This workshop will focus on how clinics can engage on issues involving local police surveillance and work on various forms of anti-surveillance, privacy, and racial justice advocacy. Local law enforcement has amassed an increasingly broad arsenal of technologies, including video surveillance, facial recognition, automated license plate readers, noise/gunshot detection systems, social media exploitation tools, GPS tracking/electronic monitoring, body cameras, “predictive policing” software, and on and on. These technologies often threaten the civil rights of residents, can exacerbate or “techwash” racialized patterns of policing, and increasingly shape police behavior.
The workshop will explore how clinics can engage in a variety of advocacy strategies on these issues, using concrete examples drawn from the work of the facilitators and participants. These strategies will include civil rights litigation, policy research/advocacy, and movement lawyering in support of local racial justice and anti-surveillance coalitions.
During this interactive session, participants will (1) share the concerns that exist regarding police surveillance in their communities and describe local advocacy efforts; (2) have focused discussions on particular advocacy strategies (e.g. civil litigation, policy advocacy, criminal defense) that map onto the lawyering modalities practiced by workshop attendees; and (3) discuss pedagogical opportunities/challenges and ethical issues that can arise in the course of working alongside local organizers, advocates, and coalitions on these issues.