OSU - School of History, Philosophy, and Religion's video: The Cabildos Speaker Series: Austin McCoy

The Cabildos Speaker Series presents Austin McCoy, assistant professor of history at Auburn University. McCoy's talk will explore the broad-based campaign to abolish the Detroit Police Department’s clandestine “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” (STRESS) unit that was responsible for killing more than twenty Black Detroiters in three years. He will use the anti-STRESS movement to draw connections between organizing against police brutality during the early-1970s, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement during the Obama Era, and calls to defund and abolish the police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The Cabildos Speaker Series was established as a means to • Listen to Black voices • Foreground cutting edge scholarship • Contextualize United States history in an African Diaspora context • Highlight the links between academic research and activism Sponsored by the School of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies and anonymous donors to the History Program at Oregon State University.