This issue begins with a response to the policing problem in the United States. The policing problem made so manifest these past months by the response that law enforcement officers gave to white supremacists at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that was so grossly different from the responses that law enforcement officers commonly gave to #BLM protestors around the country during the summer and fall months of 2020. Scholar and artist Christopher-Rasheem McMillan critically and poetically upbraids the system that has not managed—even, perhaps, has not tried—to transcend the character of its founding in the pursuit and punishment of people who attempted to escape slavery. McMillan moves between theology, critical history, and poetry, in the tradition of scholarship that matters, insisting that we see what is wrong and commit to making it right.
On the same topic, Laura Malaver's review of performance artist Dragonfly's ABSCONDED: #EjectionDay provides an...