Courtney M. Echols

Courtney Echols, a system impacted and first generation college student, is a community organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an abolitionist organization working to empower communities to fight against surveillance in all its forms. Courtney also co-founded UCI4COLA and the Orange County Mutual Aid Collective, which centers radical BIPOC political agendas and struggles through direct action, advocacy, mobilization, and education. Courtney is currently in the joint JD/PhD program at the University of California, Irvine, where she is a PhD candidate in Criminology, Law & Society and a third year law student. She holds a Masters degree in Social Ecology from UC Irvine where she also received her B.A., graduating Summa Cum Laude and having tripled majored in the fields of Criminology, Law & Society, Psychology & Social Behavior, and Social Ecology.

Courtney’s research centers on documenting historical anti-Black violence in the US and intervening in its legacies, with a particular focus on Louisiana, her home state. Her research also examines contemporary manifestations of anti-Black histories, especially anti-Black racism and oppressive conditions within the contexts of policing and the criminal legal system. She previously had the privilege of interning at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, where she aided in efforts to remedy racially violent histories within Louisiana and Mississippi. Courtney’s work, as both a community organizer and researcher, is rooted in two core principles:  1.) Once Black people get free, everybody gets free. 2.) to know the present, we must understand the history.