Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
KENOSHA, Wis. — Eleven days before a White police officer ignited protests here by shooting a Black man seven times in the back, Porsche Bennett heard a commotion outside her house. In a neighboring backyard, she saw police taking a Black man to the ground. Out of instinct, Bennett said, she pulled out her phone.
The video she streamed to Facebook that night shows a Kenosha officer punching the handcuffed man twice in the ribs. Ordered to disperse while filming from about 15 feet away, Bennett yells: “We’re not moving until we know he’s safe!” An officer replies: “Do you want to get shot?”
Instead, Bennett was arrested — another indignity at the hands of an overwhelmingly White police force that has long drawn charges of targeting the city’s Black and Latino communities. As in other cities rocked by police shootings this summer, simmering tensions between local residents and law enforcement fueled the explosion of violence that followed the Aug. 23 incident that left Jacob Blake, a father of three, paralyzed from the waist down.