Welfare State Violence: A Feature Not a Bug

panel conversation between Derica Shields, China Mills, Tumu Johnson, Stella Dadzie and Gargi Bhattacharyya that explores the welfare state as one thread connected to a wider tapestry of state violence, which produces the premature sickness and deaths of poor, racialised and disabled people. The panelists will discuss how racial capitalism, eugenics and coloniality are designed into welfare state infrastructure, and why state violence is a feature of the welfare system, not a bug. They will also look at historical and present-day forms of resistance to what we might call “welfare state violence”. Looking at these projects, they ask: how can we create community-led approaches to safety and justice?