Michelle Phelps

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Emily Baxter

Michelle Phelps leans on a brick wall.

Michelle Phelps

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities sociology professor Michelle Phelps will discuss her new book, The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America, with Madison civil rights advocate Matthew Braunginn. The book traces how Minneapolis almost came to the point of defunding the police after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, and the city’s grappling with accountability, justice and safety.

media release: A Room of One's Own is excited to welcome Michelle Phelps and Matthew Braunginn for a conversation on Michelle's newly released book The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America. Join us for this important conversation on modern day politics of transforming and abolishing policing!

This is an in person event at A Room of One's Own.

About the book

The eruption of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence in 2014 spurred a wave of police reform. One of the places to embrace this reform was Minneapolis, Minnesota, a city long known for its liberal politics. Yet in May 2020, four of its officers murdered George Floyd. Fiery protests followed, making the city a national emblem for the failures of police reform. In response, members of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to “end” the Minneapolis Police Department. In The Minneapolis Reckoning, Michelle Phelps describes how Minneapolis arrived at the brink of police abolition. Her account of the city’s struggles over what constitutes real accountability, justice, and safety offers a vivid picture of the possibilities and limits of challenging police power today.

Michelle Phelps is associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the coauthor of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. Her research has been featured in the Washington Post, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, NPR, FiveThirtyEight, The Appeal, and other media outlets, and has informed criminal justice reform efforts by the Human Rights Watch and Pew Charitable Trusts Public Safety Performance Project.

Matthew Braunginn comes from a mixed-race family in Madison, WI, steeped in multigenerational Civil Rights and Anti-War activism. He was a co-founder of what was the Young, Gifted, and Black coalition, which came to be after the murder of Michael Brown during the first wave of Black Lives Matter—leading the organizing around opposing a new Dane County Jail and the murder of Tony Robinson at the hands of Madison Police Officer Matt Kenny. Due to an autoimmune disorder and disability coming with it, he has now moved to do more behind-the-scenes work, elevating in a supporting role, the continued cause of mutual liberation, abolition, and an end to the legacy of modern-Imperialism rooted in racialized and class-based violent oppression.