Copaganda Book Tour, and The NYT Reminds Us Why I Do This

I am so grateful to all (14,500) of you who have subscribed to this Copaganda Newsletter over the years and excited to say that the official launch of my book Copaganda is two weeks away! I’m especially grateful to Michelle Alexander, Sarah Stillman, and Alex Vitale for providing the lovely blurbs for the back cover that you see below, plus James Forman Jr. and Fred Smith Jr. for their blurbs about my prior civil rights work and book Usual Cruelty. Moreover, it seems that many people who ordered Copaganda online have already received their copies early—I’m so excited to hear what people think about the book. Let me know in the comments! I want to give you a few updates on the book tour, and then I can’t resist commenting on a New York Times article I saw this morning that reminds me why it felt important to write the book.

First, I would be enormously moved if everyone receiving this email bought the book, and especially if you bought an additional copy to share with a friend or colleague. The book should have almost no typos because my 93-year-old grandmother (and newsletter subscriber) caught the last few typos that all the editors at the publisher missed. You can buy it anywhere books are sold: if you are interested in supporting an amazing Black-owned bookstore and community space, I have been working with Comma bookstore in Flint on a lot of stuff the past year in our lawsuits on behalf of the children of Flint who are fighting for the constitutional right to hug their parents. You can order directly from Comma, and Egypt (the incredible owner) will ship it to you wherever you live! As with this newsletter, all royalties are donated to charity. The royalties from the book are donated to the Los Angeles Community Action Network, and its Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which organizes unhoused people in Skid Row. Also, I have ensured that there will always be free copies of Copaganda for any teacher, all their students, and any human being in prison. I believe the ideas in the book are important in this authoritarian moment, so PLEASE help me get the ideas in front of as many people as possible.

Second, I’ll be coming to dozens of cities (and maybe even a few foreign countries…), and I’m open to going to more places. Please write me an email or leave a comment below if you think you can organize an event with at least 50-100 people in your area! This includes schools, prisons, book stores, religious institutions, newsrooms, libraries, foundations, and any place open for free to the public. I have the first few events set, so mark your calendars:

• April 7: New York City. 7pm NYU School of Journalism. RSVP here.

• April 8: Washington, DC. 6pm Busboys and Poets. RSVP here.

• April 13: Baltimore. 2pm Red Emma’s. RSVP here.

• April 16: New York City. 7pm Word Up Community books. RSVP here.

• April 26-27: Bay Area—TBA (Follow me on social media for details in a few weeks)

• April 29-May 1: Los Angeles (Follow me on social media for details in a few weeks)

• May 3: Troy, NY. 4pm. Paper Moon bookstore.

• May 15: Seattle (Follow me on social media for details in a few weeks)

• May 18: Portland Powell Books

• May 21: Chicago. 4pm University of Chicago, 7pm Pilsen Community Books.

• I’m working on events in May/June for Philadelphia, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Little Rock, Denver, Detroit, London, Liverpool and a bunch of other places. I’ll try to send another update, and will post on social media about them all!

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Finally, I saw a recent article this morning in the New York Times about the surging NY Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani, who is running on a Democratic Socialist platform and generating enormous grassroots excitement. There’s a lot to be said about the article, but this key sentence caught my eye:

One of the most important chapters in the book Copaganda tries to unravel a key theme of corporate news coverage: the policy views of people critical of the punishment bureaucracy are very rarely communicated to readers. Instead, they are vaguely gestured at—usually to (mis)inform us that, whatever they might be, everyone knows they are unpopular. The fact that these mystery policies are always “becoming less popular” is so self-evident, evidence is almost never cited for the claim. This contributes to important propaganda goals that try to get people to believe: 1) that progressives don’t have rigorous, evidence-based solutions to keep us safe, and that even they probably can’t articulate them or else they would surely be in the news article about them; 2) that, whatever they are, supporting them is futile because the general population is inflexibly opposed to them and it will never happen; 3) that far-right policies of violence, surveillance, and repression are “centrist” policies that pragmatic and smart liberals and progressives must embrace if they are actually to win; 4) and that, whatever they are, lefty policies have been tried and failed at some unknown and undisclosed imaginary time in some imaginary place.

In the Chapters 10 and 11 of the book, I use a number of examples (and some comedy) to illustrate the extreme length publications like the New York Times will go to in order to keep readers ignorant of what specific anti-carceral policies people on the left are proposing and the evidence supporting them. I also try to explain why its so important, and what connection it has to both validating and providing the infrastructure for the rising authoritarian zeitgeist and some dangerous strands of conventional wisdom that prop it up.

Anyway, please get the book, get one for someone in your life, and encourage other people you know to get it. And, I hope to see you on the tour!