Tag: 1033

Community Activists Question Timing Of Grand Jury Announcement

NPR 11/25/14 By Laura Sullivan For weeks, Ferguson police and local leaders met with community groups and activists to work out a plan for the aftermath of the grand jury’s decision whether to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. But any results of that […]

Post-Election Ferguson: Bipartisan Congress to Demilitarize Police

HUFFINGTON POST 10/21/14 By Michael Shank As the Ferguson fight rages on, a potentially more courageous Congress stands ready to return, post-elections, to shut down that which rightfully enraged protestors initially. Last month, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives finally took a stand against the […]

Police Militarization Must Be Halted

POLITIX 10/13/14 By Michael Shank Last month, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives finally took a stand against the growing militarization of our police forces and our main streets. Shortly after Congressmen Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) introduced the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement […]

Stop Police Militarization

ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION 08/28/14 By Hank Johnson As seen in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution: http://on-ajc.com/1lhRBWk U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, is a member of the House Armed Services and Judiciary Committees. Michael Shank, associate director for legislative affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, contributed to this article. […]

Your Neighborhood Is About to Look a Little More Like Afghanistan

POLICYMIC 06/10/14 By Tom McKay The news: As the United States concludes its messy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is finding itself left with vast armories of powerful military hardware designed for the streets of Baghdad and Kabul. In order to avoid sending billions of dollars of equipment […]

America’s Police Are Looking More and More Like the Military

THE GUARDIAN 10/07/13 By Michael Shank and Elizabeth Beavers America’s streets are looking more and more like a war zone. Last week, in a small county in upstate New York with a population of roughly 120,000 people, county legislators approved the receipt of a 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) […]