The A-Space

After you’ve been to the important MOVE demo on May 10^th, come by the A-Space for this important book discussion with author Kristian Williams (scroll to bottom of page for info on MOVE demo)

Book Discussion & Signing with

Kristian Williams

Author of Our Enemies in Blue & American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination

Saturday, May 10, 7:30pm

The A-Space 4722 Baltimore Avenue

Copies of the books will be available for purchase

Kristian Williams is the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination (2006), shortlisted for the Oregon Book Award, Confrontations: Selected Journalism (2007), and Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America (revised edition, 2007). His writing has appeared in national publications such as CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, In These Times, The Progressive, and in the collection We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism. He is a member of Rose City Copwatch in Portland, Oregon.

torture and the logic of domination

Kristian Williams

“I’m told that these photographs that are coming out now are nothing more than the same things that came out before, if not identical of the same type of behavior.”

—Donald Rumsfeld, 2/16/06

More of the same. So went the official Pentagon response after new photos of US soldiers torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were leaked to Australian media. Like Rumsfeld, many of us seem to be suffering a terrible sense of déjà vu:

_ again, evidence that torture is not aberrant but a standard tool in the US “war on terror”

_ again, the media fixed on the “problem of the photos,” not the reality of open criminality they expose

_ again, the administration scrambling to direct public outrage away from questions of accountability with the false “choice” between protecting American lives and upholding the law—moral standards be damned

One voice in surprising, if sad, agreement with our secretary of defense is Kristian Williams, author of the forthcoming American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination. But what Williams observes in these new photos is “identical of the same type of behavior” we’ve seen along a much longer historical continuum that stretches back to fi rst contact and slavery, persisting today in the routine maintenance of the world’s largest prison system, in the state’s management of political dissent, and in the “unremarkable” structural inequities and violence that shape everyday life in the United States.

For a superb overview of the use of torture in the war on terror, read Seymour Hersh’s Chain of Command and Jennifer K. Harbury’s Truth, Torture, and the American Way. To fully grasp how we got to Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in the fi rst place, reach for American Methods:

Torture and the Logic of Domination.

OUR ENEMIES IN BLUE

Police and Power in America

Kristian Williams

In the US a police officer is more likely to kill a civilian than be killed by one. Between 1996 and 2005, 575 officers were killed in the line of duty—an average of 64 deaths per year. Yet in a recent joint investigation, ColorLines and The Chicago Reporter found that approximately “9,500 people nationally were killed by police during the years 1980 to 2005.” That’s 380 civilian deaths per year, roughly six times the amount of police fatalities. The Bureau of Justice reports a steady decline in police fatalities since the early 1970s. The same cannot be said about the rate of deadly police force, whether deemed “ justified” or “wrongful” by police standards, against civilians.

Despite these statistics—and with over 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States—many Americans view the police as a necessary, even natural, component of a just society.

While occasionally incidents of “excessive force” do provoke public outcry for police reform, they also obscure an uncomfortable but important question: What are police for?

Kristian Williams breaks this silence. In his fascinating history of the rise of the modern police force, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, Williams argues that police misconduct is not just a matter of “bad apples” but a function of what the police are for: to protect and serve a violent and unjust social order.

Lively and meticulously researched, Our Enemies in Blue traces the origins of policing to the slave patrols and the strike-breaking squads, illustrating the police’s crucial role in maintaining racism and capitalism while simultaneously debunking popular understandings of the police as timeless or essential. Williams raises perhaps the most urgent question before us today: Is policing compatible with a working democracy?

As Joy James powerfully observes in her new introduction: “[I]t is not mere numbness to the white supremacist and classist aspects of American policing that renders many of us indifferent to and passive before police violence, but the recognition that acquiescence is the price for our unsustainable consumption: This empire permits us to share in the wealth of American excess as long as we permit its policing apparatuses to exist.”

But before you come to the A-Space….

DEMONSTRATE TO FREE THE MOVE 9!

Saturday, May 10, 2008
11th and Market Sts, Philadelphia
12 - 3 pm

We mark the anniversary of the murderous 1985 bombing of MOVE by continuing the work carried out by those who were killed: freeing the MOVE 9. Parole is NOT a given. Come out in support of these brave, political prisoners who are approaching their 30th year of incarceration!!! Up the pressure for their release!