Kristian Williams

To protect and serve? A provocative history of America's most defining--and misunderstood--institution.

Police and Power in America

Our Enemies in Blue

Robert Evans

Cops, Proud Boys, and Other Criminals

Gang Politics

A book that penetrates the surface of the Oscar Wilde mythos to uncover the radical politics that propelled his art.

The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde

Resist Everything Except Temptation

Lara Messersmith-Glavin

William Munger

Presents a collection of seventeen essays that focus on how counterinsurgency techniques are being used in the United States, including the militarization of police and the re-emergence of infiltration.

Resisting Counterinsurgency

Life During Wartime

The dangers of "progressive policing" as told through a study of Portland, Oregon. This is a story of Portland, Oregon, from an outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company, through its founding as a city and the long and lively twentieth century shaped by organized crime, labor unrest, and waves of migration. But more so, this is a story of how over the course of nearly 200 years, the city has pursued "law and order" under the influence of business interests, political climbers, and social campaigners. By maintaining the Portland Police Bureau, a body that has time and again proved a law unto itself, the powers-that-be belie the city's reputation for liberal values and civic mindedness. An expert chronicler of police abuse of power, Kristian Williams now turns his focus to law enforcement in his own backyard. It is the city’s progressive veneer, this book argues, that allows the repressive core of its policing machinery to function so effectively, weathering scandals, co-opting critics, and periodically renewing police legitimacy with well-timed and carefully limited reforms. Williams’s meticulous research and expert storytelling lay bare the Portland Police Bureau's legacy of bigotry, corruption, and violence. The most well-intended efforts to address the community's needs have resorted to the criminal justice system, incarcerating and killing those they purport to help. Portland was among the first in the US to hire a female officer and the first large city with a female police chief, as well as an early and enthusiastic proponent of community policing. Yet the city’s public record comprehensively shows racially discriminatory (and disproportionately violent) encounters with law enforcement, a department that commits racist and sexist abuse both inside and outside its ranks, and persistent criminal and retributive actions on the part of its officers. The PPB is an institution impervious to reform, let alone common decency. Amid the 2020 protests that swept the nation, and after decades of grassroots organizing against police killings in the city, Portland saw almost 200 days of mass uprising against police brutality and far right extremism—exposing the depth of anger aimed at the outrageous actions of the PPB. Policing the Progressive City adds to our understanding of how the US police system perpetuates racism, violence, and exploitation, even in one of America’s most loudly liberal environments.

Portland, Oregon, from Settlement to Uprising

Policing the Progressive City

"Together, the writers sound a sobering warning: the American government is an iron fist in a velvet glove whose purpose remains preserving the status quo and enriching the rich."— Publishers Weekly What happens when the techniques of counterinsurgency, developed to squash small skirmishes and guerrilla wars on the border of Empire, blend into the state's apparatus for domestic policing? In Life During Wartime, fifteen authors and activists reflect on the American domestic security apparatus, detailing the increasing militarization of the police force and the re-emergence of infiltration and counter-intelligence as surveillance strategies, highlighting the ways that the techniques and the technologies of counterinsurgency have been applied on the home front, and offering strategies for resistance. Includes contributions Kristian Williams, Will Munger, Walidah Imarisha, George Ciccariello-Maher, Beriah Empie, Elaine Brown, Geoffrey Boyce, Conor Cash, Vicente L. Rafael, Alexander Reid Ross, Evan Tucker, Layne Mullett, Sarah Small, and Luce Guillen-Givins.

"Killer cops and cop-killers, 'police as workers' and police as soldiers, copwatching and counterinsurgency operations... these subjects and more are examined in this collection of essays by veteran activist Kristian Williams. Fire the Cops! is a collection of several essays written in the decade following the publication of Williams' Our Enemies in Blue, year in which Williams was heavily involved in the Rose City Copwatch organization in Portland. This book can be read as a supplement to Our Enemies in Blue, or on its own, as a series of attempts to apply historical lessons to circumstances as they unfold. Including both reports from the frontlines and reconnaissance into the plans and practices of our opponents, Fire the Cops! is intended to help inform future critique, and further struggle"--Back cover.

essays, lectures, and journalism

Fire the cops!

Oscar Wilde is remembered as a wit and a dandy, as a gay martyr, and as a brilliant writer, but his philosophical depth and political radicalism are often forgotten. Resist Everything Except Temptation locates Wilde in the tradition of left-wing anarchism, and argues that only when we take his politics seriously can we begin to understand the man, his life, and his work. Drawing from literary, historical, and biographical evidence, including archival research, the book outlines the philosophical influences and political implications of Wilde's ideas on art, sex, morality, violence, and above all, individualism. Williams raises questions about the relationships between culture and politics, between utopian aspirations and practical programs, and between individualism, group identity, and class struggle. The resulting volume represents, not merely a historical curiosity, but a contribution to current debates within political theory and a salvo in the broader culture wars.

Torture And the Logic of Domination

American Methods

HURT is Portland activist Kristian Williams' collection of articles and interviews on the history, psychology, and current state of torture in democratic societies. Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue and American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, has pulled together a vast and comprehensive resource on this abominable act. Articles include David Cunningham's “Prisons, Torture, and Imperialism,” a piece on the anarchist perspective taken from comments at the 2008 Anarchist Bookfair in San Francisco, and a great essay on writing about torture, among many others. This sober 64-page document is a heavy piece of work—dark, informative, and oft times harrowing. But it's also about working hard to enact change. As says Williams in the Gyozo Nehez interview, “At the outset, I think it's more important to have a sense of hope, that things can be different and through our actions we can contribute to that change. The joy comes later, from struggle itself as much as from victory.” HURT is a how-to manual on fighting and understanding torture—a piece of the struggle itself.

Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy

Hurt

Can the contemporary anarchist scene investigate its short-comings and mark a path toward the total transformation of society and the creation of a more just world? As the title suggests, in this pamphlet Williams asks: "where is anarchism headed?" We begin with a succinct overview of what anarchism means as a political philosophy. From there, two recent histories are used as jumping off points to look at a gap in the make up and ideology of today's anarchists and that of their ancestors. The final essay ponders what cultural and structural prerequisites might be necessary to shrink that gap in order to align our highest ideals with the current "movement," such as it is. Whither Anarchism? is a challenge, a provocation, and it is real talk. "It is my hope that, despite everything, anarchism may someday transcend its present limitations and once again come to represent the highest ideals and aspirations of humanity, and that anarchists may make a distinctive contribution to the struggle for freedom and equality, and to the new world that the struggle seeks to create."

Kristian Williams

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