​The ACLU of Delaware's annual Kandler Award honors members of the community who represent the highest commitment to ensuring the civil rights and liberties of all Delawareans.

​On October 20, UD Associate Professor Yasser Payne, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice and Africana Studies, was one of two honorees. 

Watch​ the event

Dr. Payne’s street ethnographic research program examines notions of resilience, structural violence and gun violence with street-identified Black Americans by drawing ​on an unconventional methodological framework titled: Street Participatory Action Research (Street PAR)—the process of doing research and activism with street identified populations. Presently, he leads two Street PAR projects on gun violence in the City of Wilmington funded by Christiana Care Hospital; and he leads a national Street PAR project on gun violence in the following five cities: Wilmington, DE; Baltimore, MD; Detroit, Michigan; News Orleans, Louisiana; and Brooklyn, New York City.

Dr. Payne’s first Street PAR project in Wilmington, Delaware, was The People’s Report: The Link between Structural Violence and Crime in Wilmington, Delaware. This study trained fifteen people (20-48) formerly involved with the criminal justice system to empirically document the relationship between economic well-being and gun violence in the Eastside and Southbridge neighborhoods of Wilmington.​ Learn more about the project at The People's Report. ​​