be selected for middle school algebra, and less likely to be selected for Gifted and Talented programs--but more likely to get held back, suspended, referred to police, and arrested in school than white students • Young Black men in Pittsburgh are 13x more likely to die between ages 18 and 24 than their white counterparts--and 42x more likely to die by being murdered • 27% of Pittsburgh’s Black men and almost 40% of Pittsburgh’s Black women live below the poverty line (compared to just 8% percent of white men) • Jobs that pay less than $30,000 a year (e.g. health care support workers, servers, and custodians, Washington, D.C., 2020 (from CNN)

17 Howell, Junia, Sara Goodkind, Leah Jacobs, Dominique Bran- son and Elizabeth Miller. “Pittsburgh’s Inequality across Gender and 18 As, for example, in Cain, Maureen, and Adrian Howe, editors. Race.” Gender Analysis White Papers. City of Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Women, Crime and Social Harm: towards a Criminology for the Global Age. Commission, 2019. Bloomsbury, 2008.

27 THE WORLD WE WANT IS THE WORLD present is possible. WE NEED: THOUGHTS & CONVERSATIONS The Pittsburgh Police received a budget boost of $10.2 million in the last fiscal year alone.2 So--where should the police’s money go? What do we do with all this surplus time, money, and human labor? Instead of three new police stations, this bonus could have paid for three or more new reproductive health Answering these questions requires ongoing re- clinics. search and collaboration. It requires constant public discourse about the future of the community. It re- It could have been reinvested in a community-based quires a deliberately intersectional and interdisci- public health approach to ending gun violence, as plinary approach to ending oppressive hierarchies. It recommended by the CDC.3 requires people willing to employ dynamic and complex solutions to meet people’s short- and long-term It could have been set aside to give grocery grants needs. In other words, it requires strong community of $250 each to over 40,800 working families when organizing. they need it the most.

In a deeply realized democracy, social wants are social It could have gone toward establishing a robust re- needs--the world is the people’s oyster. America is storative justice infrastructure to replace traditional not a deeply realized democracy. Policing is just the punishment in Pittsburgh courts and schools. spearhead of American capitalism’s vast and brutal clockwork, which has a deeply chilling effect on fun- On average, it could have paid for over 500 years of damental democratic freedoms. tuition at Pitt--or over 2,000 years at CCAC.

Since the Reagan era, neoliberal capitalism has argued It could have expanded walkability and accessibility, that our society works best when it is run by the and improved our public transit corridors. “free market” rather than the government. We see the utter failure of this system in a situation like the It could have been used to implement a Housing First coronavirus pandemic. It is July 2020, months into model (which has been proven effective at ending the crisis, and millions of Americans are sick, broke, chronic homelessness) here in Pittsburgh. and hungry. And the government is doing absolutely nothing. The idea, as always, is that “the private sector It could have established harm prevention strate- will take care of it.” gies like clean needle exchanges and robust rehab programs. America’s obsession with a “free market” has ultimately led to the greatest wealth gap in world history. It could have built schools, preschools, playgrounds, It has led to the largest prison population in world daycares, after-school centers. history. It has led to manufactured austerity: the constant defunding of social services combined with It could have gone towards fixing our water system, the constant hyperfunding of police and military. It which has been utterly ruined since 2012 by the in- has led to the control of our entire society by a tiny ternational utilities company Veolia--the very same group of plutocrats. We can no longer pretend that company responsible for Flint, Michigan’s clean water the American experiment has succeded. We can no crisis. longer hope that capitalism is the end of history. We can no longer accept a power structure that does not It could have planted trees in neighborhoods where systematically secure human rights for all.1 air pollution is the worst, or funded a municipal ze- ro-waste program. Pittsburghers are freedom fighters, and their/our dedication to liberation and mutual aid long pre- It could have... cedes the current moment. Not only have the city’s residents (especially its Black femmes) long been City Council decides our budget in September of organizing against police and the prison-industrial each year. Go to defund12.org/pittsburgh to imme- complex; they have also long been organizing for diately email all City Council members. Come into employment; community safety and accountability; the streets with your body if you can. Fight. Not only clean water and air; access to food; education; and for the many thousand gone, but also for the many reproductive justice, among so many other things. thousand yet to be born. They have shown us that making our future in the

1 See Pogge, Thomas Winfried Menko. World Poverty and 2 City of Pittsburgh. “2020 Operating Budget” Human Rights. Polity, 2010. 3 Byrdsong et. al., “A Ground-Up Model”

28 An interview with SG: The Pittsburgh Police absorbs almost one Pittsburgh Mutual Aid fifth of the municipal budget, more than many other departments combined. Can you say a SG: Tell us a little bit about what you do at bit about why the Defund the Police and mu- Pittsburgh Mutual Aid--what tasks might you tual aid movements are compatible? all do on a typical day? PMA: Mutual aid originates with tribal socialism as embod- PMA: On any given day, Pittsburgh Mutual Aid receives ied by indigenous cultures worldwide. The “American” requests from the community through phone, email or police force is a force of colonialism designed to enslave our Covaid.co platform. This ranges from food, household BIPOC and protect the settlers’ property. As we decolo- items, rides, legal support, and literally anything. People can nize and people begin to learn that they own nothing, they also post on our platform household items, skills, whatev- will give freely and receive without shame. er they have and requestors can reach out to them directly or be linked by our rockstar volunteer resource-matching The police are one part of the larger spectrum of institu- team. Twice a week, we collaborate with Ratzon Food tions designed to sustain racism and poverty. Mutual aid Distro to deliver groceries and supplies to anyone who is a direct resistance to this capitalist structure. needs them. The Pittsburgh Mutual Aid Fund also doles out cash grants up to $250 to individuals. We must learn to care for each other by providing for each other’s needs and keeping each other safe. Defunding SG: Why did Pittsburgh need a mutual aid the police and building robust mutual aid must happen in movement? Why is the mutual aid movement tandem. Pittsburgh Mutual Aid volunteers are directly in- so important in 2020? volved in the #BLM and Defund the Police movements and many volunteers have come forward to help us provide PMA: Everywhere needs mutual aid because relying on our supplies for recent protests, from hand washing stations community to support one another is how we’ll move into to protective gear. more just societies. People who are systemically left out of institutional charity-based programs, such as Black folks, SG: How can people help to create robust mu- indigenous folks, and other people of color, LGBTQ+, tual aid in Pittsburgh? formerly incarcerated individuals, undocumented people, sex workers and others can’t wait for an end to capitalism PMA: Building mutual aid in Pittsburgh is essential to the to start building the infrastructure for equitable transfer transformative moment we are in and takes all of us. Spe- of goods. cifically, you can help by telling us about your needs and/ or signing up as a volunteer by going to PittsburghMu- Mutual aid is not charity or based on reciprocation. It is tualAid.com, joining our team of volunteer organizers, an informal community network of sharing through the following and sharing our FB (@pghmutualaid) and IG recognition that we all have needs and ways to give. This (@_pghmutualaid). allows us to provide for each other with dignity, familiarity and genuine love. There is also a backlog of hundreds of people in desper- ate need of financial support! Contribute via Cash App Specifically, in 2020 we came together with urgency at the ($PGHMUTUALAID), Venmo (pghmutualaid), or our beginning of the pandemic, but understood that a mutual GoFundMe page. aid network was long overdue. Our nation is crumbling and our traditional support systems are largely ineffec- An interview with my lovely mentor, teacher, tive, inequitable and inaccessible to people who need and friend, them most. Only the people can create equitable alter- Dr. Gretchen Givens Generett natives--we need to get to know our neighbors, find out what their needs are and what resources they have to offer. SG: Tell us a little bit about what you do, and the kinds of issues you tend to work on when SG: Why do you think the mutual aid move- it comes to the Pittsburgh area. ment will continue to be important once COVID-19 is no longer a worry? GG: My work always focuses on educational inequities and how to eradicate them. Whether that is in K-12 education, PMA: The current pandemic has served like a test, knowing in higher education, or in community, I am always looking that mutual aid will be an ever-present need, and it’s been to disrupt the master narrative of meritocracy. dope to see people with different skills and backgrounds work across local and international communities to build I am a professor and a department chair in the School the network, infrastructure and share tips and celebra- of Education at Duquesne University. In the classroom, I tions! The community love is so strong and isn’t going prepare teachers, school leaders, and other educational anywhere! leaders who find themselves working at colleges/univer-

29 sities or non-profits. I am also a qualitative researcher Questions like these, coupled with my desire to learn whose research is centered around educational stories more about how to better address inequities in education, that have been rendered invisible in America... are the foundation of my teaching, scholarship and service.

My scholarship starts with self-narrative as a form of Pittsburgh has a long way to go in terms of educational portraiture that interrogates her educational experiences equity. Listening to the stories of Black students and other growing up in suburban Richmond, yet tethered to my students of color, you hear the anger, grief, and frustration Grandmother’s front porch in rural Virginia. Blending with a system not designed in their best interest. You the arts and sciences in my methodology, I use stories to often hear fair and honest critiques of educators actively capture the complex, dynamic, and multifaceted ways in working to steal their joy and passion for learning and which her positionality in and towards school is shaped discovery. And yet, there is a feistiness and spirit about by race, class, and gender. young people in Pittsburgh that will not allow the adults in their educational spaces to render them invisible. Storytelling, in its simplest form, is a way of relating to This is why I choose to center my work on adults in edu- and informing one another. As a researcher, I believe that cational spaces. While the youth are wonderful organizers there is a deeper benefit: telling stories offers a place and outstanding ambassadors, I don’t think the burden where we can reflect and recast our individual stories to of change should rest on their shoulders. I want them to form a collective narrative that can be used as a catalyst have a childhood and be young adults. for transformation. Adults need to change. I believe that it is the adults in Ultimately, my research suggests that reflective and in- education who should be fighting for racial justice by teractive storytelling serves a function in uncovering having the courage to risk personal comfort and safety and (re)covering our individual and collective stories to improve the lives of students. I also believe that adults so that we can be intentional in our efforts to dismantle should systematically and intentionally interrogate them- systemic inequities. Finally, my most important work is selves to continuously improve and understand personal that as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, niece, and cousin. biases, assumptions and prejudices. These roles are central to my sense of self and influence all of the work that I do. It is my experience that, as a unit in schools, teachers and leaders rarely do that work here in Pittsburgh. SG: What draws you to the intersection of race and education? What do you see at this in- SG: In your essay “What’s in a Myth?”, you tersection today--either within Pittsburgh point out that “to inscribe means to draw (a or without? figure) inside another figure...reinscribing the past pulls others into the process of historical GG: I did not come to my understandings of my academic reconstruction.” Can you say a little about role and purpose by chance. Education is central to my what reinscribing Pittsburgh history means identity as Black woman born post-desegregation in a for us today? small rural town in central Virginia. I learned that political activism, hard work, and education were the methods GG: At the time, I was thinking a lot about the stories we typically used to overcome discrimination and racism. choose to tell and the ones we choose not to tell. My family stories are rich and abundant. These stories are I was born five years after my mother, along with four often about hard work done on the farm and in school.Yet, other students, integrated her high school in a rural school it was not until I was in graduate school doing research district. I started my schooling in that same school system on integration in North Carolina that I learned that my and when I turned eight years old, I attended schools in mother had integrated her high school. She never told a well-funded suburban district. I grew up keenly aware me that story until I was telling her about my research! that the educational narratives that I heard at home were different from the educational narratives being presented The myth that I and so many other Black kids grew up to me in integrated schools... with was the myth that segregated Black schools consist- ed solely of dilapidated school buildings, old books, and I wanted to better understand why after laws, policies, limited financial resources. and well-articulated intentions, there were still so many When I asked that question, “What’s in a Myth?”, over inequities in education. My initial questions arose from 20 years ago now, I was really asking, what if we told a my own schooling: Why were there not more Black and different story? Brown kids in my honors classes? Later, my questions evolved from interrogating individual experiences to What if we told the story about Black segregated schools probing systemic realities. Why were all the poor kids that centered the leaders who lead, the teachers who in technical education? Why did I not have more Black taught, the coaches who mentored, the students who teachers? learned, the parents who supported it all?

30 The master narrative of segregated Black schools as less I think grassroots organizing is about working in this way than integrated schools created a school system that cat- - being okay whether you are the learner or the knower, egorized anything Black in education as deficient. The idea working across disciplines, collaborating with people of reinscribing was my work to center intergenerational across differences, and co-creating meaning at every stage conversations about education in ways that afforded me of the process. the opportunity to hear and learn from my mother’s educational story and for her to hear and learn from mine. SG: What do you think of 2020? What on Earth is this year trying to tell us? The figure was my attempt at imagining what it would look like for us to hold each other’s story. What would GG: This year has me “all in my feelings.” I grew up in a holding and retelling my mother’s story from a position family where the politics of respectability dictated that of success and excellence and not dilapidated buildings you did not outwardly express anger and rage. mean for my educational advancement and for that of my children and my children’s children? Over the years, I have had to learn how to allow myself to express these two emotions. But, 2020 has made me In relation to Pittsburgh, what would it mean for Black “feel” them. I think that is what this year is telling us. We students here to hold the educational stories (those in need to “feel” what is happening – feel what is happening formal settings and those in informal settings) of elders to other people, feel what we are doing to the earth. in Pittsburgh? Because we have had to slow down and feel things, more SG: A big part of making police and prison ab- people are able to see what you (Suhail and others) have olitionism viable is identifying the real prob- been saying about policing, for example. I also think 2020 lems of social harm that communities face is telling us that we have to do things differently. We have daily, and figuring out how those can be most to change. My friend Michelle King, also known as the holistically addressed. Learning Instigator, said that 2020 has signaled to her that anything is possible. I’m thinking, here, about how direct action and qualitative research can be intertwined... If I hold onto Michelle’s words then I am able to imagine What is the power of qualitative research? a way forward. How has it expanded your work? And how can we “DIY” its techniques and incorporate them into grassroots organizing?

GG: My research intermingles traditional sociology of education theory, African American studies, and feminist studies with more progressive concepts of justice that examine agency, empowerment, and action...This strategy requires that I forge collaborations in my approach to research and that I redefine, through my work, how research is done and how it is positioned. For me, scholarship is a form of storytelling that is negotiated and understood in the ways we co-create meaning at every stage of the research process, including the idea development and writing stages. I strive to collaborate across race, class, gender, sexuality, discipline, and organization type in my scholarship.

When I work this way, it is always a powerful learning process for me and, as feedback from my collaborators suggests, for others as well. Indeed, working this way does not always feel good because I have to be self-reflective and I have to position myself as both a knower and leaner.

Unfortunately, I have also chosen to work with people who are not at all collaborative--they have to be positioned as “knower”--or they won’t do the project. This can be painful. Yet, even these moments teach me important lessons.

31 IMAGINE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD WITHOUT POLICE.

write it. draw it. staple it to a telephone pole. it’s time to build a new world in the shell of the old.

32 BIBLIOGRAPHY

“A Historical Overview of Inmate Labor in Pennsylvania.” Department of Corrections, Commonwealth of Pennsyl- vania, www.cor.pa.gov/PCI/Pages/History.aspx “Active Agency Map.” My Maps, Google, 2020, www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1eYVDPh5itXq5acDT9b0BVeQw- mESBa4cB&ll=36.19459170250789%2C-103.96982876449249&z=4. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2012. Altenburger, Christine. “The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police: Some Historical Highlights,” Western Pennsylvania History, Penn State University Press, January 1994, 20.

Baldwin, James. “A Report From Occupied Territory.” The Nation, 11 July 1966. Bassichis et al.,“Building an Abolitionist Queer and Trans Movement with Everything We’ve Got,” in Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, ed. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith, AK Press, 2011. Baum, Dan, et al. “[Report] Legalize It All: How to Win the War on Drugs. ” Harper’s Magazine, 31 Mar. 2016, harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/. Benzing, Jeffrey. “Pittsburgh’s Repeating Tragedy of Unsolved Black Homicides.”PublicSource , 21 Feb. 2018, www.publicsource.org/pittsburghs-repeating-tragedy-of-unsolved-black-homicides/. Blackett, Richard J.M. “...Freedom, or the Martyr’s Grave: Black Pittsburgh’s Aid to the Fugitive Slave.” Western Pennsylvania History, Penn State University Press, April 1978, 117-122. Blackley, Katie. “Despite Significant Support, Pittsburgh Immigration Activist Is Deported to Mexico.”90.5 WESA, 2017, www.wesa.fm/term/martin-esquivel-hernandez-0#stream/0. Blackley, Katie. “Who Lived Here First? A Look At Pittsburgh’s Native American History.” 90.5 WESA, 2018, www. wesa.fm/post/who-lived-here-first-look-pittsburgh-s-native-american-history#stream/0. Bult, Laura. “A Timeline of 1,944 Black Americans Killed by Police.” Vox, 30 June 2020, www.vox. com/2020/6/30/21306843/black-police-killings. Bump, Philip. “Over the Past 60 Years, More Spending on Police Hasn’t Necessarily Meant Less Crime.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 7 June 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past-60- years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant-less-crime/. Byrdsong, T. Rashad, Angela Devan & Hide Yamatani. “A Ground-Up Model for Gun Violence Reduction: A Community-Based Public Health Approach,” Journal of Evidence-Informed Social Work, 13:1, 76-86, 2016, DOI: 10.1080/15433714.2014.997090. Cain, Maureen, and Adrian Howe, editors. Women, Crime and Social Harm: towards a Criminology for the Global Age. Bloomsbury, 2008. “CCAC Board of Trustees Meeting, November 5, 2015.” Community College of Allegheny County, 2015, https:// ccac.edu/president/board-of-trustees/_bot-minutes-pdfs/2015/bot-nov-2015.pdf. Center for Popular Democracy, et al. “FREEDOM TO THRIVE: REIMAGINING SAFETY & SECURITY IN OUR COMMUNITIES,” populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Freedom%20To%20Thrive%2C%20Higher%20Res%20- Version.pdf. City of Pittsburgh. “2014 Budget,” 2015, https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/cbo/2014_Operating_Budget.pdf. City of Pittsburgh. “2020 Operating Budget & Five-Year Plan,” 2019, https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/redtail/ images/8055_Operating_Budget_as_approved__by_Council_12-17-19(3).pdf City of Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board. Findings & Recommendations, CPRB Case # 208-13 (Scalese v. Henson #4033, Love #3772). 2015. “Convict Docket (PA) 1826-1859,” Power Library, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, digitalarchives.powerlibrary. org/psa/islandora/object/psa%3Acd-pa1826-59. Danley, Stephen. “Camden Police Reboot Is Being Misused in the Debate over Police Reform.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 16 June 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/16/camden-nj-police-reboot- is-being-misused-debate-over-police-reform/. Dao, James. “Guard Left Troubled Life for Duty in Iraq.” The New York Times, 14 May 2004, www.nytimes. com/2004/05/14/world/the-struggle-for-iraq-the-jailer-guard-left-troubled-life-for-duty-in-iraq. html. Darity, William A., and A. Kirsten Mullen. From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Davis, Robert C. et al. “Can Federal Intervention Bring Lasting Improvement in Local Policing? The Pittsburgh Consent Decree.” Vera Institute of Justice, April 2005. Department of Justice. United States of America v. City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, and Department of Public Safety. web.archive.org/web/20080514213445/http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/split/ documents/pittssa.htm. Deitch, Charlie. “Antwon Rose II May Have Been Killed In 2018, But The Officer’s Acquittal Was 20 Years In The Making.” Pittsburgh Current, 2019, https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/antwon-rose-ii-officers- acquittal/. Deto, Ryan. “Pennsylvania Has the Most ICE Arrests in the Country.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 2 July 2019, www. pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/pennsylvania-has-the-most-ice-arrests-in-the-country/Con- tent?oid=15323545. Deto, Ryan. “Update: Pittsburgh Police Chief Promises Investigation of Wood Street T Activities.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 17 Dec. 2015, www.pghcitypaper.com/Blogh/archives/2015/12/17/details-released-of-arrests-at-pittsburghs-wood-street-t-station. Deto, Ryan. “Yes, Antwon Rose Jr. Was a Pittsburgher.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 1 July 2020, www.pghcitypaper. com/pittsburgh/yes-antwon-rose-jr-was-a-pittsburgher/Content?oid=9096610. Doll, Eugene E. “Trial and Error at Allegheny: The Western State Penitentiary, 1818-1838.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 81, no. 1, 1957, 3–27, 8. “Downtown Safety Coalition - Making Downtown a Community for All.” Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, 6 Oct. 2017, downtownpittsburgh.com/2017/09/25/downtown-safety-coalition-making-downtown-community. Drabinski, John E. “Reconciliation and Founding Wounds.” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development vol. 4, no. 1 (2013): 117-132. doi:10.1353/hum.2013.0010. Federkeil, Jessica. “Pittsburgh Opens New Police Substation in Downtown’s Cultural District.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 Nov. 2017, www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2017/11/20/Pittsburgh-Police-open- substation-Downtown-Zone-2-Cultural-District/stories/201711200160. Finkel, David, and Christian Davenport. “Records Paint Dark Portrait Of Guard.” The Washington Post, WP Com- pany, 5 June 2004, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16832-2004Jun4.html. Fitzpatrick, Dan. “The Story of Urban Renewal.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2000, old.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20000521eastliberty1.asp.

33 Foucault, Michel. Surveiller Et Punir: Naissance De La Prison. Gallimard, 1975. Free at Last? Slavery in Pittsburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries, University of Pittsburgh, exhibit.library. pitt.edu/freeatlast/middle_passage.html. Friedersdorf, Conor. “Police Have a Much Bigger Domestic-Abuse Problem Than the NFL Does.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 4 Oct. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers- who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/. “Full Text: Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Remarks at the National FOP Conference in Pittsburgh.” WTAE, 10 Aug. 2015, www.wtae.com/article/full-text-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-s-remarks-at-the-national-fop-conference-in-pittsburgh/7472984. Gazarik, Richard. Wicked Pittsburgh. The History Press, 2018. Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. “Normalizing the In/Security State: Police and Prisons.” YouTube. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fJz_FQBTPmY. Graham, Vince, user. Urban Renewal...Means Negro Removal. ~ James Baldwin (1963), PBS, 1965, www.youtube. com/watch?v=T8Abhj17kYU. Gramlich, John. “5 Facts about Crime in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/. Harding, Margaret. “2 Pittsburgh police sergeants promoted to lieutenant.” Trib Live, 29 March 2014, https:// archive.triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-allegheny/2-pittsburgh-police-sergeants-promoted-to-lieutenant/. Harring, Sidney. Policing in a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865-1915, Rutgers Univer- sity Press, 1983. Harring, Sidney. “Taylorization of Police Work: Prospects for the 1980s.” Insurgent Sociologist 11, no. 1 (July 1981): 25–32. doi:10.1177/089692058101000403. Hassan, Adeel. “Antwon Rose Shooting: White Police Officer Acquitted in Death of Black Teenager.”The New York Times, 23 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/antwon-rose-shooting.html. Hersh, Joshua. “Why Defunding the Police Isn’t Such a Radical Idea.” VICE, 2020, www.vice.com/en_us/ article/889qvp/why-defunding-the-police-isnt-such-a-radical-idea. “History.” City of Pittsburgh Police Recruitment, pittsburghpa.gov/joinpghpolice/about/history.html. Howell, Junia, Sara Goodkind, Leah Jacobs, Dominique Branson and Elizabeth Miller. “Pittsburgh’s Inequality across Gender and Race.” Gender Analysis White Papers. City of Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission, 2019. Idia, Tereneh. “The Pittsburgh Area Has Stark Racial Inequities. Black Pittsburghers Face a Key Question: Should They Leave?” PublicSource, 2 Jan. 2020, www.publicsource.org/the-pittsburgh-area-has-stark- racial-inequities-black-pittsburghers-face-a-key-question-should-they-leave/. Kelly, Grace. “Pittsburgh’s Chinatown and how it disappeared.” Old Pittsburgh Photos and Stories | The Digs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7 Mar. 2015, https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2015/03/04/ pittsburghs-chinatown-and-how-it-disappeared/. Kleck, Gary, and J. C. Barnes. “Do More Police Lead to More Crime Deterrence?” Crime & Delinquency vol. 60, no. 5 (August 2014): 716–38. doi:10.1177/0011128710382263. Lieberman, Paul, and Dan Morain. “Unveiling the Face of the Prison Scandal.” Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2004, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-19-na-graner19-story.html. Lochner, Lance, and Enrico Moretti. “The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports.” The American Economic Review, Mar. 2004, https://eml.berkeley.edu/~moretti/lm46. pdf Mainwaring, Thomas W. Abandoned Tracks: The Underground Railroad in Washington County, Pennsylvania, Uni- versity of Notre Dame Press, 2018. Maniktala, Abhishek and Erica Cochran Hameen. “Pittsburgh’s Gentrification: Analyzing factors and deter- mining patterns.” StoryMaps, Carnegie Mellon University, 2019, https://story-maps.arcgis.com/stories/a1abaee75540489f83abb28aca2fe389. Marshall, Michael. “US Police Kill up to 6 Times More Black People than White People.” New Scientist, 24 June 2020, www.newscientist.com/article/2246987-us-police-kill-up-to-6-times-more-black-people-than- white-people/. Mayo, Bob. “Attorney General Praises Police as ‘Peacemakers’ in Pittsburgh Speech.” WTAE, 10 Aug. 2015, www. wtae.com/article/attorney-general-praises-police-as-peacemakers-in-pittsburgh-speech-1/7472978. Mayo, Bob. “Police Officer Testifies Jordan Miles to Blame for Own Injuries.”WTAE , 11 Oct. 2017, www.wtae.com/ article/police-officer-testifies-jordan-miles-to-blame-for-own-injuries/7465392. McKinnon, Jim. “Inquest begins in Sheraden shooting.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 26 June 2003, http://old. post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20030626inquestc4.asp. McKinnon, Jim. “Inquest: Police Fired 19 Shots at Suspect in North Side Shooting.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2002, old.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20021105inquest1105p2.asp. McKinnon, Jim. “Wecht says police had cause in shooting death of man, 24.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 February 2003, http://old.post-gazette.com/neigh_city/20030205inquest0205p3.asp. McNulty, Timothy. “Officer takes plea in tunnel shooting.”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2001, https://old.post- gazette.com/regionstate/20011012charmo1012p2.asp. Mellon, Steve, and Julian Routh. “The Week the Hill Rose up,” News Interactive, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2018, newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/the-week-the-hill-rose-up/. Mock, Brentin. “How Leon Ford Survived Being Shot by Pittsburgh Police.” Bloomberg, 4 May 2018, www.bloomberg. com/news/articles/2018-05-04/how-leon-ford-survived-being-shot-by-pittsburgh-police. Ove, Torsten. “Mafia Has Long History Here, Growing from Bootlegging Days,”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2000, old.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20001106mobhistory2.asp. Ove, Torsten and Rona Kobell. “City officer who fired fatal shot was on foot,”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1998, http://old.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19981224chase4.asp. Parton, James. “Pittsburg.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1868/01/pittsburg/536130/. Peduto, William (billpeduto). “It wasn’t in Pittsburgh...” 20 June 2018, 12:39 AM. Tweet, https://twitter.com/ billpeduto/status/1269856636736286720. Peduto, William (billpeduto). “Real change does not occur...” 8 June 2020, 12:59 AM. Tweet, https:// twitter.com/billpeduto/status/1269856636736286720. Perry, Andre M., et al. “To Add Value to Black Communities, We Must Defund the Police and Prison Systems.” Brookings Institute, 11 June 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/06/11/to-add-value-to- black-communities-we-must-defund-the-police-and-prison-systems/. “Persons Arrested.” Uniform Crime Reporting, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 21 Aug. 2018, ucr.fbi.gov/ crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/persons-arrested. “Pittsburgh in 1816.” Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, web.archive.org/

34 web/20081202145839/www.clpgh.org/research/Pittsburgh/history/pgh1816.html. “Pittsburgh Police Department.” Palestine Is Here, palestineishere.org/places/united-states/pennsylvania/ philadelphia/police/pittsburgh-police-department/. “Pittsburgh’s Racial Demographics 2015: Differences and Disparities.” Center on Race & Social Problems, University of Pittsburgh, 2015, http://www.crsp.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/REPORT.pdf. Pogge, Thomas. World Poverty and Human Rights. Polity, 2010. “Police: Teen Shot after Dragging Officer with Car.”WTAE , 7 Mar. 2013, www.wtae.com/article/police-teen-shot- after-dragging-officer-with-car-1/7460219. Potter, Gary. “The History of Policing in the United States,” Parts 1-6, Police Studies Online, Eastern Ken- tucky University, 2013, plsonline.eku.edu/in-sidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-2. “Prison Records.” Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, www.phmc.pa.gov/ Archives/Research-Online/Pages/Prison-Records.aspx Ribeiro, Alyssa. “‘A Period of Turmoil’: Pittsburgh’s April 1968 Riots and Their Aftermath.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 39, no. 2, Mar. 2013, pp. 147–171, doi:10.1177/0096144211435123. “RUTH WILSON GILMORE.” YouTube, Institute for Geographies of Justice, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmjg- PxElk7A&t=959s. Sampson, Robert J., et al. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.”Science , American Association for the Advancement of Science, 15 Aug. 1997, science.sciencemag.org/ content/277/5328/918. Samuelson, Wayne. “Czar of Pittsburgh Police.” Old Pittsburgh Photos and Stories | The Digs, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 23 Dec. 2014, newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2013/12/16/czar-of-pittsburgh- police/. Silver, Jonathan D. “Little Pennsylvania Communities Get Big Weapons from U.S. Military Surplus. “ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 13 Dec. 2014, www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2014/12/13/Little-communi ties-get-big-weapons-from-military-surplus/stories/201412130053. Silver, Jonathan D. “Violent Crime Dips in Pittsburgh in 2019 Amid Decline in Homicides, but Trouble Spots Remain.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 30 Jan. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/01/30/ pittsburgh-crime-statistics-2019-homicide-violent-property-theft-rates/stories/202001300130. Sostek, Anya. “Unearthing the Stories of Slaves in Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 19 Oct. 2008, www. post-gazette.com/local/2008/10/19/Unearthing-the-stories-of-slaves-in-Pittsburgh/stories/200810190278. Sullivan, Christopher M., and Zachary P. O’Keeffe. “Evidence That Curtailing Proactive Policing Can Reduce Major Crime.” Nature, 25 Sep. 2017, www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5. Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania, Stackpole Books, 2001. Tarr, Joel A. Devastation and Renewal: an Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005 Taylor, Rob Jr. “Family of Romir Talley, shot by Wilkinsburg police, wants answers.” New Pittsburgh Courier, 1 Jan. 2020, https://newpittsburghcourier.com/2020/01/02/family-of-romir-talley-shot- by-wilkinsburg-police-wants-answers/ “TIMELINE: 9 Officers Injured, 20 People Arrested When Violence Erupted after Peaceful Protest Monday.” WPXI, 2 June 2020, www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/live-updates-several-businesses-vandalized-numerous-arrests-made-after-3rd-day-unrest-pittsburgh/BLETYCTT7JFAJNTYC4XY44FS6U/. “Timeline: events in the Jonny Gammage case.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2005, https://old.post-gazette.com/ pg/05285/586622.stm. “Timeline: Nate Harper’s Career as Pittsburgh Police Chief.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 21 Feb. 2013, www. post-gazette.com/local/city/2013/02/21/Timeline-Nate-Harper-s-career-as-Pittsburgh-police-chief/ stories/201302210432+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us. Toland, Bill. “Prohibition Ended 80 Years Ago Today, but the Dry Movement Never Worked Here.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 Dec. 2013, www.post-gazette.com/life/2013/12/05/Hic-hic-hooray/stories/201312050249. Trotter, Joe William. River Jordan: African American Urban Life in the Ohio Val- ley. The University Press of Kentucky, 1998. Uggen, Christopher, and Sarah K.S. Shannon. “Productive Addicts and Harm Reduction: How Work Reduces Crime– But Not Drug Use.” Social Problems, vol. 61, no. 1, 2014, pp. 105–130., doi:10.1525/sp.2013.11225. United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. United States of America v. Nathan E. Harper. 22 Mar. 2013. Weichselbaum, Simone, and Wendi C. Thomas. “More Cops. Is It the Answer to Fighting Crime?” USA Today, 13 Feb. 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean- less-crime-experts-say/2818056002/ Wereschagin, Mike. “In Focus: Pittsburgh and Lancaster’s Approaches to Facial Recognition Technology.” Lancaster Online, 28 Jan. 2020, lancasteronline.com/news/politics/in-focus-pittsburgh-and-lancast- ers-approaches-to-facial-recognition-technology/article_ff528c0c-4133-11ea-86a2-071fe02dd21e.html. “Western State Penitentiary.” Register of Pennsylvania, vol. 5, no. 11, Mar. 1830, 167–170. Wimbley, Lacretia. “Report: 2019 Homicides in Pittsburgh Lowest in Two Decades; Rest of County Struggles to Match.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2 Jan. 2020, www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2020/01/02/ Report-2019-homicide-rate-in-Pittsburgh-at-lowest-in-two-decades-Allegheny-County-struggles-to- match/stories/202001020113. Winfree, L. Thomas, et al. Introduction to Criminal Justice: the Essentials. Wolters Kluwer, 2019, 109. Wright, Anne. “Stories: Pittsburgh.” EarthTime, CMU CREATE Lab, earthtime.org/stories/pittsburgh. Zimmerman, Alex. “99 Problems: Run-in with Jordan Miles Wasn’t First Controversial Incident for Three 99-Car Cops.” Pittsburgh City Paper, 17 Dec. 2014, www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/99-problems-run-in-with- jordan-miles-wasnt-first-controversial-incident-for-three-99-car-cops/Content?oid=1797137.

Cover images

Front: Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, 1937 Back: courtesy of WPXI ABOUT THE AUTHOR Disclaimer Suhail Gharaibeh is a Chicanx and Arab American writer This work is a free academic inquiry born and raised in Pittsburgh, and now studying for and as such does not reflect the official views of New York University or a B.A. in History at New York University. Their aca- the personal opinions of any parties demic work focuses on developing queer postcolonial associated with the University. analyses of power and capital in world history.

35 OUR ONLY HOPE FOR OUR COLLEC- TIVE LIBERATION IS A POLI- TICS OF DEEP SOLIDARITY ROOT- ED IN LOVE. IN RECENT DAYS, WE’VE SEEN WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN PEO- PLE OF ALL RACES, ETHNICITIES, GENDERS AND BACKGROUNDS RISE UP TOGETHER, STANDING IN SOLIDARITY FOR JUSTICE, PROTESTING, MARCHING AND SINGING TOGETHER, EVEN AS SWAT TEAMS AND TANKS ROLL IN. WE’VE SEEN OUR FACES IN ANOTHER AMERICAN MIRROR-- A REFLECTION OF THE BEST OF WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE CAN BECOME. THESE IMAGES MAY NOT HAVE DOMINATED THE MEDIA COV- ERAGE, BUT I’VE GLIMPSED IN A FOGGY MIRROR SCENES OF A BEAUTIFUL, COURA- GEOUS NATION STRUGGLING TO BE BORN. --MICHELLE ALEXANDER, “AMERICA, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE,” 2020