Talk at Occidental College “Historical Reflections on the War on Drugs and the ‘Crack Crisis’ in Late 20th Century L.A.”

Dr Donna Murch
•    Author of Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (2010)
•    Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University 
•    UCLA Bunche Center Visiting Scholar 2013-2014

The militarization of policing that emerged in the aftermath of the Watts Rebellions, and accelerated following the LAPD’s attack on the Black Panthers’ Headquarters on Central Avenue in 1969 and on the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1974 reached its apex during the city’s War on Drugs (WODs) in the 1980s and 1990s. As large numbers of black and brown youth were subjected to harassment, social marginalization, and incarceration, the “crack crisis” and War on Drugs became a major focus of community-based activism. Much of these efforts sought to counter police violence and criminalization on the one hand, and to expose state complicity in the rapid expansion of the crack cocaine economy on the other.  The resulting debate about policing and criminalization speaks to new forms of activism that emerge in an era of neoliberal retrenchment and state repression.