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Rose City Copwatch |
PRESS RELEASEFor Immediate Release
Local Author Declares Police Obsolete"Making Police Obsolete"
Thursday, March 10 at 7pm, Portland author Kristian Williams will be reading from his new book, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America. The reading, sponsored by Rose City Copwatch, will be at Vinnie's Pizza (300 N. Killingsworth). Attendance is free. Our Enemies in Blue traces the history of policing from the slave patrols of the colonial era to our contemporary age of militarization and the War on Terror. It brings special attention to the cops' role in enforcing racial and economic inequality, and in squashing movements for social change. In the section Williams will be reading on March 10, he considers the possibility of a world without police and describes alternative systems of public safety that have grown out of resistance movements in the U.S. and abroad. In particular, he discusses the Labor Guards of the Seattle General Strike, the Black Panther Party's survival programs, the street committees of the anti-Apartheid movement, and the Community Restorative Justice program in Northern Ireland. Other speakers from Rose City Copwatch will relate these historical examples to the organization's long-range aim of abolishing the police and to its ongoing work monitoring police activity here in Portland. The author will be available afterwards to sign books. Proceeds from book sales will benefit Rose City Copwatch. Copwatch achieved notoriety in 2004, when it organized a successful grassroots effort to acquire and publicize photographs of killer cops Scott McCollister and Jason Sery. Since that time, it has offered trainings on "Your Rights and the Police" and participated in aregular patrol against police brutality. For more information about the event, contact: Clayton Szczech (503) 993-9464. -- END -- |
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