When Government Kills: State Violence and Youth Movements

Occurring Friday evening, October 25, 2019, 7:30 – 9:30 pm as part of the Kent State conference: “Commemorating Violent Conflicts and Building Sustainable Peace”

LOCATION: The ballroom of the Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

How can it happen that children and teens sometimes find themselves looking up the barrels of their own governments’ guns? The May 4 shootings shocked the United States but were hardly unique. We will use a fishbowl discussion format to consider the causes and consequences of this surprisingly common form of state violence, and ways to reduce it. In a Fishbowl discussion, participants seated inside the inner circle, or ‘fishbowl,’ actively contribute to the discussion; they ask questions, share thoughts and opinions. Those on the outside circle or circles listen carefully to the ideas presented and may decide to rotate into the inner circle discussion or to ask question of the group in the center.

• Christine Nobiss is Plains Cree-Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation. She is a Decolonizer with Seeding Sovereignty and directs the SHIFT and Land Resilience Projects. Christine holds a Masters Degree in Religious Studies (Native American focus).
• Thomas M. Grace, Ph.D., is the author of Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016). Thomas is one of the nine surviving casualties of the Ohio National Guard gunfire in May 1970 and was part of a group of plaintiffs that won a 1974 US Supreme Court decision, Scheuer v. Rhodes, for their right to sue Ohio National.
• Tony Gaskew, Ph.D., is a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. He has over twenty years of policing experience. His research focuses on the relationship between policing and the Black experience in the U.S and beyond. He is the author 3 books including Policing Muslim American Communities (Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).
• Sibley Hawkins has been with the International Center for Transitional Justice since 2014, focusing primarily on gender justice and truth seeking in Côte d’Ivoire, Nepal, Syria, and Tunisia and elsewhere. She holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in Human Rights and International Law from New York University