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Paper short abstract

This paper addresses how black communities in the urban periphery Greater Lisbon, Portugal ,engage with and confront police violence and different modalities of policing, by developing counter-narratives through music, graffiti, and Black cinema that demand racial justice and safe communities.

Paper long abstract

Over the years, peripheral communities, anti-racist activists, social movements, the media, international organisations, artists and academics have published articles, news items and reports on police violence in Portugal, particularly against Black and Roma populations. Many of these actors have repeatedly reported different levels of police violence, criticising anti-black racist logics, legal-criminal configurations and neoliberal arrangements concealed behind the liberal maxim that policing serves to protect people and is, in essence, a device for maintaining law and order. Based on a longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork on predatory policing in many neighbourhoods of Greater Lisbon, I discuss how Black individuals and communities have engaged with and confronted police violence, constructing counter-narratives through music, graffiti, and Black cinema, demanding racial justice and communities safe from state violence.