I like it when my work gets reprinted.
Of course it’s flattering that someone admires the piece enough to run it again. But more importantly, reprints present a good chance for the piece to find a new audience, completely apart from the readers of the first release. And it’s nice that an article that took me dozens of hours of concentrated effort gets to live on beyond the magazine’s brief moment on the news stand.
Lately, I’ve had several pieces resurrected in this way:
The Portland Alliance ran my polemic against police unions, “No Solidarity with Police Union,” which originally appeared in the Portland Observer. It’s in the current Alliance, but you can also see it a facsimile of it from The Portland Observer here.
The current issue of the American Gun Culture Report includes the essay Peter Little and I wrote about gun control and race for In These Times.
In its November/December issue, the Earth First Journal reprinted my essay, “The Green Scare, the State’s Priorities, and Day-to-Day Repression.” I originally delivered it as a lecture in May of last year. I then converted the lecture into an essay for the Eat the State website.
And I recently came across a pirated pamphlet edition of my Monthly Review essay, “The Demand for Order and the Birth of Modern Policing.”
The pamphlet was free, so I can’t complain too vociferously. I do wish people would ask me first, though. It’s just polite.