Kristian Williams

HURT: New Collection and Speaking Events (April 2012)

admin — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:02:09 +0000

Microcosm has just released a short booklet collecting some of my essays on torture. Titled Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy, it includes sections on torture and inequality, the role of the media, and prison abolition.

I’m giving two talks on the book, in just a few days. Here are the details:

Friday, April 6, 7pm
Bluestockings
172 Allen Street, New York

Tuesday, April 10, 7pm
Red Emma’s
800 St. Paul Street, Baltimore

March 10, Portland: “Police and the 99%”

admin — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:32:39 +0000

There’s been a lot of debate about the police and the Occupy movement. Are the cops part of the 99%? Why have they attacked Occupy protests? How should the movement respond?

I’ll address these questions at a talk I’m giving in Portland this Saturday. A more open discussion will follow. Details are below:

“Police and the 99%”
Saturday, March 10, 2012, 2-4pm
First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 13th

Cops and the 99% (March 2012)

admin — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:08:20 +0000

On March 1, I’ll be giving a talk in Seattle on the role of the cops in preserving social inequality, and the implications for social movements. The event is at The Wildcat, 1101 23rd Ave, Seattle. It begins at 7pm.

Meanwwhile, here are a couple interviews on similar subjects I did with KBOO:

“The Policing of Capitalist Society and the Occupy Movement.” Interview by Bill Resnick. The Old Mole Variety Hour. KBOO 90.7. November 21, 2011.

“Cops for Labor?” Interview by Al Bradbury. Labor Radio. KBOO 90.7. November 14, 2011.

And, my essay “Cops for Labor?” is now online: “Cops for Labor?” Dollars and Sense. September/October 2011.

The Horror of 2011; Stopping Censorship in 2012

admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:33:39 +0000

I probably should have mentioned these items closer to Halloween, but I had two horror-related pieces published in the latter part of the year.

The first is a short story, one of very few I’ve gotten into print. It’s called “The Door,” and is about a young man who begins noticing small but disconcerting changes in his daily routine. It ran in the anthology Red Blood, Black Sky from Another Sky Press. You can read it for free online.

The second is a review of Jim Trombetta’s The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You To Read. Trombetta’s book is partly a textual examination of 1950′s horror comics, partly a collection of some of the genre’s best stories and artwork, and partly a history of the effort to censor comics, leading to the imposition of the Comics Code. My review, “The Untimely Death of ’50s Horror Comics,” ran in the November issue of Hustler. It isn’t online.

Speaking of censorship and reading things online — if you happened to stop by this site on January 18th, you would have seen that it was blacked out. That’s because kristianwilliams.com, along with I-don’t-know-how-many other sites closed shop for the day to protest a couple nasty bills before Congress. SOPA and PIPA, as they were called, would have authorized widespread censorship in the hopes of defeating online piracy. The black-out action resulted in millions of emails being sent to congress and, thank goodness, the bills are now effectively dead. It turns out, if nothing else, the internet can be used to save the internet.

(Thanks, Joe, for keeping me in touch with the 21st century and managing the technical side of blacking out, and then restoring, the site.)

Northern California Tour (December 2011)

admin — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:51:15 +0000

I will be speaking in Northern California three times in the next week.

On Saturday, December 10, I’ll be speaking about Oscar Wilde’s politics at the Humboldt Anarchist Bookfair. The book fair is at the Manila Community Center, 1611 Peninsula Drive, Arcata. The talk is in Room B at 11am.

On Tuesday, December 13, I’ll give a talk on police violence. The event is at 421 Miner Street in Stockton. Food will be served at 6pm, and I’ll speak at 7pm.

Then on Wednesday, December 14, I’ll be discussing strategies for resisting police violence. The talk is at the V-Hive, 2315 K St., in Sacramento, and starts at 6:30pm.

Counterinsurgency and Policing (Oberlin College, November 2, 2011)

admin — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:02:45 +0000

On Wednesday, November 2, I will be speaking about counterinsurgency and domestic policing at Oberlin College in Ohio. The event, sponsored by the Prison Justice Project, begins at 8:00 in Craig Auditorium.

Oscar Wilde’s letters to Constance, his wife (October 2011)

admin — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:23:29 +0000

During a visit to the British Library a few years ago, I came across a short note from Oscar Wilde to his wife, Constance. It is actually a sweet little prose poem on the nature of love. Later, I was surprised to see that the note is not included in the Complete Letters. So I set off to figure out what it was that I had found, when it was written, and what it might mean.

The result is an essay available at The World and I.

Cops and Class War (September 2011)

admin — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 23:39:44 +0000

My two latest articles both focus, in very different ways, on the position the cops occupy in our highly stratified society.

The first, “Exclusion Zones,” appears in the September issue of In These Times. It describes the policing of public space in Portland, Oregon (where I live), and outlines the race and class dynamics driving the cops’ approach. I link two deaths at the hands of police — those of James Chasse and Keaton Otis — to the agenda established by the local business elite, in particular, the Portland Business Alliance.

The second article considers the role cops played in the labor unrest in Wisconsin earlier in the year, and contrasts it to their more usual job of breaking strikes. Specifically, I try to identify the conditions under which the cops sometimes side with striking workers, and the limits to that solidarity. That article is in the September/October 2011 issue of Dollars and Sense, but isn’t available online.

Interview: Police Abolition (August 2011)

admin — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 23:40:48 +0000

Last week I did an interview for AshevilleFM.org. I talked a bit about the history of policing, about recent anti-cop resistance, and about the developing politics of police abolition. It’s archived here.

Horror Comics and Economics Comics (August 2011)

admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:27:53 +0000

Some time ago I wrote a review of Mike Howlett’s Weird World of Eerie Publications for The Comics Journal.

More recently, I wrote a short essay for the Progressive Populist, comparing two comics explaining the economic crisis — Erich Origen and Gan Golan’s Adventures of Unemployed Man and Seth Tobocman, Eric Laursen and Jessica Wehrle’s Understanding the Crash. The piece is mis-labeled as a review, but it isn’t really evaluative; instead it reflects on the different genre choices and visual strategies the two titles employ.

Old horror or new economics — Which is scarier?