Kristian Williams

I’ll be speaking at the International Copwatching Conference in Winnipeg.

I’m offering the keynote address Saturday, July 23rd, at 9am. Titled “Making Copwatch Matter,” the talk will consider the political potential of copwatching and the real challenges copwatch groups face.

Then, on Sunday, July 24, at 3pm, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on copwatch tactics. There, I’ll tell the story of Rose City Copwatch’s debut action — a poster campaign to expose killer cops.

It looks like there are going to be a lot of great presentations at the conference. Check out the full schedule.

The May issue of Interface includes an article I’ve written on counterinsurgency and community policing. It extends the argument from Our Enemies in Blue, and it includes discussion of recent developments in COIN theory, in military doctrine, and in police/military collaborations.

I’ve also just written a piece, “Profiles of Provocateurs,” looking at a few recent cases of anarchists or radical environmentalists being entrapped by state agents. In an effort to learn from past mistakes, I point out some of the warning signs that the victims of these campaigns overlooked, or sometimes, deliberately ignored. I’m posting the essay to various activist sites.

And, I took my lecture from the “Law and Disorder” conference, and turned it into a small essay. The piece considers the political and strategic divergences between the police accountability framework and that of police abolition, and it describes the areas of overlap where cooperation between the adherents of each can cooperate. It’s appeared in the most recent issue (#106) of the Canadian journal Slingshot.

I’ll be giving a talk on May 20 at 3pm, at Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington.

I’ll discuss my recent research on counterinsurgency and community policing. I’ll outline the counterinsurgency model, describe its transfer from the military to the police and back again, explain how it is being implemented domestically, and consider some implications for social movements.

I’ve written a couple reviews for The Comics Journal, just before it re-invented itself.

One is a review of Audrey Niffenegger’s latest, The Night Bookmobile. The other is a review of Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection. Given how different the books are, it’s interesting how alike they are — creepy yet beautiful.

I also wrote a profile of Tequila expert Clayton Szczech for the Reed College alumni magazine.