Microcosm has just released a short booklet collecting some of my essays on torture. Titled Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy, it includes sections on torture and inequality, the role of the media, and prison abolition.
I’m giving two talks on the book, in just a few days. Here are the details:
Friday, April 6, 7pm
Bluestockings
172 Allen Street, New York
Tuesday, April 10, 7pm
Red Emma’s
800 St. Paul Street, Baltimore
There’s been a lot of debate about the police and the Occupy movement. Are the cops part of the 99%? Why have they attacked Occupy protests? How should the movement respond?
I’ll address these questions at a talk I’m giving in Portland this Saturday. A more open discussion will follow. Details are below:
“Police and the 99%”
Saturday, March 10, 2012, 2-4pm
First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 13th
On March 1, I’ll be giving a talk in Seattle on the role of the cops in preserving social inequality, and the implications for social movements. The event is at The Wildcat, 1101 23rd Ave, Seattle. It begins at 7pm.
Meanwwhile, here are a couple interviews on similar subjects I did with KBOO:
“The Policing of Capitalist Society and the Occupy Movement.” Interview by Bill Resnick. The Old Mole Variety Hour. KBOO 90.7. November 21, 2011.
“Cops for Labor?” Interview by Al Bradbury. Labor Radio. KBOO 90.7. November 14, 2011.
And, my essay “Cops for Labor?” is now online: “Cops for Labor?” Dollars and Sense. September/October 2011.
I probably should have mentioned these items closer to Halloween, but I had two horror-related pieces published in the latter part of the year.
The first is a short story, one of very few I’ve gotten into print. It’s called “The Door,” and is about a young man who begins noticing small but disconcerting changes in his daily routine. It ran in the anthology Red Blood, Black Sky from Another Sky Press. You can read it for free online.
The second is a review of Jim Trombetta’s The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You To Read. Trombetta’s book is partly a textual examination of 1950’s horror comics, partly a collection of some of the genre’s best stories and artwork, and partly a history of the effort to censor comics, leading to the imposition of the Comics Code. My review, “The Untimely Death of ’50s Horror Comics,” ran in the November issue of Hustler. It isn’t online.
Speaking of censorship and reading things online — if you happened to stop by this site on January 18th, you would have seen that it was blacked out. That’s because kristianwilliams.com, along with I-don’t-know-how-many other sites closed shop for the day to protest a couple nasty bills before Congress. SOPA and PIPA, as they were called, would have authorized widespread censorship in the hopes of defeating online piracy. The black-out action resulted in millions of emails being sent to congress and, thank goodness, the bills are now effectively dead. It turns out, if nothing else, the internet can be used to save the internet.
(Thanks, Joe, for keeping me in touch with the 21st century and managing the technical side of blacking out, and then restoring, the site.)
