Social Wars | “A War on Poor People”: Speaking Out Against Drug Criminalization (original) (raw)
A 2015 paper sought to understand this double standard by investigating the impacts of “social wars” on communities. Social wars “broaden state power by producing a constant threat that is never fully identifiable,” thus allowing for more aggressive measures that blur the line between “policing and warfare” (Massaro, 372). In regards to the war on drugs, the “block” has been constructed as the front lines, and “the battle for control of these semi-public spaces occurs between residents and officials . . . through militarized policing, mass incarceration, and state sanctioned violence” (Massaro, 373).