When I think about police brutality in the context of the poster from the 1968 San Francisco State strike entitled Happiness Is a Warm Club, it’s poking fun at the police and is sort of a bitter joke, but also a warning. The artist who made it wasn’t only reacting to the personal violence of the club. They were calling out a system that had no way of being checked and was running rampant. A system without real accountability is one where a club can make someone feel power over another rather than responsibility for them. When I look at both the events of 1968 on campus and the countless cases from the last decade, I realize I am thinking less about the brutality alone and more about the question of how we can stop and hold those accountable that are continuing the pain. How do we build real paths toward justice? What policies would actually make a difference?

The 1968 strike showed how the police can escalate a situation in seconds and completely misrepresent the meaning of a protest. But it also showed that when communities demand accountability, even imperfectly, they create the pressure necessary for change. And that pressure is still needed. In 2020, when the George Floyd protests sprouted up across the country and New York’s Civil Complaint Review Board confirmed misconduct by more than 140 NYPD officers, it felt like another moment when the public could no longer pretend that these were isolated incidents. I remember seeing video after video of clubs being used on people who were already backing up and not being violent, and pepper spray being used on these crowds that were no threat. These moments made me think about how there is no accountability for these actions and the only way for them to be effectively investigated is internally. That in itself is how the “warm club” stays warm. When you are able to move unchecked, you continue the violence and abuse because you do not think there will be repercussions. One way to combat this and have some form of accountability is to have an independent oversight committee that doesn’t just advise the police but with real disciplinary power,

Daunte Wright’s killing in 2021 in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota by officer Kimberly Potter showed another area where reform and accountability is needed. The lack of meaningful training and clear standards created the conditions where a twenty-year-old died because an officer “mistook” her gun for a taser. That should not be possible in a system that is supposed to be centered on the mission of public safety. The protests that followed were met with flash-bangs, tear gas, and impact rounds, showing once again how badly we need strict national standards for crowd-control weapons. “Less lethal” doesn’t mean less harmful. It often just means the harm is easier to justify.

Across the 2020–2023 protests, nearly a thousand documented cases of police brutality revealed patterns we’ve seen for decades: force used haphazardly, weapons brought to inflict pain and punishment rather than protect, and officers hiding behind badges to avoid accountability. Yet with all these issues, I don’t just see despair and no light at the end of the tunnel. I see opportunities for real change. When I look at 2020 and even now, I see a lot of similarities to 1968 and the issues occurring then, but I also see where we have improved and where we can do better. We can demand independent oversight, clear national force standards, bans on dangerous crowd-control tools, mandatory transparency, and de-escalation training.

The Warm Club poster captured a feeling of hopelessness at a time when police violence felt inevitable. But it also gives me hope because someone saw the issue and was not quiet, and neither are we trapped in that moment. Each generation before and since has fought and added new tools—not weapons, but ideas for reshaping how policing works. And if we keep pushing for policies rooted in humanity, accountability, and protection rather than power, then maybe someday the Warm Club poster will be a memory of what was and not what is.

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