Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Violence in Society

The United States is an exceptionally violent country, increasingly unable or unwilling to stem violence in its many forms. A growing corporate crime wave has gone unprosecuted and unpunished. Meanwhile, the country has doubled down on pursuing people accused of street and drug crimes and immigration offenses. Corporate impunity, the financialization of the economy, militarized policing, the burgeoning carceral state, and the forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere all have fostered corporate, economic, and state violence in America.

Americans lived in a different reality in 1980: Vermont was the only state that let residents carry a concealed firearm without a permit. Twenty-four states now allow this—and numerous other gun laws have fallen by the wayside. When police were accused of wrongdoing, the default answer from society's arbiters was: "The police wouldn't lie." Editors steered clear of stories about rape and sexual violence. The word "homeless" wasn't in common use. The fabric of the middle class had not yet begun fraying.

In All Clear, safety expert Chris Joffe shows district and school leaders how to create safety in school environments and develop a plan for responding effectively in the event of emergency—whether it be from an allergy attack or an active shooter. In our ever-changing educational and cultural landscape, this is a critical resource. A sought-after safety trainer and consultant for schools, Chris draws on decades of experience to guide and empower district and school leaders to prepare for and execute crucial next steps in the wake of a school emergency.

Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps, and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas.

Lessons about embracing the miracles of life, based on a story of how Brody Young survived being shot nine times and severely wounded by a man while on patrol as a park ranger in a remote canyon in Utah one night. After many months, he recovered from his wounds and returned to work, forever changed by his near-death experience. How Young reacted in the face of life-threatening danger takes on heightened meaning when we learn how he decided to respond to the miracles that followed.

Close to midnight on May 17, 1951, four north Alabama lawmen drove to a bootlegger's home to serve an arrest warrant. Before the clock struck twelve, the bootlegger lay dead in front of the house he shared with his wife and eight children, and three of the four officers were also dead. Afterward, a sixteen-year-old boy would face a series of trials that would divide a county and thrust the state of Alabama into the national spotlight.

From minor league baseball exploitation to spectator hooliganism, Sailofsky shows the connections between the business of sports and violence, but also, more importantly, he imagines new forms of sport that are not places of harm.

During the civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002, an estimated 20,000 children were forced to join the fighting. As villages were raided and youths rounded up, it was not uncommon for a child to be ordered to kill a friend, relative, or neighbor. The goal was to make it impossible for the captives to return home and be accepted back into their communities. Betancourt's study provides insight into the long-term psychological and developmental effects of family separation, war, and exposure to violence.

In the midst of widespread mass shootings in America, a common motif stands out: the perpetrators of these attacks often view themselves as vigilante saviors, whose job it is to regulate society in a way that exterminates their enemies. In this critique, Rachel Wagner makes the case that this unfortunate phenomenon is best understood through the idea of the cowboy apocalypse. She shows that across US media, from video games and movies to novels and TV, a story arc has been created that provides a complete myth about the end of the world and the future after that.