Kristian Williams

I’ll be on KBOO radio’s “Old Mole Variety Hour” on Monday, October 25th. Bill Resnick will be interviewing me about the culture of police impunity, and in particular the new evidence of cover-ups in the James Chasse and Captain Mark Kruger cases. People in the Portland area can listen on 90.7 fm. Those out of town can find it archived on the KBOO website, though it may take a few days to show up there.

Update: We didn’t actually have time to talk about Kruger, but the interview about the Chasse case is on the KBOO web site.

I’ll also be giving a talk in Portland, on Thursday, November 4, from 7-9pm, at Sisters of the Road Cafe (133 NW 6th Avenue). Local historian Michael Munk will discuss the history of Portland’s “Red Squad,” and I will talk more broadly about the cops’ role in preserving inequality. The event is sponsored by Oregon Jericho.

Humboldt Grassroots issue 3 includes an article titled “Not An Isolated Event,” which draws heavily from an interview I gave with Street Roots years and years ago.

And, I’ll be speaking at the Humboldt Anarchist Book Fair on December 11. (More details to come.)

For the first time, the public is being allowed to observe contract negotiations between the Portland Police Association and the city government.

I went to watch the first day of talks, and wrote a brief report of what I saw.

The Oscholars recently ran a special issue focusing on Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” In it, I have an article examining two lines of influence on Wilde: Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, on the one hand; Williams Morris and Walter Crane, on the other.

I have also written a short review of Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews. It’s in the August 2010 issue of OutSmart.

More of my work on Wilde should reach print in the next couple months, including an essay on his aphorisms.

Anti-War

I’ve recently reviewed three comics the subject of war. The three are very different from each other in terms of approach, and they contain very different anti-war messages.

The first, “Timeless Cartoons” reviews Craig Yoe’s collection The Great Anti-War Cartoons. The book includes images from the sixteenth century on. The review ran in The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2010.

The second, “It was the War of the Trenches,” reviews Jacques Tardi’s novel-like treatment of a few minor events from World War I. It’s on The Comics Journal site.

And the third looks at reporter David Axe’s memoir, War is Boring. It, too, is on The Comics Journal website.

Superheroes

Also at The Comics Journal, I reviewed four recent superhero comics, all issue #1’s from Marvel: Avengers, Secret Avengers, Astonishing X-Men, and Dazzler.

Would you believe Dazzler is the best of the bunch?

There’s a reason I titled the series “False Starts.”