This year’s annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) recently took place in San Francisco. Coming on the heels of the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Ferguson Jr. at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and in the midst of an ongoing community uprising shrouded in police brutality, many sociologists in attendance had the national crises of police brutality and racism on their minds. The ASA however created no official space for discussion of these issues, nor has the 109 year-old organization made any kind of public statement on them, despite the fact that the amount of published sociological research on these issues could fill a library. Frustrated by this lack of action and dialog, some attendees created a grassroots discussion group and task force to address these crises. Full article on about.com