On Wednesday, November 2, I will be speaking about counterinsurgency and domestic policing at Oberlin College in Ohio. The event, sponsored by the Prison Justice Project, begins at 8:00 in Craig Auditorium.
Oscar Wilde’s letters to Constance, his wife (October 2011)
During a visit to the British Library a few years ago, I came across a short note from Oscar Wilde to his wife, Constance. It is actually a sweet little prose poem on the nature of love. Later, I was surprised to see that the note is not included in the Complete Letters. So I set off to figure out what it was that I had found, when it was written, and what it might mean.
The result is an essay available at The World and I.
Cops and Class War (September 2011)
My two latest articles both focus, in very different ways, on the position the cops occupy in our highly stratified society.
The first, “Exclusion Zones,” appears in the September issue of In These Times. It describes the policing of public space in Portland, Oregon (where I live), and outlines the race and class dynamics driving the cops’ approach. I link two deaths at the hands of police — those of James Chasse and Keaton Otis — to the agenda established by the local business elite, in particular, the Portland Business Alliance.
The second article considers the role cops played in the labor unrest in Wisconsin earlier in the year, and contrasts it to their more usual job of breaking strikes. Specifically, I try to identify the conditions under which the cops sometimes side with striking workers, and the limits to that solidarity. That article is in the September/October 2011 issue of Dollars and Sense, but isn’t available online.
Interview: Police Abolition (August 2011)
Last week I did an interview for AshevilleFM.org. I talked a bit about the history of policing, about recent anti-cop resistance, and about the developing politics of police abolition. It’s archived here.