Working with a broad-based coalition in Los Angeles, scholar and activist Muniz will challenge the continued and growing use of gang injunctions. Individuals typically targeted by these policies are overwhelmingly black or Latino youth, raising serious concerns of racial profiling and criminalizing young people.
Muniz, who has over a decade’s experience as a community organizer, is a PhD candidate in UCLA’s Sociology Department. She is recipient of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship, and the Diversity Initiative for Graduate Study in the Social Sciences Award. Muniz’s forthcoming publications include “Street Vendors: A Sign of Disorder? Defining Danger in the Era of Community Partnerships and Broken Windows Policing” and “On a Bike with a Pager? You’re Going to Jail! Origins of the Racial Criminalization of the Mundane in Gang Injunctions.” She is also turning her dissertation, “Disrupting the Social Control of Racialized Deviance in Los Angeles,” into a book for general readership.