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Our Enemies in Blue
Police and Power in America (Revised Edition)
Kristian Williams
Pages: 350ISBN: 978-0-89608-771-2
Release Date: 2007-08-01
“Should become mandatory reading for all police academy students.”—Damon Woodcock (Ret.), Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau
“A well-researched, historically grounded, and mordant critique of American policing past and present.”—Christian Parenti
Even critics have a difficult time imagining a world without police. But just what is the role of police in a democracy: to serve the public or to protect the powerful? Tracing the evolution of the modern police force back to the slave patrols, this controversial study observes the police as the armed defender of a violent status quo.
Written for both the lay reader and for scholars, Our Enemies in Blue demonstrates that police misconduct isn’t just a matter of “bad apples,” but a function of the very nature of policing in the US. Williams examines the populations most often subjected to police abuse and the forms that abuse takes, delving into the role of police brutality in repressing political dissent and in preserving existing structures of inequality.
Kristian Williams is also the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination.
Other topics that are related to Activism are:
Author Article
Confronting Horror: Writing About Torture
by Kristian Williams
Published by New Politics in print and online
I DID NOT DREAM OF BEING TORTURED.
But I did dream of being caged, of being bound and blindfolded, of being kept cold and naked in a small steel box. I dreamed of terrible footsteps, always approaching, and the chilling sound of metal clanging against metal. I dreamed of endless screams, and of shadows that stretched toward me, and of hands holding instruments that I could never quite see.
The dreams ended, always, before the pain could become real. But that is a small matter. The fear was real enough.
I SPENT A LITTLE LESS THAN A YEAR researching and writing my book American Methods -- or, a little more than a year if you count the time spent on revisions. The book examines the U.S. government's use of torture -- in war, in prison, and by proxy. My research led me to read scores of human rights reports, hundreds of pages of government documents, countless newspaper articles, and numerous books on the history and practice of torture, international law, global politics, and rape. I learned a whole new vocabulary -- "hooding," "monstering," "stress positions," "falaka," "strip cells," "rendition," "waterboarding," "the Palestinian hanging." And I became acquainted with all variety of imaginative new uses for rad...
Kristian Williams
Click here to view Kristian Williams's full Author PageKristian Williams is a member of Rose City Copwatch in Portland, Oregon, and of the National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981).
In addition to Our Enemies in Blue, Williams is also the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination which made the short list for the 2007 Oregon Book Award. He has contributed articles to CounterPunch, The World Today, the Columbia Journalism Review, and to the collection We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (Verso, 2003). He is presently at work on a book about Oscar Wilde and anarchism.
A collection of his articles, Confrontations (2007), is also available from Tarantula Radical Publishing and Distribution.
Williams also wrote, "Confronting Horror: Writing about Torture" for New Politics, Winter 2008: vol. 11, no. 4.