You Can’t Stop the Revolution is a vivid participant ethnography conducted from inside of Ferguson protests as the Black Lives Matter movement catapulted onto the global stage. Sociologist Andrea S. Boyles offers an everyday montage of protests, social ties, and empowerment that coalesced to safeguard black lives while igniting unprecedented twenty-first-century resistance. Focusing on neighborhood crime prevention and contentious black citizen–police interactions in the context of preserving black lives, this book examines how black citizens work to combat disorder, crime, and police conflict. Boyles offers an insider’s analysis of cities like Ferguson, where a climate of indifference leaves black neighborhoods vulnerable to conflict, where black lives are seemingly expendable, and where black citizens are held responsible for their own oppression. You Can’t Stop the Revolution serves as a reminder that community empowerment is still possible in neighborhoods experiencing police brutality and interpersonal violence.

About the Author

Andrea S. Boyles is Associate Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Tulane University. She is a feminist, race scholar, and the author of Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort.

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List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
introduction

1. Between a rock and a hard place: the (re)construction of blackness and identity politics
2. (Dis)order and informal social ties in the united states
3. “A change gotta come”: informal integration
4. Making black lives matter
5. “We are in a state of emergency”
6. (No) conclusion and discussion

Notes
References
Index

Reviews

"Thank you, Dr. Andrea Boyles, for humanizing and acknowledging the 'boots-on-the-ground' community leaders and protesters who in 2014 so righteously organized and vigorously mobilized, fueling a contagious determination."
— Contemporary Sociology

"You Can’t Stop the Revolution breaks out of the well tread genre of books about police violence and Black Lives Matter and moves into a very provocative discussion of the nature of social order for oppressed communities."
— Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Boyles’ account of post-Ferguson provides context with meticulous detail. . . . This book could serve as supplemental material for a graduate-level research methods course or graduate seminar courses focused on race and crime."
— Criminal Justice Review

"One of the book’s many strengths is its engagement with the issue of policing. Boyles offers important insights into the relationship between Blacks and the police that are relevant outside of Ferguson."
— American Journal of Sociology

"Andrea Boyles's three-year study captures poignant displays of commonly discounted resilience and determination that historically oppressed people equip themselves with to endure."—Rod K. Brunson, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Chair of Public Life, Northeastern University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

"Gives us a deeper understanding of what happened in Ferguson and why it continues. This book is brilliantly written and inspires us all to work for change."—Amy A. Hunter, St. Louis native and social justice speaker, activist, and creator of TED Talk "Lucky Zip Codes"

"A critical masterpiece that refocuses our attention around police violence onto Black bodies across geographical Black spaces not typically considered in the literature. Powerfully captures Ferguson in ways that problematize earlier assumptions about racialized policing and violence—and demonstrates how Blacks resist state and community violence. A major contribution!"—Jason M. Williams, coeditor of Black Males and the Criminal Justice System

"Very little scholarship in our field constitutes this type of solid, detailed, and well-integrated methodological work, marrying the micro and macro levels of data and analysis. A pathbreaking study of the black community engaging in community and political activity that the author frames as 'protecting and serving.'"—Peter Kraska, author of Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police

"It's fabulous. Vivid, passionate and engaged...gives voice to the participants and provides a series of sociological frames to understand and appreciate the movement and events. It is an impressive scholarly achievement."—Robert Schaeffer, author of Social Movements and Global Social Change

Awards

Media for a Just Society Book Award 2020 2020, Evident Change

Media

Interview with the author.

About the Book