What is a People’s Archive?
What is an Archive?
An archive is a place where physical or digital information is collected, organized and preserved to create a historical record and provide educational materials. It allows for long-term storage of and easy access to information.
What is a Community Archive?
Many archives are established by more traditional institutions like universities, government entities, or libraries. A Community Archive is usually a product of grassroots organizing, people coming together to uplift and validate perspectives that otherwise might be forgotten or intentionally hidden. It shifts the power back to and gives heart to the community.
What is an Activist Archive?
An Activist Archive is a community archive combined with advocacy. It can be a powerful tool in the struggle for justice because it intentionally puts the abuses perpetrated on oppressed people before the public. Activist archives provide exposure, shining a spotlight on false narratives spun by the media and the powers that be.
People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, an activist archive, is dedicated to presenting factual evidence and personal stories from Cuyahoga County. It exposes how the media often works in tandem with law enforcement, the courts, and elected officials to blame the victim and exonerate the murdering police.
A Note About Language
We carefully considered using the term “victims”, as in the title of our collection, “Interviews with loved ones of victims of police violence.” Defining people as “victims” risks reducing their complex lives to a single word that suggests powerlessness. The individuals memorialized in this collection, however, are discussed with the utmost love by their loved ones. Far from powerlessness, these interviews show the profound effects these individuals’ lives had and continue to have on their communities. These individuals share the fact that they were victimized by police, but we hope and trust that this archive will allow viewers to understand them as much more than just victims.
In addition, we have chosen to use the word murder throughout Right the Record, not as a legal term (as nearly all police officers that kill are acquitted in a court of law) but as a nod to the justice that could and should exist, but does not.
