Residents across Connecticut continue to protest and speak out in response to the police killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer.
This hour, as residents demand police accountability, how should they also work towards dismantling systemic racism in our state?
We talk with State Representative Robyn Porter, who has worked on police accountability legislation. We find out what more needs to be done to reform police departments and how it ties into addressing the underlying structural inequalities in Connecticut.
And we hear from a criminal justice thinker who asks us to consider: what are police for in the first place?
We want to hear from you. Have you participated in a protest in the last week?
GUESTS:
- Representative Robyn Porter - State Representative for New Haven and Hamden; she is a member of the Connecticut General Assembly Judiciary Committee
- Tracey Meares - Walton Hale Hamilton Professor at Yale Law School; Founding Director of The Justice Collaboratory; in 2014, she was a member of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
- Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. - Artistic director of HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford
On June 4 at 8pm, HartBeat Ensemble is holding a zoom event described as a "virtual space specifically for Greater Hartford-area BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) artists, activists, students -- really anyone who needs a BIPOC affinity space for strategizing, decompressing, healing and strategizing in these traumatic times." For more information and registration, click here.
Cat Pastor contributed to this show.
