Lightning Talk: Deviant by Design: The Criminalization of Protest in the Age of Mass Dissent

Session Submission Type: Lightning Talk Session

Abstract/Description

This Lightning Talk panel explores how legal systems, media narratives, institutional policies, and global responses criminalize protest. Drawing from five key protest events—the George Floyd uprisings, pro-Palestine campus demonstrations, the Capitol Riots, anti-DEI backlash, and Nigeria’s End SARS movement—this panel highlights how power influences whose voices are legitimized and whose are suppressed. Across six concise presentations, we examine how protest becomes redefined as deviance depending on the race, political identity, or geographic location of those resisting. Each speaker brings a disciplinary lens—legal studies, homeland security, youth justice, African protest movements, social work, and media analysis—to dissect this transformation. We argue that criminalization is not simply about actions taken, but about the framing of those actions through systems of authority and control. The panel concludes by offering theoretical insights and visual mappings of the protest-to-crime pipeline, urging a critical reevaluation of institutions' interpretation and punishment of dissent.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII. Lightning Talks

Chair

• Oreoluwa Ladoja, Texas Southern University

Discussants

• Larrisha Birdie McDonnough, Texas Southern University

• Tracey Heywood, Texas Southern University

• Cory Robinson, Texas Southern University

• Lumar Le blanc, Texas Southern University

• Elizabeth Barnes, Texas Southern University