Two new excerpts from the afterword of the new edition of Our Enemies in Blue appeared this month — both concerning alternatives to police. The first, at Oregon Humanities, looks at alternatives in the Black freedom struggle. The second, at Bitch, looks at feminist attempts at justice.
I am pleased to announce, at long last, the publication of the third edition of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America.
Eleven years after the original, and 120 pages longer, the new version brings the historical narrative up-to-date and describes changes in immigration enforcement, surveillance, and crowd control. It also features an expanded afterword on alternatives to policing, and a useful introduction by Andrea Ritchie.
The cover price is $22, but I’m selling it for $20. Or, for $35, you can have Our Enemies in Blue AND Fire the Cops, a collection of my articles, essays, and lectures on policing, published last year. Just send a check to the address below.
Kristian Williams
PO Box 11112
Portland OR 97211
If you are interested in bringing me to talk at your neighborhood bookstore, library, coffee shop, union hall, church, or school, please be in touch. We’ll see what we can work out.
The U.S. government and its local counterparts have been far more eager to spy on, infiltrate, disrupt, and prosecute activists on the left than on the right — even though the right wing has generally been more prone to violence.
In an excerpt from the revised edition of Our Enemies in Blue, I consider why that is, and how the left/right discrepancy relates to other police biases, especially involving race.
The third edition of Our Enemies in Blue is going to be released in a couple weeks. In anticipation, I adapted some of the book’s arguments for an essay in Dollars and Sense. In it, I contrast the legal treatment of offenses associated with poverty and those associated with wealth. In other words: crack versus powder, welfare fraud versus corporate fraud, urban camping versus drunk driving.