You Can’t Stop the Revolution is a vivid participant ethnography conducted from inside of Ferguson protests as the Black Lives Matter movement catapulted onto the global stage. Sociologist Andrea S. Boyles offers an everyday montage of protests, social ties, and empowerment that coalesced to safeguard black lives while igniting unprecedented twenty-first‑century resistance. Focusing on neighborhood crime prevention and contentious black citizen–police interactions in the context of preserving black lives, this book examines how black citizens work to combat disorder, crime, and police conflict. Boyles offers an insider’s analysis of cities like Ferguson, where a climate of indifference leaves black neighborhoods vulnerable to conflict, where black lives are seemingly expendable, and where black citizens are held responsible for their own oppression. You Can’t Stop the Revolution serves as a reminder that community empowerment is still possible in neighborhoods experiencing police brutality and interpersonal violence.
Andrea S. Boyles is Associate Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Tulane University. She is a feminist, race scholar, and the author of Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort.
"Andrea Boyles's three-year study captures poignant displays of commonly discounted resilience and determination that historically oppressed people equip themselves with to endure."—Rod K. Brunson, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Chair of Public Life, Northeastern University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
"Gives us a deeper understanding of what happened in Ferguson and why it continues. This book is brilliantly written and inspires us all to work for change."—Amy A. Hunter, St. Louis native and social justice speaker, activist, and creator of TED Talk "Lucky Zip Codes"
"A critical masterpiece that refocuses our attention around police violence onto Black bodies across geographical Black spaces not typically considered in the literature. Powerfully captures Ferguson in ways that problematize earlier assumptions about racialized policing and violence—and demonstrates how Blacks resist state and community violence. A major contribution!"—Jason M. Williams, coeditor of Black Males and the Criminal Justice System
"Very little scholarship in our field constitutes this type of solid, detailed, and well-integrated methodological work, marrying the micro and macro levels of data and analysis. A pathbreaking study of the black community engaging in community and political activity that the author frames as 'protecting and serving.'"—Peter Kraska, author of Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police
"It's fabulous. Vivid, passionate and engaged...gives voice to the participants and provides a series of sociological frames to understand and appreciate the movement and events. It is an impressive scholarly achievement."—Robert Schaeffer, author of Social Movements and Global Social Change
240 pp.6 x 9Illus: 4 b/w photographs
9780520298323$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Aug 2019