UCLA Chicana/o studies students host event on police brutality

Students held an open workshop on police brutality Thursday in Dickson Court.

About 100 students attended Dialogue: Law Enforcement Power, organized by 47 students of the honors class Chicana/o Studies 166: “Paulo Freire for Chicana/Chicano Classroom.” The event featured a workshop and discussions led by guest speakers, including a former public defender and students.

The main purpose of the event was to allow students to engage in a dialogue about police brutality and to reflect upon it, said Crista Lee, a third-year Chicana/o studies and geography student in the class. Lee said the students held the event with the hope that talking about the issue would cause some participants to be more generally aware of police brutality and prompt them to protest it in the future.

The event was part of a class project that had been planned throughout the quarter. Students said they thought the workshop was relevant partially because of protests this year and last year in response to high-profile incidents where individuals were killed by police.

Dion Raymond, a discrimination prevention officer at UCLA, and Kim McGill, an organizer for the Youth Justice Coalition, an Inglewood-based activist group that focuses on race and the criminal justice system, led the workshop.

McGill spoke about her experiences with law enforcement growing up as a white person in a predominantly black neighborhood and how she thinks they differed from the experiences of others she knew because of their race. She said police officers would often ask her what she was doing in the neighborhood, whether she had been kidnapped and if she needed a ride home, while police officers sometimes asked her friends of color if they or their families were gang members.

At the end of the workshop, students asked questions and gave personal accounts of their own experiences with law enforcement. Other students sat outside in two circles and talked about how they think policing can be improved through greater transparency of law enforcement tactics and procedures as well as involvement of the community.

Some students said they benefited from the format of the workshop because they felt more welcome to participate than they do in some of their more formal classroom lectures.

“This event was great because having safe spaces where people can openly talk about controversial issues is very important,” said Alejandro Bravo, a fourth-year Chicana/o studies student not in the class.

Other students said they liked that the event was put on by their peers.

“I appreciate that the students put on this event because it shows us that we can bring change and have an impact on campus,” said Natalia Toscano, a third-year Chicana/o studies student. “They’re bringing awareness to the campus so the campus can take it to the community.”