From Graduate Practicum to Activist Research Collective: A Roundtable with Members of the Policing in Chicago Research Group and Our Community Partners

Michael De Anda Muñiz is a sociology PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include race, gender, and class inequality, culture, Latinas/os, women-of-color feminisms, and art. His dissertation examines the ways that Latina community-engaged artists in Chicago cross, blur, and challenge boundaries and operate within alternative artistic spaces.

Janaé Bonsu is an activist-scholar based in Chicago. Janaé is a PhD candidate in social work at the University of Illinois at Chicago where her research focuses on the relationship between Black women’s experiences of interpersonal and state violence, police trust, and safety strategies. She also currently serves as the national codirector of BYP100, a national member-based organization of eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds organizing through a Black queer feminist lens.

Lydia Dana is working on a PhD in sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to her work with the Policing in Chicago Research Group, she studies relationships between social service provision and surveillance in the post-welfare context. Prior to her doctoral program, she earned a master’s degree in gender and cultural studies while conducting advocacy and writing grants in support of racial, economic, and gender justice, and the preservation of indigenous land and languages.

Sangeetha Ravichandran is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago with an MA in art therapy. She has worked alongside survivors of interpersonal and state violence for over ten years. Her current research examines biosurveillance with a focus on connections between feminism, carcerality, and liberal counterinsurgency.

Haley Volpintesta is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UIC with MA degrees in human rights and sociology. She has worked alongside youth impacted by state violence and the street economy for over fifteen years. Her research examines the limits of the law as a tool for governing sex commerce and protecting youth who trade sex.

Andy Clarno is associate professor of sociology and African American studies, and coordinator of the Policing in Chicago Research Group at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Neoliberal Apartheid: Palestine/Israel and South Africa after 1994 (2017).

Rodrigo Anzures-Oyorzabal (he/they) was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, and raised in Chicago. His most recent social justice work includes being the policy and advocacy manager for the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, where he worked with queer and trans youth to create more affirming school environments in Illinois, and deportation defense organizing with Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD). He is constantly inspired by the young people of OCAD and their families.

Rosi Carrasco played key roles in multiple immigrant rights mobilizations in Chicago and nationally, including the massive demonstrations in 2006 and 2007. Carrasco has participated in acts of civil disobedience protesting deportations, has worked as an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations, and is currently working with Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights to fight deportations. Carrasco has been working toward ending the use of the Chicago Gang Database since the campaign began.

Tania Unzueta Carrasco is the policy director for Mijente, a national Latinx political organization. She ran the campaign against the Chicago Gang Database for three years. She is also a longtime, nationally known immigrant rights organizer, particularly for her work with undocumented immigrants in Chicago and around the country.

Rey Wences is a queer and formerly undocumented national organizer known for their work against deportations and criminalization of the undocumented community. They are based in Chicago, Illinois, where they work closely with members of Organized Communities Against Deportations, a collective that organizes against deportations, immigration detention, and incarceration of immigrant communities.