Kristian Williams

It’s been a year since Hurt was released. Here’s a small sample of reviews:

At the Portland Book Review, Sarah Alibabaie writes:

“One will not be able to help but react in accord or discord or at least question along with the arguments raised. . . . Hurt is a good publication that not only introduces but invites the reader to a debate on torture and to imagine alternatives.”

Chris Auman concludes his review for relgarwiglar.com:

“these writings are the result of well-reasoned and researched thinking and go a long way in educating the reader on the causes and underlying factors of torture in the 21st century.”

Meanwhile, Kurt Morris opines at Razorcake:

“It was good to see Williams not reverting to the familiar arguments on everything; tying in torture with police and the U.S. prison system really is quite interesting. However, the apex of Williams’s argument is that getting rid of the apparatuses that allow abuse and torture and working towards an anarchist system is what would solve this despicable practice. … I wondered who would be reading this beyond people who already agreed with the premise and conclusions. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still a very worthwhile topic to discuss, but this discussion needs to move from beyond anarchist circles and into some kind of action. How is that done? Beats me. I just review stuff.”

— So I guess you can’t please everyone.

In other news, The Macinator ran a retrospective review of Our Enemies in Blue:

“This is a book that anyone affected by law enforcement should read, and really, that’s everyone: Protesters, people in ‘urban’ neighborhoods, proponents of ‘community policing,’ officers themselves, and just ‘normal’ people.”

Tom Nomad wrote an interesting survey article of my major works:

“Toward a Counteroperational Theory: A Review of the Works of Kristian Williams.” Tom Nomad. Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society. September 2012.

It can be found on Sci-Hub.

On Tuesday, February 12, I’ll be speaking on a panel discussing alternatives to the police.

Here are the details:
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
5 – 7 pm
PSU Smith Center room 327/328

If you want a preview of what I’ll be talking about, you can tune into KBOO 90.7 FM a day earlier. On Monday, February 11, some time between 9 and 10 am, I’ll be interviewed on The Old Mole.

A few weeks ago I participated in an event called “Our Lips are Sealed” about grand jury resistance and withstanding repression more broadly.

In the course of the day, I spoke on two panels, alongside Dennison Williams (no relation), Richard Brown of the SF8, and the Freedom Archives‘ Claude Marks. It was a great and humbling experience to share the stage with these folks, two of whom have done serious time as political prisoners and one who resisted a grand jury subpoena earlier this year but (so far) remains free.

One can hear audio of from the event at the Radio Autonomia website.

I’ve also written about the grand jury for Counterpunch, earlier in the fall (“A Defense of Contempt: The Kafkaesque Case of Matt Duran.” Counterpunch. October 1-15, 2012. Subscription only; sorry!)

At the time Matt Duran was the only northwest grand jury resistor in prison; since then, Kteeo Olejnik and Maddy Pfeiffer have also been imprisoned for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury looking into the anarchist movement.

For more information on the Northwest Grand Jury, visit the Committee Against Political Repression website: https://nopoliticalrepression.wordpress.com/

When I was in Oakland a couple weeks ago, I gave a speech at a rally demanding justice of Alan Blueford, a young man shot and killed by the Oakland police.

The demonstration drew a crowd a few hundred strong. After hearing speeches from several people who had lost family to the cops, we marched to the police station, where I briefly spoke.

The text of my speech is below. To learn more about the Blueford case, and the organizing that has resulted, please visit: http://justice4alanblueford.org/

“Our demands should be an attack.”

We are here today, with grief and anger, because the police shot and killed Alan Blueford.

But not just Alan Blueford. We are here because the police killed Mack Woodfox, Jose Buenrostro-Gonzalez, Anita Gay, Oscar Grant — and so many others.

In a country where police kill, on average, 364 people per year — nearly one a day– and where 35% of these people are black, when the cops shoot a young black man it cannot be treated as an accident. It cannot be understood as a mistake. It is not even a crime in the ordinary sense.

When the cops kill people of color that is simply the normal operation of a racist institution in a grossly unequal society. That’s the job that the police are put there to do.

That role goes all the way back to the origin of the institution. The modern US police are the descendants of an older body called the slave patrols. Those patrols were militia organizations responsible for keeping slaves on the plantation and, more importantly, responding to or preventing slave revolts. As the country industrialized and urbanized, the slave patrols evolved and took on the characteristics of what we now recognize as a modern police force. And, tellingly, their mission expanded — not only the control of slaves, but free blacks and poor whites as well.

In the 200 years since, the form of inequality has changed — from slavery, to segregation, to legal equality masking social inequality — but the role of the police has remained remarkably constant. The police developed to control poor people and people of color, and they are still on that job today.

That suggests to me, very strongly, that the racism and violence of the police are not incidental, but are inherent features of the institution. And that means, among other things, that we cannot reform our way out of our police problem.

The twentieth century was the century of reform. We saw progressive campaigns against municipal corruption, mid-century efforts to professionalize the police force, then the introduction of military discipline, the emergence of community policing, diversity training, and the creation of advisory boards. And as a result, the police today are better paid, better trained, better organized, better armed than at any other point in history — and they continue to act as racist thugs. That core function of preserving inequality remains very much the same.

Our efforts, then, should not be directed toward fixing this institution — but toward destroying it. As we make our demands and plan our campaigns, this ultimate goal must always be kept in mind. We should pursue changes that de-legitimize, demoralize, discredit, and disempower the police and which, correspondingly, energize, embolden, and empower the community. When we demand justice, let us be clear that it is not the justice of the courts and the government, but the justice that abolishes courts and government that is required. Our very demands should be a form of attack.