Naming Experience: Registering Resistance and Mobilizing Change with Qualitative Tools

Abstract

This project draws from our work investigating the state of collected data on policeofficer-involved homicides (POIH) in Los Angeles County and using action research to involvecommunity members in understanding and deploying data in new and meaningful ways. In thispaper, we develop the conceptual bounds for a project that addresses the reports our team hasencountered detailing police harassment of students and faculty at UCLA. A common thread inthese reports is that individuals wish to share their experiences with police harassment at UCLA,but feel they have few spaces to voice their concerns or channel them into productive tools forchange. This paper reviews literature in fields of critical legal storytelling, as well as informationand archival studies’ practices of data management for social justice to conceptualize a projectthat will tackle the issue of police harassment at UCLA through the creation of a mobileapplication for reporting such incidents. We draw from this literature to develop a reporting toolthat that is easily accessible, understood, and utilized by people on the UCLA campus, and thatallows for the collection and dissemination of these narratives detailing such incidents as a wayto meaningfully channel such expressions to shape discourse in a way that mobilizes positivechange.