Synopses & Reviews
Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Anthony Baez, Patrick Dorismond. New York City has been rocked in recent years by the fate of these four men at the hands of the police. But police brutality in New York City is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that refers not only to the hyperviolent response of white male police officers as in these cases, but to an entire set of practices that target homeless people, vendors, and sexual minorities.
The complexity of the problem requires a commensurate response, which Zero Tolerance fulfills with a range of scholarship and activism. Offering perspectives from law and society, women's studies, urban and cultural studies, labor history, and the visual arts, the essays assembled here complement, and provide a counterpoint, to the work of police scholars on this subject.
Framed as both a response and a challenge to official claims that intensified law enforcement has produced New York City's declining crime rates, Zero Tolerance instead posits a definition of police brutality more encompassing than the use of excessive physical force. Further, it develops the connections between the most visible and familiar forms of police brutality that have sparked a new era of grassroots community activism, and the day-to-day violence that accompanies the city's campaign to police the "quality of life."
Contributors include: Heather Barr, Paul G. Chevigny, Derrick Bell, Tanya Erzen, Dayo F. Gore, Amy S. Green, Paul Hoffman, Andrew Hsiao, Tamara Jones, Joo-Hyun Kang, Andrea McArdle, Bradley McCallum, Andrew Ross, Eric Tang, Jacqueline Tarry, Sasha Torres, and Jennifer R. Wynn.
Review
“The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance.”
-Willis G. Regier,The Chronicle Review
Review
“No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience.”
-The Times Higher Education Supplement,
Review
“The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes.”
-New Criterion,
Review
“Published in the geek-chic format.”
-BookForum,
Review
“Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs.”
-Tricycle,
Synopsis
“The Book of Karna” relates the events of the two dramatic days after the defeat of the great warriors and generals Bhishma and Drona, in which Karna, great hero and the eldest Pándava, leads the Káurava army into combat. This first volume of "Karna" depicts mighty battles in gory detail, sets the scene for Karna's tragic death, and includes a remarkable verbal duel between Karna and his reluctant charioteer Shalya, the king of the Madras, as they hurl abuse at each other before entering the fray.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
About the Author
Andrea McArdle is a teacher in, and Faculty coordinator for, the Lawyering Program at New York University School of Law.
Tanya Erzen has written for The Nation and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. They are both doctoral candidates in the American Studies Program at New York University.
Table of Contents
Policing the quality of life. Turnstile jumpers and broken windows : policing disorder in New York City / Tanya Erzen -- Policing madness : people with mental illness and the NYPD / Heather Barr -- Giuliani time : urban policing and Brooklyn South / Sasha Torres -- The police. Can zero tolerance last? Voices from inside the precinct / Jennifer R. Wynn -- Girlz in blue : women policing violence in the NYPD / Amy S. Green -- No justice, no peace / Andrea Mcardle -- Activism. Mothers of Invention : the families of police-brutality victims and the movement they've built / Andrew Hsiao -- International human rights law and police reform / Paul Hoffman -- Police brutality in the New Chinatown. Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence. Organizing Asian communities -- An interview with Derrick Bell : reflections on race, crime, and legal activism / Andrea Mcardle -- Organizing at the intersections : a roundtable discussion of police brutality through the lens of race, class, and sexual identities / Dayo Folayan Gore, Tamara Jones, and Joo-Hyun Kang -- Bearing witness / Bradley Mccallum and Jacqueline Tarry.