Updates + Book Tour!

Hi everyone! It’s been a long time, and I wanted to share some updates about what I’ve been working on and my plans.

First, I have finally finished the Copaganda book. The hard copies of the galleys are now being proofread and sent to the mainstream journalists who will write reviews agreeing with me about how complicit they have all been in distorting our understandings of crime and safety. I will begin my book tour in March, with the official publication set for April. I will send around a list of cities and dates here when we have them finalized. If you think that you could host an event in your city at a bookstore, university, community space, etc. that could generate enough interest, please send me an email or leave a comment below, and I can connect you with the publisher to try to set something up! I’ve already had requests from all over the country, as well as Australia. I’m willing to consider going anywhere if there is enough interest and if it would be useful to people.

Second, as with my last book, Usual Cruelty, all royalties from Copaganda will be donated to charity. This time, all royalties will be donated to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition at the Los Angeles Community Action Network, one of the most important and finest community organizations I’ve ever worked with. Also, the publisher is re-releasing Usual Cruelty in paperback before it releases Copaganda. If you haven’t read that book yet, it would be a great time to read it!

Third, I am thrilled to announce that the publisher has again agreed to provide free copies of Copaganda and Usual Cruelty to anyone in prison and to any teacher/professor for their classes. If you work with a program that sends books into jails and prisons, or if you know any teachers in high school, college, or grad school (or if you otherwise could use free copies for teaching/organizing and can’t afford them), please let me know. We sent thousands of copies of Usual Cruelty into prisons and classrooms over the last 5 years. I cherish all the letters I have received back in return.

Fourth, I have accepted an offer to publish my recent essay The Body Camera: The Language of Our Dreams as a book in French. I hope this enables me to open up some vital conversations in other countries about the worldwide expansion of “police reform” technology and the accompanying propaganda. It is likely that it will follow as a book in English within a year or two. But you can read it in English for free online any time.

Fifth, I’ll be following up here in a few weeks with some interesting updates on our civil rights work at Civil Rights Corps, including some interesting connections to copaganda. Look out for that before the holidays!

Finally, for those (few) of you who are paid subscribers, all of your payments are donations to Civil Rights Corps, which continues to do amazing work. I don’t make any money off this. However, I recognize that I’m not posting here nearly as much anymore, so please feel free to convert your memberships into free ones if you’d rather not be donating to Civil Rights Corps. Alternatively, if you want to support our amazing work, please consider telling others about us as we could really use some end-of-year donations. People can do that directly on our website.

More soon!

alec