Arresting Power: Resisting Police Violence in Portland, Oregon

A historical and political analysis of the role of the police in contemporary society and the history of policing in the United States. This film provides a framework for understanding the systems of social control in Portland with its history of exclusion laws, racial profiling, gentrification practices, and policing along lines of race and class. It also serves to uncover Portland’s unique history of police relations and community response.

This event also includes a screening of the short film “State of Oregon?” about the death of Larnell Bruce, a black teen from Gresham, Oregon and aims to shed light on the fatal encounter that ended his life, while unpacking the state’s fraught racial history.

Part of the Policing Justice series by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.