Erica Hannickel

Associate Professor of Environmental History

For the past few weeks, I have been caught in an eddy of anger and pain, but also hopefulness. I was fifteen when the Rodney King protests and riots swept through Los Angeles. I remember them vividly, and I believe they in part led me to major in ethnic studies at UC San Diego.

We have seen this movement ebb and flow over the past thirty years, with increasing focus solidifying around Black Lives Matter in 2013 with Trayvon Martin’s murder. I am hopeful because the response to George Floyd’s murder is now much more widespread—it is both national and global—and much more multiracial and intense. I also see various news outlets using the phrase “systemic racism” and finally highlighting the difference between legal and effective protests versus simply always tossing out the word “riots.” It also seems to me that more white people are listening, understanding, and participating this time. I hope that all of this will be the crack that it takes to make the whole racially unjust system shatter.

• Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation and the Land, Leah Penniman,  2018.
• The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, George Lipstiz,  1998.
• The Street, Ann Petry, 1946 novel.
• Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture, Britt Rusert,  2017.

Brian Tochterman

Associate Professor of Sustainable Community Development

Prior to the death of George Floyd and the uprisings that ensued, I had been thinking a lot about the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on our accepted notions and norms of social capital and community practices. It really had me down in some respects. Imagine my surprise to see the streets suddenly swell in solidarity in the name of change and justice. It’s here that I should note that I was a New Yorker and a Minneapolitan prior to living in Ashland, so it has been quite the emotional rollercoaster watching from afar as my former homes become the epicenters of death and life or sadness and hope over these last few months.

Right now I’m closely following what emerges from the Minneapolis City Council with regards to disbanding the police department, because empowered communities or communities with self-determination and self-policing is really what we aspire to in Sustainable Community Development, at least in theory. I’m very interested in seeing how that might play out in practice in a place that’s close to home.

• Michelle Alexander’s column, “America, This is Your Chance,”  The New York Times, June 8, 2020, captures the potential of the moment and offers a series of reading suggestions.
• The writings of Ruth Wilson Gilmore
• Keenanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s work, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation and Race for Profit in particular. Also has several recent columns in The New York Times and The New Yorker.
• “Histories of Police, Policing, and Police Unions in the United States,” Matt Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen. The Metropolis.
• “Reading Towards Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness,” from the website Radical History Review.

Dani O’Brien

Assistant Professor of Education

As an educator and teacher educator, this moment has me reflecting on the role of schools in upholding white supremacy. The school-to-prison pipeline, high stakes testing, zero-tolerance discipline, deficit pedagogies, and other practices and policies have played a role in harming BIPOC communities. However, I believe that schools can and must be a site of possibility and hope that challenge white supremacy and affirm that Black Lives Matter. I am inspired by the Black Lives Matter at School movement and their demands for schools. I hope that Northland students who are upset about what is happening and are looking to create a better world will consider teaching, as we need more teachers who are committed to social justice and anti-racism.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, Beverly Daniel Tatum, 1997.

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, Monique W. Morris, 2016

Black Appetite. White Food: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom, Jamilla Lyiscott, 2019.

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, Bettina Love, 2019.

Teaching for Black Lives, Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au (eds.), 2018.