3.5
Our Enemies in Blue
By Kristian WilliamsPublisher Description
Kristian Williams is the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy, and Fire the Cops! He was one of the editors of the collection Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, and is a contributing editor at the movement security web journal, DCSC.ws. He has written about policing and state violence for Clamor, Counterpunch, New Politics, In These Times, and Toward Freedom. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities4 Reviews
3.5
Kate
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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Erin Crane
Created over 3 years agoShare
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“The title is provocative, but the book itself is very scholarly and measured overall.
I read this book soon after Are Prisons Obsolete? which was a good pairing. Both books go further than calls to reform police and incarceration. They push you to consider whether we need these systems at all. They remind you that we didn’t always have them in the past, at some point we created them, and we don’t need to keep them just because we’ve had them for decades/centuries. They are not necessarily the best solutions to the problems they are attempting to solve. That’s an important thought process to have.
Another good point made in this book is that police and media often assume that a disruptive protest or a riot is an unwarranted reaction to something. That those are never legitimate actions. But if a group is oppressed and denied justice or aid via legitimate means, what exactly is that group supposed to do? Sit there and take it? Or are we saying they are exaggerating their woes and it’s not bad enough to warrant protests and/or riots? How do we know it’s not?
This book was dense. It was more history than I expected. More than I wanted tbh.”
BookAnonJeff
Created over 6 years agoShare
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“Very Thorough Research. This book both predates and succeeds (and even cites) Radley Balko's stronger work RISE OF THE WARRIOR COP: THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA'S POLICE FORCES. While it cites *volumes* more incidents than Balko's work, and is thus very illuminating because of it, this book has a fatal flaw that is lacking in Balko's work - namely, that it constantly comes at the issue of police brutality as a form of racial and/ or class warfare/ oppression. Its discussions of Anarchism and the optimal state of having no police force whatsoever is great (and lacking in Balko's work), but that strength isn't enough to overcome the flaw of being so hyper-biased throughout. Still, like Michelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW (which this book also cites), this book - initially written roughly 8 yrs before Balko's, and updated 3 yrs after Balko's - is a GREAT read for any who seek the truth that in America, police truly are the enemy of us all.”
Remy
Created over 8 years agoShare
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About Kristian Williams
Kristian Williams is the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy, and Fire the Cops! He was one of the editors of the collection Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, and is a contributing editor at the movement security web journal, DCSC.ws. He has written about policing and state violence for Clamor, Counterpunch, New Politics, In These Times, and Toward Freedom. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
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