Joining us now to talk about
the death of Sarah Everard ,a
story that has made massive news
in the UK, less so here in the US.
And so it's important that we learn
about this from someone
who understands the story.
We're very lucky to be joined once
again by columnist for
The Intercept as well as author of
Being Numerous: Essays
on Non-Fascist Life.
Natasha Lennard,
welcome back to the show.
>> Hey, thank you for having me.
>> Very glad to have you here.
So this death has sparked a lot
of conversation.
You had a really amazing breakdown
of a number of different ways that
different aspects of politics and
society and the way we comment on
specific comments based on
the context of who's in the story,
all combine.
Can you tell me a little bit about
your interest in
this particular murder?
>> Right, so
Sarah Everard is a British woman,
a 33 year old woman,
who was kidnapped and
murdered in London.
And her remains were discovered.
And so it was a kind of almost
archetypal horror of a gender-based
violence,.
And it sparked a massive response
in the UK and a very necessary
conversation about what was broadly
described as women's safety.
But a lot of the response and
the shape of the response, played
on a lot of archetypes around what
we talk about when we talk about
danger, that I think are pretty
outdated and need to be, we need
to have a critical response about.
So it was a lot of talking about
women in public spaces,
stranger danger,
the kind of horror stories that
you're told about as a child about
not going home alone after dark.
And of course people have
very valid fears of the kind
of risk a woman alone at night can
face that seem to be realized in
Sarah Everard's murder.
But what was missing from that
dialog was the particular shape
of how she was killed.
The person who has been charged
with her murder is a member of the
London Metropolitan Police Force.
So this was also a story about who
gets accorded trust, and
indeed gendered state violence,
police violence.
And also obviously,
the broader conversation about
which murders garner attention.
That's not to say something as
horrific as what happened to
Sarah Everard shouldn't produce
rage and attention.
But of course, when counterparts,
women who are not white women,
black women, other women of color,
black trans women are assaulted
in public spaces and
that is indeed a structural problem
that happens consistently within
that demographic, it doesn't create
the sort of outpouring we saw.
So what I was trying to point is
that, yes this is an unthinkable
horror, but we have to think about
the structures that enable and
perpetuate gendered violence on
a mass scale, and
those include police violence.
And so the answer of how do we
criminalize dangers to women,
how do we increas policing of it,
that are often the responses to
these kinds of horrors totally
miss the point that that kind of
policing and the way the state can
enhance dangers to women's bodies,
particularly some women's bodies,
must not be overlooked and
is absolutely not a solution.
>> Yeah, I understand the need to
provide the caveat that pointing
out that this sort of story does
get talked about shouldn't be seen
but might accidentally be seen as
disregarding that it is its
own tragedy, its own horror,
which is totally true, but
you're a hundred percent right.
That certain sort of stories
just naturally produce
not just recognition, but
possibly a week of coverage.
And other sorts of stories not so
much, or they require some sort
of special circumstance.
Like the media might focus
on violence against Asian-American
women If enough of them die in
a very limited period of time,
then it might merit coverage.
But I also wanted to focus on
the aspect of, you talked about it
led to this conversation about what
is dangerous and all that.
And it seems like it took quite
a bit of work for the fact that
the person who did this that might
be a cop to count as dangerous.
That you almost weren't supposed to
point out that well, yeah,
obviously we know that, you
list great statistics in the story
about the predisposition that you
seem to see with domestic violence
when a cop is involved in this.
So, and it looks like in this
particular case, what happened at
a vigil, which perhaps you can
describe for us, that might have
made that part of the story
a little bit more front and center.
>> Right, so
there was this kind of interesting
shift that happened that I think
was a very necessary shift.
In that immediately after Sarah
Everard's body was discovered,
the conversation, the popular
conversation seemed to be about
this, women walks alone at home at
night, stranger danger, really
kind of footnoting the relevance
of the police in this story.
But then at a mass vigil that was
held for Everard in London,
the Metropolitan Police,
the very police force that
the accused murderer is part of,
broke up the vigil because it had
not been sanctioned.
But they broke it up
in an incredibly violent way.
So there was this
imagery of officers manhandling,
throwing women to the ground
in the name of public safety, and
these were women, a kind of a vigil
organized by an organization called
Sisters Uncut talking about women's
safety, public safety, the
inclusion of trans women safety.
And then it was police officers
manhandling them in the name
of safety.
So it was really on the nose and
that very crucially did in fact
bring the conversation of state
violence, police violence against
women into the conversation.
And what's been interesting is that
following that vigil and
the police violence in it,
we've seen the activism and
the anger around Sarah Everard's
murder also translate and encompass
an anger about police violence.
And a kind of connection with
the women's safety movement that is
responding to the murder,
to activism and organizing that was
already going on against a new bill
that has been proposed for
England and Wales, that would give
police really dangerously expanded
capacities to break up protests.
So watching those two efforts
combine I think it's been really
heartening and really important and
a really worthwhile shift away from
talking about individualized safety
of individual women against
strangers as opposed to
state violence.
And of course the far more common
violence at the home and
domestic violence.
>> Exactly.
So that bill,
what led to that being a thing that
in theory could pass, and
do you think that it is likely that
this recent conversation,
the shift in the conversation and
how it applies to that bill might
be successful in stopping it?
>> So the bill is actually a really
capacious bill, it's not just
about protest policing.
But it's about resources for
police in general and
it's about capabilities of police.
But a very particularly dangerous
threatening to civil liberties
aspect of it that had drawn
attention even prior to this
Everard vigil, I see as a response
to the kind of protests you saw in
London as well as here in the US.
Protests against policing,
against racism,
Black Lives Matter protests,
anti-colonial protests, that you
saw really take off in England.
And this expansion of police
powers, I see as non-coincidentally
a follow up to that.
So the struggle against
racial violence in policing
is certainly connected to this.
So this bill was somewhat long in
the making in this last year, but
anger against that sort of
police intervention,
against protesters and their rights
has really been brought to the fore
after that vigil.
And in terms of this it's called,
hashtag kill the bill, kill
this policing bill, that's the kind
of rallying cry that the intention
seemed to be to rush the bill
through parliament very quickly.
And it looks like the organizing
and people in the streets in
response to that have genuinely
made a difference and it's been
slowed down and will be considered
more slowly and challenged,
I think, with a far greater degree.
So I think you see the power of
people really responding to this,
and refusing to accept this
narrative that more policing equals
safety, which has obviously been so
much of the crucial political
conversation here on the left.
>> Yeah, yeah, and one last thing I
wanted to ask you about.
You reference, as I alluded to
earlier, some stats about,
I believe it was here in the US how
you see something like four times
the rate of domestic violence in
households with police officers.
You reference a petition about
hundreds of instances of abuse
that had effectively led to no
consequences whatsoever.
Do you see any indication whether
in the UK or possibly to the extent
that this story is being covered
in the US, that anything might come
out of this socially of recognition
that this is a pervasive problem?
That whether it ends up that this
is what happened with that one case
or not, that this link is clear,
well established
across multiple countries.
>> Yes, so, I mean the statistics
you're talking about, there have
been two studies in the US that
are somewhat contested but
this was two separate studies,
that say that rates of domestic
violence in policing families is up
to four times as high.
In the UK in 2019,
there was a super complaint brought
against over a dozen police forces
referencing over 700 alleged
instances of domestic abuse
that led to scant consequences for
the officers involved.
So, these are structural problems
and it's kind of, it's a very
English tendency that I've seen to
say, the police are a problem over
there across the Atlantic.
That's where
the racist policing exists.
But clearly as the protests of last
summer showed as the London
uprisings in 2011 made clear,
this is a problem in both nations
where policing exist as such.
Is there going to be a reckoning?
I think the uprisings of 2020 show
the need for that reckoning, and
all the burgeoning of that long
overdue and long fought for
reckoning.
Do I think the response
to the policing of Sarah Everard's
vigil and the activism in the UK
right now will be the end of it and
the necessary turning point?
No, this is a really hard fought,
almost Sisyphean task, but
I think really impressive
the amount of ferocity and potency
that we're seeing in the actions
against policing as an institution.
>> Agreed.
So there's a lot of different
elements that we're talking about
here that we've touched on.
But if anyone watching this would
like a lot more detail, Natasha's
article is up at The Intercept.
Search for women's safety movement
sparked by Sarah Everard's
murder should focus more on
cops in the home.
You can get way more detail there.
And Natasha,
we want to thank you both for
your work on The Intercept and
also for joining us as well.
>> Thank you.
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