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Robyn Maynard

@policingblack.bsky.social
1.3K followers 209 following 237 posts

New on here. Author of Policing Black Lives (Fernwood/Duke University Press, 2025) and co-author of Rehearsals for Living (Haymarket 2023). More at www.robynmaynard.com

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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Solidarity with anyone else watching this fever aces game with a resting heart rate of 100BPM
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Please send me any updates on exciting organizing documentation you are working on to combat the harms of criminalization across Canada. putting together the @interruptcrim.bsky.social fall newsletter and would love to share more work from across canada- especially in the prairies and East coast.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Canada is closing its door to Haitian asylum seekers- it changed the law to largely bar their crossing after Haitian and African asylum seekers sought refuge at the border ten years ago. This is a nation hostile to Black life. globalnews.ca/news/1199602...
globalnews.ca
Advocates brace for possible influx of Haitian asylum seekers as U.S. protections end | Globalnews.ca
TPS, which had allowed Haitians to live and work legally in the U.S. on a temporary basis, officially expired Monday.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Sold-out Policing Black Lives event in Vancouver organized by the brilliant folks at Weaving Our Worlds and the Vancouver Black Library but sharing in case you want to find a way to come say hi! www.weavingourworlds.ca/policing-bla...
weavingourworlds.ca
Aug 11: Policing Black Lives – Weaving Our Worlds
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I'm speaking at a Policing Black Lives event in Vancouver, hosted by the fabulous Weaving Our Worlds and Vancouver Black Library, and there is a prison book drive - please consider donating ! weavingourworlds.ca/book-list/
weavingourworlds.ca
Book Drive List for Policing Black Lives Event – Weaving Our Worlds
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Interrupting Criminalization @interruptcrim.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
This is an important article from IC board member Robyn Maynard (@policingblack.bsky.social). In it, she discusses how today's border policing is steeped in historic efforts to control Black mobility, from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act.
bostonreview.net
Hunted and Banned
Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Montreal cops abusing Black and Arab populations and keeping Black folks hair and dreadlocks as “trophies.” The legacy of slavery is ongoing in this country. www.tvanouvelles.ca/2026/06/12/s...
tvanouvelles.ca
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
can anybody share a free template that makes quotes and images look good, easy to read for multiple generations? ideally with a bit of style?
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Interrupting Criminalization @interruptcrim.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
"Grasping the full scale & scope of today’s border controls requires us to look at the history of the carceral governance of Black people, a project that started with trans-Atlantic slavery & continued through colonial rule in Africa & the Americas & Jim Crow in the US" - friend of IC Robyn Maynard
bostonreview.net
Hunted and Banned
Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.
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The Real News Network @therealnews.com · 27/05/2026
In 2026, fascism in the US is rising while “the left” descends further into powerlessness, goofiness, and irrelevance—but, author @williamcson.bsky.social argues, it doesn’t have to stay that way.
therealnews.com
The world is in crisis. William C. Anderson sees a way out
In 2026, fascism in the US is rising while “the left” descends further into powerlessness, goofiness, and irrelevance—but, author William C. Anderson argues, it doesn’t have to stay that way.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Read this brilliant new piece by @harshawalia.bsky.social in Boston Review: www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
bostonreview.net
How Not to Abolish ICE
What have we learned from the past two decades of struggle?
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Interrupting Criminalization @interruptcrim.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
To get the IC Canada newsletter straight to your inbox, click here to sign up!
bit.ly
Join Our Mailing List! | Interrupting Criminalization Powerbase
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Check my latest newsletter for Interrupting Criminalization!
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
the US is taking “unprecedented” measures to secure ownership over Canadian mines, turning Canada—and the First Nations from whose lands the minerals are sourced—into a US mining territory, the Canadian government is funding & fast-tracking these projects breachmedia.ca/elbows-up-ca...
breachmedia.ca
Elbows up? Canada is letting Pentagon take ‘unprecedented’ stakes in Canadian mines  ⋆ The Breach
By fast-tracking critical minerals, Canada is not simply building a green economy. It is being further integrated into the U.S. war industry
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Here is my second news round up on criminalization -and the work opposing its expansion- in Canada for @interruptcrim.bsky.social Please read, share, and send me pertinent info and updates at the address provided! bit.ly/ICCanada2
bit.ly
Fighting State Repression –– On Both Sides of the U.S.-Canada Border! 💥
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
“San Diego is not unique. The full catalog of attacks on Muslims within the United States is only dwarfed by US imperialism’s library of brutality against Muslims, which begins with chattel slavery and is reinvigorated continuously through war.” - www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/san...
parapraxismagazine.com
San Diego Über Alles — Parapraxis
Esmat Elhalaby
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Here is my second news round up on criminalization -and the work opposing its expansion- in Canada for @interruptcrim.bsky.social Please read, share, and send me pertinent info and updates at the address provided! bit.ly/ICCanada2
bit.ly
Fighting State Repression –– On Both Sides of the U.S.-Canada Border! 💥
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tamara nopper @tamaranopper.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
A few years ago, I wrote about how social scientists do not often receive training in our grad programs to trace the power elite’s activities. medium.com/datasociety-... For those who wanna level up, there are many upcoming free trainings from @mapthepower.bsky.social. littlesis.org/trainings/
medium.com
“Power Structure” Is No Abstract Phrase
On methods for studying elites
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Andrea Ritchie @dreanyc123.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Side note: @policingblack.bsky.social writes a quarterly @interruptcrim.bsky.social Canada newsletter that is 🔥. Be sure to subscribe today so you can get it this week - because borders are bullshit & our struggle is across Turtle Island interruptingcriminalization.ourpowerbase.net/form/newslet...
interruptingcriminalization.ourpowerbase.net
Join Our Mailing List! | Interrupting Criminalization Powerbase
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Andrea Ritchie @dreanyc123.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
"as border policing extends the state’s power to inflict racial violence abolitionism must reject the denial of that freedom wherever it takes place—from policing & incarceration to forced removal, immigration detention, & entry bans—with a firm insistence that no one be ripped from their community"
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Andrea Ritchie @dreanyc123.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Also highlighting the reality that far from being the promised land Canada has colluded with colonial deportation regimes throughout history, incl. when it "passed an 1833 law meant to control the migration of Black runaways from the United States that enabled the extradition of “fugitive offenders”
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Andrea Ritchie @dreanyc123.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Must read by @policingblack.bsky.social on why violent enforcement of migration & borders is a Black issue (and has *always been* from the foundation of the US & therefore will not be solved by only abolishing ICE), Black transportability & freedom of movement. www.bostonreview.net/articles/hun...
bostonreview.net
Hunted and Banned
Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.
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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
If you care about Indigenous & Black feminist thought, abolition, environment, relationality, radical transformation, resistance, crisis, hope, or care - the world & its futures - you must read @biidaasamose.bsky.social @policingblack.bsky.social’s wonderful Rehearsals for Living. Thank you both!
Black book cover with colourful writing: Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
No cop city anywhere - from atlanta to vancouver, cities are being militarized against their inhabitants. themainlander.com/2026/04/20/v...
themainlander.com
Academy at Woodward's marks "tactical escalation" by Vancouver police, writes drug user education group
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
No cop cities- from atlanta to vancouver. themainlander.com/2026/04/20/v...
themainlander.com
Academy at Woodward's marks "tactical escalation" by Vancouver police, writes drug user education group
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Toronto: What we’re seeing now is that (police) are not even distinguishing between protests, academic events or cultural events. Any time there are Palestinians speaking about Palestine, they are viewed as potentially anti-semitic or promoting violence.” www.thegrindmag.ca/cops-keep-sh...
thegrindmag.ca
Cops keep showing up to arts events about Palestine. What can organizers do?
Toronto police showed up at a comedy fundraiser and at a film screening on the same night in April. Organizers describe how this fits into a broader pattern and what can be done to protect community…
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Missing from the convo about rising “hate” in Toronto is that we don’t count the routine police beatings, dog maulings, home raids, and killings of Black and Indigenous folks as “hate crimes” because that would require a reckoning with the nature of policing in this country.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Toronto- “One investigation found more than a dozen errors when reading a vehicle licence plate or a lack of verification by officers, resulting in people who had not committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint, sent to jail or mauled by a police dog” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Row over ‘virtual gated community’ AI surveillance plan in Toronto neighbourhood
Rosedale residents considering car licence plate-scanning Flock system in bid to tackle property crime
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
This is a sick civilization. An open call to genocide. It is clear that Gaza is how we got here- tolerating genocide in one space begets another. Generations of our ancestors have worked to build something different, toward the preservation of earthly life. I hope I live to see this re-orientation.
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Indigenous Climate Action @indigenousca.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
Webinar: Kill Bill C5: The Building Canada Act must be repealed 📅Date: April 7, 2025 🕑Time: 7 PM EST/ 6 PM CST/ 5 PM MST/ 4 PM PST 💻Zoom Registration: tinyurl.com/3baznxa7 Speakers: Moderator 🎙️Ellen Gabriel Sabaa Khan Donna Ashamok Ojistoh Horn
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
OMFG
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Cutting VPs who are crucial to school functioning, yet the province has tens of millions allocated in the new budget to forcibly return police back to schools, reversing the decisions taken by school boards to remove them when they were deemed ineffective and harmful. www.thestar.com/news/gta/tds...
thestar.com
TDSB is cutting 40 vice-principals — so some schools will have to share
The Toronto District School Board, currently under provincial supervision, said 28 of the roles were tied to pandemic-era funding that expired.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
In Toronto, the first community policing model began in 1967, introduced in two neighborhoods with large Black communities. By 1970, it had expanded citywide, with a 1973 creation of the Ethnic Relations Unit, and a “Black section” in 1975. 1/3 briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/vie...
briarpatchmagazine.com
Community policing: expanding the carceral web
Excerpt from Policing Black Lives: Revised and Expanded – In a revised and expanded version of Policing Black Lives, Robyn Maynard documents how half a centre of police reforms, including community po...
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Yassmin Abdel-Magied @yassmin.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
"If I hear the phrase ‘forgotten’ with respect to Sudan one more time, I might scream" My latest on Sudan: thecontrapuntal.com/sudan-war-ya...
thecontrapuntal.com
Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Sudan: “If I Hear ‘Forgotten’ One More Time, I Might Scream” - The Contrapuntal
For Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Sudan emerges beyond war’s shadow and reductive narratives, challenging apathy, confronting historical amnesia, and insisting on deeply human storytelling.
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Negro Frolics @desmondcole.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
A Tamil refugee claimant is set to be deported—even though he risks jail and torture back in Sri Lanka The minister overseeing the deportation, himself a Tamil refugee and longtime advocate for Tamil asylum seekers, is silent My latest for @breachmedia.ca breachmedia.ca/tamil-refuge...
breachmedia.ca
He spent years defending Tamil refugees. As Minister, he’s refusing to stop a deportation back to danger in Sri Lanka ⋆ The Breach
Kumar Thuraisinkam is facing deportation—but the minister who once decried the treatment of his community isn’t stepping in to stop it
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Major Canadian banks and pension funds provided ***tens of billions of dollars ***to American contractors for ICE toronto.citynews.ca/2026/03/30/c...
toronto.citynews.ca
Canadian banks, pension funds have poured billions into ICE contractors
OTTAWA — Major Canadian banks and pension funds provided tens of billions of dollars to American contractors for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, an investigation by the non-profit...
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Sickening. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
theguardian.com
Israel passes law to give death penalty to Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks
Knesset approves measure that has been criticised by European countries and rights groups
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Evil times. Antisocial behaviour should not be rewarded with power.
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John Munro @johnmunro.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
"If mobility was the means through which Black people could attain their freedom, controlling mobility became paramount for those who sought to deny it." Everyone interested in mobility justice needs to read this.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
I have a new essay in @bostonreview.bsky.social, a transnational look at how slavery and the policing of Black mobilities across Atlantic empires shapes contemporary border regimes, and how this informs how we conceive of abolition www.bostonreview.net/articles/hun...
bostonreview.net
Hunted and Banned
Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.
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Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 26/03/2026
#OtD 26 Mar 1953 Mau Mau guerrillas fighting British colonialism in Kenya attacked the Naivasha police station. They inflicted a humiliating defeat on the police and released 173 prisoners, many of them Mau Mau, from an adjoining detention camp stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9847...
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Why Was Minnesota’s Resistance to ICE the Strongest Yet? “WE SOMALIS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A COMMUNITY THAT RESPONDED TO ONE ANOTHER Amina Adan” hammerandhope.org/forums/minne...
hammerandhope.org
Why Was Minnesota’s Resistance to ICE the Strongest Yet?
We asked five organizers to take us inside the Twin Cities’ response.
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Jonathan Stegall @jonathanstegall.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
"And if the crises of our present are inseparable from those of our past, then the efforts to resist ICE’s abuses must be part of a larger political project—one that requires us to move toward abolition, not reform."
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Border policing is policing, and it comes from the same histories of anti-Black carceral governance.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
This demonstrates part of why I tell people not to join the police intending to be “one of the good ones” - the good ones will be pushed out by leadership because the impunity is systemic, all the way to the top www.thestar.com/news/gta/vet...
thestar.com
Veteran prosecutor accused of telling Toronto cop he should have given ‘false evidence’ under oath — ‘We protect our own’
“What am I supposed to do? Lie?” — That’s how Const. Edin Hasanbasic said he responded after veteran Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg confronted the officer about his testimony.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Black abolitionists saw their project as a rejection of the idea of Black transportability, insisting that freedom of movement is a human inheritance that belongs to all. Ending anti-Black policing necessitates the abolition of border regimes www.bostonreview.net/articles/hun...
bostonreview.net
Hunted and Banned
Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.
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Robyn Maynard @policingblack.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Policing measures are ramping up dramatically in this city, and regardless of the justification, there is no timeline in which this does not facilitate more harm for Black, Indigenous, and unhoused people.
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shioncore erikawave nanamiism @letmygaysdivorce.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
back to forced servitude in slave states. As migration scholar Daniel Kanstroom explains, because of some legislators' concerns about the abuse of the law to punish free Black people as well as the enslaved, its final form required the involvement of the federal government to enforce legal standards for the protection of deportees' rights and due process. Such protections, it turned out, were so flimsy as to be largely nonexistent - the increased national scope only made the new system more efficient. Black folks across the North were now permanently vulnerable to being hunted, kidnapped, and forced into bondage by both private slave catchers and federal officials. "In effect," Kanstroom writes, these government-mandated removals created "the first systematic international deportation regime in the United States." (Of course, Indigenous dispossession also played a vital role in establishing the state's power to deport: both slave laws and the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Kanstroom notes, were legal and conceptual antecedents to the federalization of immigration law in the late nineteenth century.)
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Heather Campbell @thatheatherc.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Quote: "In Canada, the head taxes used to restrict Chinese migration in 1885 and 1923 had originally been proposed (though not taken up) as a means to deter the migration of Black Americans to Ontario decades earlier."
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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Government-mandated removals under the Fugitive Slave Act created “the first systematic international deportation regime in the United States.” @policingblack.bsky.social on how the control of Black mobility set the stage for for today’s border regimes:
bostonreview.net
Hunted and Banned
Efforts to control Black mobility—from early passports to the Fugitive Slave Act—laid much of the groundwork for today’s border regimes.
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