Roosevelt | Bryan J McCann

Roosevelt Rx briefing, Hart Senate building, September 19th 2008

News from the National Office

Post-Election Center

TI Launched

Roosevelt LiveBlogs the Presidential Debate

On Campus

Midwest Regional Fall Policy Workshop

Blum speaks at Vermont Campus Compact conference

Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch

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"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

— Franklin Roosevelt

Bryan J McCann

Contact info:

Login Email:	bmccann(AT)mail.utexas.edu
Contact Email:	bmccann(AT)mail.utexas.edu

Policy interests: Criminal justice, Diversity, race, and opportunity, Human rights, Labor and workers' rights, Poverty and social justice, Religion, Social policy, The courts, Women, gender, and feminism

I am a first year PhD student in the Communication Studies department where I emphasize Rhetoric and Language. I am interested in historicizing violence, particularly in the context of the criminal justice system, and examining how discourses of violence privilege specific ideologies and groups. For example, I currently have an article under review that examines how pro-death penalty responses to former Illinois Governor George Ryan's death row commutations personalized the state-sanctioned violence, capital punishment, by emphasizing the healing needs of victims' families. I argue that such an approach prevents deliberation about the death penalty and the prison-industrial-complex (it's hard to be anti-victim), makes inaccurate generalizations about the desired and needs of victims, and prevents marginalized groups, such as death row inmates, from laying claim to the language of victimhood. I am presently working on a projet that discusses issues of gender and violence as they relate to the film "Monster."

Locally, I am a member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and also belong to a national group of communication scholars interested in prison activism called Prison-CARE. As far as the goals of the institute are concerned, I am excited but cautious. While I think there is great value in going through traditional means to create reform, I believe that some issues require more radical approaches that do not lend themselves to conventional political language or methods. There comes a point where all you can do is go to the streets and make a lot of noise until they can't ignore you anymore.