| Title | : | We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest and Possibility |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1642594539 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781642594539 |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published November 10, 2020 |
In this urgent and incisive collection of new interviews bookended by two new essays, Marc Lamont Hill critically examines the “pre-existing conditions” that have led us to this moment of crisis and upheaval, guiding us through both the perils and possibilities, and helping us imagine an abolitionist future.
We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest and Possibility Reviews
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‘Language is never neutral. Language is always political.’
2020, what a year. It was one that certainly cast a spotlight on a lot of social, economic and political issues, injustices and failings, ones Marc Lamont Hill expertly analyzes and addresses in the essays and interviews within We Still Here. While it may be painful to relive some of these moments and much of the individual subject matter will be familiar from Twitter threads and Instagram infographics during the summer, Hill brilliantly distills a vast array of topics from the pandemic and the socio-economic effects to the Black Lives Matter movement and the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor that lead to the protests over the summer, and shows how the American headline news is all part of larger systemic issues. Done through conversation with
Frank Barat (and including an extraordinary forward by the amazing
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor), Hill’s analysis and insights make this a crucial work of anti-racism and social criticism surrounding the events of 2020 that takes an academic approach while delivering in an accessible manner.
Published in November, 2020 there may be apprehension that this book is still too close to the ongoing issues and struggles addressed in the book, but something I found most impressive was the clear and concise ways Hill is able to speak on the topics--ones we’ve all been currently reading about--and finding such incisive insights while finding key connections. There is a lot going on here and many of the ideas cross over between each chapter, but I’d like to take a look at a few of his key topics. This was a year where, in Hill’s words:‘too many Americans had shown little regard for what was needed from every single one of us: to make our own selves uncomfortable in order to ensure another’s life...a high-stakes call to become Martin Luther King;s ‘beloved community’
There is a lengthy discussion on how the pandemic exponentially harmed already marginalized communities. ‘Your proximity to death makes you disposable,’ he says ‘your disposability makes you exploitable.’ He discusses how this has affected communities of color and especially those already without adequate housing. Hospitals in under-resourced areas also bore an extra weight, being overrun without adequate safeguards, with staff often making and reusing their own PPE in the early months. The chapter Death Eligible addresses concerns with prisons, both from the pandemic aspects with high infection rates where 'the incarcerated were used to make masks and hand sanitizer that they were not allowed to use, while they got sick,' but also as a continuing conversation from ideas expressed by abolitionists such as
Angela Y. Davis. You lived it, you’ve seen the articles, but Hill condolences it all into a very pointed argument that is very effective.
The economic conditions are particularly enlightening through Hill’s discourse on the pandemic. He focuses on the way it will likely lead to growing inequality. ‘The June 2020 Global Economic Prospects Report shows that the pandemic could push 71 million people into extreme poverty’ and ‘the overwhelming majority of the new poor will be concentrated in already vulnerable areas.’ Much of this he terms under the concept of ‘Corona Capitalism’ which is, in effect, very similar to the warnings of what
Naomi Klein refers to as the ‘
shock doctrine’, or how the powerful exploit disasters or times of uncertainty for profit and ramming through neoliberal policy (this is best examined in her book
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism). Hill lays out a definition of his variant, Corona Capitalism:‘Corona capitalism refers to the economic conditions and institutional arrangements that made the vulnerable more likely to experience premature death during the Covid-19 pandemic. Corona capitalism also speaks to the ways that human crises are exploited by the powerful, who coordinate with governments to create policies that enable them to profit during such moments...it describes how centuries of racial capitalism and decades of neoliberal economic policy not only created the conditions for the Covid-19 pandemic but also informed our legal, economic, medical, ecological, cultural, and social responses to it.’
Through this lens he critiques the roll-out of PPP (my own House Rep, Bill Huizenga, took in near a $million in PPP then fired his employees anyways), stimulus checks, and puts a specific focus on companies such as Amazon that made massive profits during this time. He argues that while Amazon did not do anything that was illegal, it highlights the ways government picks winners and losers and legislates to the whims of the already-powerful.
‘The conundrum in many ways represents what it means to be Black in America: In what way am I going to resist death today?’
Most of the book, however, is focused on the summer protests and the growing Black Lives Matter movement. He argues that these protests should never be called riots, as riot implies random occurrences and chaos whereas the movement centered around organized ideas and demonstrations and states that ‘rebellion’ would be a better term (this was a new discourse to me that I found interesting) because ‘it spotlights organized resistance by the oppressed against the systems that dominate them.’ He also draws a line between the discomfort and loss of faith in the system during the pandemic to the uprisings that were sparked by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor as well as Amy Cooper
making false claims to the police on bird-watcher Christian Cooper. It was an amalgamation of grievances and injustices that made them inevitable, he argues, and not a singular event.
‘Black Feminism is the political, intellectual, and moral anchor of our freedom struggle.’
He has a particularly interesting discussion on intersectionality and the importance of listening to Black Feminists and how ‘we have always measured Black pain by its impact on Black men.’ Breonna Taylor, from Grand Rapids, Mi right next to me, comes up here, as her murder barely registered in the public eye until months later during the summer rebellion. He says this is in part due to the lack of footage, ‘as the spectacle of violence is so often a critical element’ he says in criticism of the public fetishization of seeing violence in order to acknowledge it, but also due to her being a Black woman. In the chapter Justice for “All” he argues in favor of using the phrase All Black Lives Matter to ensure ‘our humanity does not hinge on our social acceptability, respectability, or proximity to power’ and to hold space for the most marginalized as well, particularly Black women and trans women who are more often impacted.
This leads into ideas on how justice should be had for all, and that even those who have committed a crime do not deserve to be killed.
Ta-Nehisi Coates once wrote that a police officer should not be judge, jury and executioner, and Hill argues as follows:’We can have moral critiques of the neighborhood drug dealer, the person who robs houses, or someone incarcerated for a violent crime. These critiques cannon, however, lead us to ignore injustices against those who do hard within our communities. Such a position yields the lives of those we deem ‘bad people’ to the violence of the state. It also denies the possibility of healing, redemption, and transformation. Instead, we must create mechanisms for holding individuals accountable for their actions while asserting their fundamental right to love, investment, and protection.’
In multiple essays he addresses the notion of State Violence and how the State seems to have a monopoly on the ability to enact violence. He analyzes Martin Luther Kings statements on non-violence and states that ‘King’s effectiveness as a nonviolent leader hinged on the presence of actual violence.’ ‘Empires have always maintained their power through violence,’ he says, continuing in the chapter Language of the Unheard as follows:’Even as we applaud King for his discipline and moral maturity, as well as his political acumen, it is wholly unreasonable to demand unconditional nonviolence from all oppressed people. The moral authority of the oppressed cannot be conditioned on their commitment to using their own bodies as a ransom for liberation. To do so is to normalize the violence of the oppressor.’
Hill fears that insistances on nonviolence normalize the notion that only the State can activate violence and use it as a tool. While he does not advocate for violence, it is an interesting point to consider, particularly when compounded with his analysis of the way ‘cultural practices do not merely encourage us to valorize the police. They also prepare us to perpetually grant police the benefit of the doubt...they compel us to justify police misconduct as a necessary evil.’ This section is particularly interesting and dives into cultural normalizations of police and the ways media has presented them over generations.
Police killings also makes a large portion of his statements, as that was the crux of the issue this summer. The way he frames it, though, I found quite effective:’The story of US police violence is not ‘sometimes violent police kill us.’ The more accurate narrative is ‘US policing is a violent institution that uses illegal and excessive force against its most vulnerable citizens routinely. SOmetimes, in the process of engaging in ritual violence against us, they also kill us.’
This seems something to consider, especially as so much online discourse battles over the effectiveness of slogans and framing and how the phrase ‘defund the police’ supposedly turned people off because it was too complex an idea to be embodied in a catch phrase.
‘We must struggle to create a world where harm is met with restoration, justice is not confused with punishment, and safety is not measured by the number of human beings we imprison.’
There is so much to talk about here, but you get the idea and I think it would be better served actually reading Hill’s words in full. He does a phenomenal job distilling a wide variety of topics and showing their interconnectedness, while finding the pulse of the issues of 2020 and examining them in highly efficient and effective ways. It helps to have a bit of prior-knowledge going into a few sections but the discussions are beneficial for those still new to the ideas as well as those continue to grapple with them. Often works like this face the criticism that they emphasize problems but never solutions, though Hill addresses this in passing at a few points arguing that until we have these conversations and acknowledge these issues in full, we can never hope to correct them. May this book be another step in the way to looking these issues in the face and standing tall to find a better way.
4.5/5
‘The challenge before us is to never relent. WE cannot let our mission be coopted. We cannot reduce our radical vision to a reformist strategy. We cannot concede our right to reparations. We cannot settle for nicer occupiers or warmer cages. We cannot scale down our dreams. We cannot give up.
We Still Here.
Until victory. Always.’ -
I love Marc Lamont Hill, but I was very skeptical of this book. I typically dislike when publishers rush publishing things that need more time to digest; writers need time to write and research in depth about a topic so publishing a book on a pandemic when the pandemic is still ongoing? I was skeptical. But if any publisher could pull it off it was Haymarket and if any writer could pull it off, it was Hill. This book so excellently contextualized all the ongoing pandemics in this country - coronavirus, policing, racism, poverty.
If you're someone who didn't consider yourself radical or informed prior to the June 2020 protests, I highly recommend reading this now for further learning and language aroudn race, policing, poverty and more. -
An extraordinary analysis of our current times.
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4.5/5 stars
Concise and very accessible, while looking at the issues with nuance -
“The thing we have to do to keep us alive could also be the thing that kills us.”
Marc Lamont Hill’s compelling collection of essays and conversations “We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest & Possibility” perfectly encapsulates the social unrest and unpredictability of the year 2020.
In some ways, this book illustrates how the crises of 2020 are connected to, and exacerbated by, long-standing systemic issues. “We Still Here” asks us to wrestle with those issues, such as poor governmental preparation for pandemics, a disease that requires social distancing in a world where not all people can afford to be distanced from others, a healthcare system that serves the interest of the wealthy and policing that further marginalizes and harms the most vulnerable among us.
Both a timely, courageous & important book that challenges us to not only give a closer look at the issues of today, but also to reimagine what that world can look like when we work to prioritize the lives of human beings. -
This is a great little book for activists and would-be activists alike. It offers important context about Covid-19 and the way it has impacted Black and Brown communities disproportionately. It also connects the struggle to Defund the Police in a global context. It's a brilliant little book that inspires and motivates. As always, Marc Lamont Hill's voice is resonant and powerful.
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more like 3.5- i knew a lot of this info already and so for me it felt like an intro book to these topics and i think was a good quick easy read for beginners who want to learn more about policing and protesting but wasn’t for me. but i do think in like 20 years this will be really useful to see how the pandemic affected the country and how policing and the pandemic can be tied in together.
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Must read
Written in a form of the interview It will answer a lot of your questions about BLM, protests policing and how pandemics affecting black communities across the US. Must read -
Challenging, thoughtful, full of wisdom I need to hear and thoughts I need to reconsider. Concise and conversational. Highly recommend it.
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This read like my Twitter feed for this year. I think in years to come this could give ppl a feel for the moment in 2020. I do need to get over or admit that I have an aural displeasure for the term "black bodies" instead of "black people." Especially when referring to living ppl. That's a "me problem" and doesn't really affect how I felt about this book.
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“We should not be afraid of new people joining the movement. The only way we can strengthen and expand our resistance is by more people becoming politicized and radicalized. But it is important that we engage in the type of political education that allows people to develop an understanding of what’s at stake when we make particular choices. Otherwise, I would rather have a small number of committed folk who are going to make the demands that get us free than to have a coopted and compromised mass movement that keeps us marching in place.”
#MarcLamontHill #WeStillHere
Education is the key of resistance. This book allows us to understand the #BLM movement, the long life struggle, black feminism, Corona capitalism, and Trump’s role in increasing racism. It highlights the problem with all lives matter, the George Floyd’s movement, and black politicians. Definitely recommend it.
“The thing we have to do to keep us alive could also be the thing that kills us.”
يجب ألا نخاف من انضمام أشخاص جدد للحركة السياسية. الطريقة الوحيدة التي يمكننا بها تقوية وتوسيع مقاومتنا هي أن يصبح المزيد من الناس مسيسين. ولكن من المهم أن ننخرط في نوع التثقيف السياسي والتعليم الذي يسمح للأشخاص بتطوير فهم ما هو على المحك عند اتخاذ خيارات معينة. وإلا، فإنني أفضّل عدد صغير من الأشخاص الملتزمين الذين سيقدمون المطالب التي تحررنا على أن تكون لدينا حركة جماهيرية مختلطة ومهزومة تبقينا في مسيرتنا ".
#مارك_لامونت_هيل #مازلنا
اؤمن كثيراً بأن التعليم هو مفتاح المقاومة. وهذا الكتاب يتيح لنا فهم حركة حياة السود مهمة، ونضالهم الطويل حتى قبل هذه الحركة، ويشرح لنا عن النسوية السوداء، ورأسمالية كورونا، ودور ترامب في زيادة العنصرية. إنه يسلط الضوء على مشكلة من استبدل حياة السود مهمة بكل الأرواح مهمة، وعن مظاهرات جورج فلويد، ودور السياسيين السود في رفع الظلم والعنصرية. كتاب اكاديمي قصير لكنه مهم جداً جداً.
يقول مارك لامونت عن المقاومة ونضال الحرية: "الشيء الذي يتعين علينا القيام به لإبقائنا على قيد الحياة هو الشيء الذي يقتلنا أيضًا". -
A succinct snapshot of a crisis and the culture that led to it. Detailing the progress of Covid-19 from its beginning til August 2020, We Still Here details how the pandemic exposed the racism and inequities in our country more than ever before. Although not much of this information was new to me, Marc Lamont Hill does an expert job of interweaving the societal ills of modern day into a brief, cohesive picture, something I find to be an impressive feat.
This book would be a great one to recommend to those new to antiracism work and I can see it becoming a critical resource when teaching about this moment in time. -
This is a very short book that was exactly what I was looking for, a sort of primer to the current moment, with a black sociologist looking at the significance of the 2020 anti-racist uprising in more or less real time. It also covers the affects of the coronavirus on the black community, as well as other vulnerable populations, in the context of global capitalism. It's an excellent grounding and introduction to the main issues of today, so even though it's short (taking the form of an extended interview), it's well worth reading.
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Honest, academic, yet understandable to all the readers. Offers insights on the BLM movement, the pandemic, and the rising awareness of white supremacists. A guide to how to move forward prioritizing the needs of black women, girls, and femmes as well as the other minority groups of black and brown folx with the belief that all black lives matter. The white reality I have resided in continues to crumble on a personal level as these powerful narratives offer their guidance.. I am so grateful!
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I really loved the question/answer format most of the chapters followed, along with the music interludes between chapters. They made it a really great audiobook! An interesting overview of a lot of what's been happening in 2020.
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Essential reading for our times; the title has it all. Nothing new if you've been following along, but everything put so succinctly and directly.
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I enthusiastically agree with and appreciate the analysis in this book on the issues affecting communities of color regarding COVID-19, policing, and racial justice issues but I did not love this book. The Q&A format came off as a bit contrived and sanctimonious in places, and I would have been interested to hear what questions BLM activists and allies are still struggling to answer at this point in history. But mainly I am concerned with the inaccessible language that would put off those just waking up to the realities presented in this book.
I lead a rolling anti-racism seminar for our church, for mainly for elderly white churchgoers just now seeing these realities of America for the first time, and am always looking for new books for the group to read and process together. This book isn't one I can consider for this group, given hyperbolic-sounding analysis such as: poor/non-existent treatment of COVID-19 in prisons turns = US prisons are now "death camps"-with all the imagery and moral weight that phrase conjures. Pro-police narratives are referred to as "cop-a-ganda"; I chuckled at this coined term, but my church group would walk out if this language was used in our sessions.
Outside of these quibbles, this is a succinct and well-organized articulation of a number of themes animating racial justice movements in 2020, and it deserves a wide readership. -
Revolutionary times require revolutionary new vision and action. Reform is not the answer. It never has been. Abolition of systems that brutalize Black, Brown, Indigenous, Muslim, women, femme, girls, people with disabilities, poor and working people-marginalized and vulnerable people must happen for justice and democracy to be more than platitudes. On the lips of politicians.
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Hard to rate, as it was rather 101 for me but might be much more interesting to someone just getting acquainted with these issues. The pandemic stuff, like everything written early in the pandemic, is interesting to contemplate in light of subsequent events.
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What a book. A frank contextualization of our current crises in America—COVID-19, capitalism, racism, and policing, to name a few.
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Content notes: all the things the title hints at
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This was a really great take on abolitionist and anti-racist views from a COVID-19 standpoint. Super educational and insightful.
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4.5 stars rounded up
great info, would be a great start for someone who wants to be introduced to state violence and abolition versus someone who knows so much about it already. but still a great, informative, and impactful read! -
Raw, edgy analyses of the systems of oppression present in US society. Last couple chapters really sent it!
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4.5 stars. A great primer on the issues we all face today and should be aware of.
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“The moral authority of the oppressed cannot be conditioned on their commitment to using their own bodies as a ransom for liberation. To do so is to normalize the violence of the oppressor.”
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A really informative, concise analysis on the main issues of the last several years that culminated in a pandemic and "corona capitalism", protests in response to systemic police violence against people our nation has deemed "disposable", and how to enforce change on the United States' systems of oppression. While this pandemic we are still experiencing on such a scale is new to us all, the systems of exploitation, oppression and violence now effectively monopolized by the United States government is deeply ingrained into the character of this nation. For anyone seeking a narrative for why last year turned out the way it did, Marc Lamont Hill beautifully clarifies the sociology behind oppression in the U.S., and the exigence for a social justice movement to protect our most vulnerable communities from police violence and shift our economies away from a system of exploitation and human disposability.
