Police Rebellion, Then and Now

As the NYPD prepares for a strike on July 4th, John Garvey and I revisit the history of rebellion in the NYPD in a lively discussion of its relationship to white supremacy, police power, and struggles for emancipation.

On Police Reform

I had the honor of speaking with Francine Knowles of the Daily Southtown for an article exploring the possibilities and limits of police reform. Check it out here, and consider subscribing!

Class Power on Zero-Hours

I have a lengthy review of the new AngryWorkers book, Class Power on Zero-Hours, in the June issue of the Brooklyn Rail. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone trying to orient their praxis right now. AW are one of the hardest grinding groups out there, and their website is constantly updated with news and analysis. I'm not sure when they sleep!

In Solidarity

The Gotham Center for New York City History has put together a handy compendium of historical articles around police violence and resistance in NYC, and I am honored to be included.

Needless to say the unfolding rebellion in the USA has my unqualified support. Some of us write historical articles; this movement is writing history. Hope to see you all in the streets.

NYC Can't Jail Its Way Out of a Public Health Crisis

Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot and I have a piece in City Limits examining NYC's emergency budget, which replicates the "law and order" priorities that have made so many people vulnerable to COVID in the first place.

Speaking at Columbia University Rent & Work Strike Teach-In, Wednesday 4/29

I am honored to present on academic labor organizing at the Columbia University Rent Strike / Work Strike Teach-In, 4pm on Wednesday April 29th. My talk, presented via Zoom, will focus on lessons from five years organizing inside and outside a massive business union at City University of New York, and my participation in CUNY Struggle and the 7K or Strike campaign. Check out my talk and the rest of this exciting event. And support Columbia University on strike!

COVID and the US Carceral System

Some excellent colleagues and I are featured in a story on COVID in the US carceral system, up now GSU news. Echoing comrades from around the country and world, I argue that the COVID crisis in prisons reveals conditions that have always been disastrous.

COVID-19 Coverage in Hard Crackers (Updated 4/14)

As the COVID crisis transforms daily life around the world, we have been working to collect stories and interviews for the Hard Crackers blog. So far we have published:

An MTA workers discusses the chaos of running the NYC subway amid the crisis.

An Amazon warehouse worker calls out the unsafe and hyper-exploitative practices which put Amazon workers and the general public at risk.

Tanzeem Ajmiri on Coronavirus conspiracy theories and what they tell us about American society.

Fast food worker Luis Brennan from the Burgerville Workers Union on the present horizons for workplace organizing and what could come next.

An Emergency nurse on supply shortages, bureaucratic hospital management, and the absurdity of capitalist medicine.

An ICU nurse speaks out on shortages, deteriorating standards of care, and retaliation against a whistleblower.

An editorial roundtable on the social significance of the crisis for American society.

Boyda Johnstone on the challenges of online teaching as students grapple with hardships in their daily lives.

Editor Mike Morgan on the potential for resistance in the military amid COVID, and his own experiences organizing against the Apartheid-era South African military.

CJ Leblanc on the impact of COVID on incarcerated people at Angola, and the potential for rebellion.

Last but not least, a discussion of America's #1 quarantine obsession: Netflix's Tiger King.

We are looking for testimonials from everyday people about workplace safety, unemployment and housing issues, struggles with paying bills and taking care of their loved ones, as well as any acts of solidarity and collective action in these very difficult times. We want to hear from you! If you have a story that you want to share with us, please email the editor at editor@hardcrackers.com.

Saturday April 4th: Against Jails (Updated with Video)

On Saturday, April 4th Nadja and I will be joined by some dope organizers for a panel discussion called Abolition and Pandemic. This event was organized by the Brooklyn Rail as a public forum on our "All Jails Fit to Build" article. In light of COVID the event has been moved online. To attend, follow this Zoom link.

Update 4/6: A full video of this event is now available online. Thanks to the Rail and everyone who made this a big success!

Let Them Out Now

I have an op-ed in City Limits supporting the Board of Correction's call to immediately release 2,000 people from Rikers Island amid COVID-19's rapid spread. It is literally a matter of life and death.

No Such Thing as a Nice Prison

When we presented at last month's International Transformative Justice and Abolition Criminology Conference in Salt Lake City, Zhana and I were struck by the surprising similarities between the new carceral and policing schemes we heard about in SLC and the situation in New York City. We decided to sit down with Decarcerate Utah organizer Brinley Froelich for a wide-ranging discussion of new trends in criminalization and incarceration in these two cities, and how they can be resisted. A transcript of this lively exchange is now available on the Verso blog.

The Everyday Abolitionism of 13 Reasons Why

I have a new article in Hard Crackers exploring the surprising prison and police abolitionist themes in the popular teenage melodrama 13 Reasons Why.

5th International Transformative Justice and Abolition Criminology Conference

On February 18th, Zhana Kurti and I will be appearing at the 5th International Transformative Justice and Abolition Criminology Conference in Salt Lake City. We are really excited to be presenting our ongoing investigations into carceral devolution and the non-profit sector, alongside some excellent scholars and activists. We have some more writing in the works, so keep an eye out!

All Jails Fit to Build

Following the New York Times editorial board's endorsement of the new NYC jails last Fall, Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot and I decided to research other jails the Times has supported over the years. The answer might surprise you! Check out our new article in the February edition of  The Brooklyn Rail. 

Managing Urban Disorder in the 1960s: The New York City Model

Zhana Kurti and I have a new piece at the Gotham Center exploring the historical role of the non-profit industrial complex in planning explicit counterinsurgency in New York City. This is part of an ongoing project we began two years ago with "Rebranding Mass Incarceration." In our new piece we explore the role played by the Ford Foundation and Vera Institute of Justice in planning a counterinsurgency strategy for New York City in the late 1960s. To my knowledge the two main documents we dug up have not been written about before. The result of this study, we argue, is a theoretical and historical foundation for understanding the role criminal justice non-profits play in New York City, and beyond, as the crisis of legitimacy around mass incarceration deepens. But there's much more work to be done.

Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity

I recently appeared on Laborwave Radio to discuss the life and work of Noel Ignatiev. Click here to check out the interview. The episode largely revolves around the article I wrote for Commune on Noel's legacy and our friendship, which can be read here.

"We Had to Take Things Into Our Own Hands"

Earlier this year I sat down with Alexandra Adams and Lauren Barbato for a lively exchange about university-based rank-and-file unionism and their founding of the Rutgers Rank-and-File Caucus. This interview, which appeared in a limited-run newsprint version of The File,  is now available to read online alongside lots of other swell articles at The File's new website.

Jailhouse Schlock

My scholarship was cited in two recent articles about the new jails planned for New York City: Michael Kimmelman's "After Rikers Island Closes, What Will Jail Look Like?" in The New York Times, and Tiera Rainey's "Mainstream Reform Efforts are Simply Evolving, Not Ending, Mass Incarceration," written for the American Friends Service Committee, Arizona Office. The critique of "justice hubs" Zhandarka Kurti and I wrote also made an appearance on the Antifada episode "Abolish Justice Hubs," where the gang is joined by No New Jails activist and my friend Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot. 

There Are Abolitionists All Around Us

Earlier this year I had the privilege to sit down with veteran NYC abolitionist Pilar Maschi for a wide-ranging discussion of her path to politics and the successful attempt she helped wage to stop an earlier iteration of the NYC jail expansion currently underway. The interview appears in Issue 4 of Commune, and can be read online here without a subscription. But you should subscribe anyway!

Noel Ignatiev, 1940-2019

saying goodbye, the last time I saw Noel

The great revolutionary Marxist and my dear friend Noel Ignatiev has died. I had the honor of celebrating his life and work in the pages of Commune.

This Bird Has Flown

I had the honor of being interviewed by New York Times reporter Matthew Haag for an article exploring the applicability of Norwegian prison design to New York City.

There's an old saying in politics: if a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is "no."

NYC Jail Fight in the News

behind the scenes at "True Crime" on WGN

The NYC jail fight has been featured in a number of journalistic and activist outlets in recent weeks surrounding the New York City Council's shameful decision to add up to twelve jails to the City's carceral landscape with no guarantee that the jails on Rikers Island will even close. I have been honored to be called upon to speak on the history and political stakes of the present moment.

My research figured prominently into a story by Chelsea Sanchez for City Lab entitled "Rikers Was Planned As NYC's Kinder, Gentler Jail. What Happened?" in which I am also quoted.

I was also extensively interviewed alongside some excellent activists for Anakwa Dwamena's impressive New York Review of Books piece "Closing Rikers: Competing Visions For the Future of New York City's Jails."

Following the City Council vote I was interviewed and quoted by Teo Armus in a Washington Post article entitled "'A Stain on New York City: As lawmakers vote to close Rikers Island (sic) some see history repeating itself."

On that accursed day I also had the privilege of contributing to a powerful statement by No New Jails entitled "Nothing has changed. Together we will win."

In the lead-up to the vote, No New Jails circulated a short statement I wrote to each member of the City Council, for which I did not receive any personal responses. My favorite robo-response began with "Dear [name]."

Finally, I was invited on WGN radio's "True Crime" program for a freewheeling discussion with Kelly Pope and Bill "Professor Fraud" Kresse about Rikers History, invest/divest, the Rikers Island art heist, and building a world without police and prisons.

It's a real honor to find a tiny little spot for my work in the unfolding of such consequential events. I will continue to use my scholarship to serve the movement however possible. Otherwise, what's the point?

The Crucifixion of Rikers Ysland

I have a new piece in Hard Crackers contextualizing the 2003 Rikers Island Art Heist, undertaken by four exceptionally brazen – and apparently, inept – high-ranking jail guards. The story has since been recounted as a tragicomedy of "stupid crooks," and surely the shoe fits. But I argue it offers a more fundamental lesson about the nature of truth in carceral facilities, and its relationship to the violence that structures daily life for incarcerated people. 

Speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee 10/9

On Wednesday, October 9th I will have the honor of speaking at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as part of the Fall Colloquium Series put on by the Department of Sociology. I will be speaking on a familiar topic: how a mid-century jail reform movement in the New York City Department of Correction paved the way for the Rikers Island of today.

If you can't make it out to Knoxville, check out "A Jail to End All Jails," an article Jack Norton and I wrote a few years back. In it, we outline how the mid-century jail reform program of Anna M. Kross and her humanist cohort inadvertently built the bridge, quite literally, the the Rikers Island of today. 

As jail reformers in New York City once more attempt to solve the problems of incarceration with better jails, attention to this history is essential. For a practical alternative to the dead end of prison reform, check out the abolitionist program offered by No New Jails NYC. This group, operating on the right side of history, has a practical plan to decarcerate New York City, and replace Rikers Island with no new jails. Anyone concerned with actually fixing the mess of mass incarceration should support this group any way they can.

Introducing: The File

I had the honor of co-editing a The File, a DIY publication by and for rank-and-file academic workers, along with my great comrades (pictured left) Sonam Singh and Danielle Carr!

The File features in-depth coverage of dissident labor organizing at CUNY, Rutgers, Barnard, Columbia, and more, including an extensive  interview I conducted with AAUP baddies Alexandra Adams and Lauren Barbato of the Rutgers Rank and File Caucus.

Check out our site, or click here to read the first issue online. We also printed a good amount of paper copies! If you'd like some, or would like to participate in a (hypothetical) second issue, contact me or follow the contact link on our site.

Bigfoot Cop and the End of Policing

I have a new essay about Kevin Shamel's classic novel Bigfoot Cop and its relationship to contemporary paradigms of police reform and abolition. Check it out in Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life.

Free Meek

The inimitable Dr. Zhandarka Kurti and I have a new article in Jacobin examining the Meek Mill case, the docuseries Free Meek, and its lessons for effective organizing against mass incarceration. It was a thrill to be putting the finishing touches on this piece when the news came down that Meek would finally be rid of the case that's dogged him for practically his entire adult life – not, it should be noted, without still accruing a record.

Review of Homer Venters's Life and Death in Rikers Island

I have a review of Homer Venters's Life and Death in Rikers Island up now in Jacobin. I enjoyed this book, not in the least because of its terse and unpretentious exposition. I have some problems with the framework, which I address in the review. Definitely worth a read (both the review and the book) if you're interested in Rikers Island or the broader questions surrounding prison reform / abolition in the US right now.

The Lippman Commission and Carceral Devolution in New York City

As New York City debates the most dramatic transformation of its jail infrastructure in almost a century, I had the honor of co-authoring a critical assessment for Social Justice, with my fellow social justice warrior Dr. Zhandarka Kurti. Drawing largely on Zhana's extensive research into probation and "alternatives to incarceration" we critical engage with the specifics of the original plan to downsize and relocate the city's jail system.

Some of the details are a bit dated given the lengthy turnover time of academic publishing, but the substance of the critique remains highly relevant: namely, if the city downsizes its jail population by shifting its burden to other tentacles of the carceral state, the communities most devastated by mass incarceration could very well be no less entangled in this pernicious net than before. Click here to read the full article, and consider checking out the campaign for No New Jails, presently striving to build a grassroots alternative to the vision outlined by the Lippman Commission.

Saturday June 8th: Revenge of the Rank & File

On the afternoon of Saturday June 8th I will host a public discussion between rank-and-file activists at CUNY and Rutgers, at The People's Forum in Manhattan.

It's an honor to share the stage with folks who are blazing the trail for a new direction in fighting austerity at the university.

Both universities and their respective unions are crawling with career academics who have built lucrative careers off "working-class New York," "austerity blues," "the city is a factory," and the like, while standing idly by as the university is dismantled piece by piece. On June 8th, come meet some folks who are actually doing something to fight back. RSVP here, or surprise us!

Escape from New York

Great news! In April I successfully defended my dissertation Captives of a New Alcatraz, the New York City Department of Correction from 1954 to 1990. In it I draw from extensive archival material to provide a political-economic account of how it came to be that there are so many awful jails on a tiny island in the East River.

Today I received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center. 

Next month I will relocate to Chicago to become an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University. 

I told my students at BMCC to forget what I've been teaching them all semester; the American Dream is in fact alive and well. To my great satisfaction, they booed and called me a sellout. 

The future is bright!

Rank and File Revolt at CUNY

I had the honor to be included alongside some great comrades from the 7K or Strike campaign for an interview in Left Voice. The public university is specific in many ways, including the complex stratification of its workforce and the ideology among many proletarianized educators that they are not "workers." However I believe the lessons from the successes and failures of our efforts, chronicled in this piece, have a fairly broad range of application. Keep an eye on CUNY!

4/14: Book Event for David Ranney's Living and Dying on the Factory Floor

I recently had the honor of speaking with Dave Ranney about his new book Living and Dying on the Factory Floor, a memoir of community organizing and factory work in 1970s-1980s Chicago. The interview, published in Jacobin, can be found here.

Next month Dave will be coming to New York City for three book events co-sponsored by Hard Crackers. My longtime co-conspirator Zhandarka Kurti and I will be co-hosting one of these, April 14th, 6:30pm at McNally Jackson Bookstore, 52 Prince Street, Manhattan. Join us for a dialogue about workplace and community organizing, and the lessons we can draw from Dave's experiences.

Dave will also appear  on 4/13 at 1882 Woodbine, and 4/16 John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Click here for more information.

Be sure to catch Dave while he's in town. And if you haven't picked up the book yet, what are you waiting for?

"White Tigers Eat Black Panthers:" New York City's Law Enforcement Group

I wrote an article for the Gotham Center for New York City History revisiting the Law Enforcement Group, a short-lived fascist organization within the NYPD in the 1960s.

Hard Crackers Issue 6 Release Celebration

Join me and the other New York editors of Hard Crackers for a celebration of Issue 6. Copies will be available, and we will have mercifully short readings.

Freddy's Bar and Backroom

Sunday 3/24, 2pm

627 5th Ave, Brooklyn

From the introduction:

This is the sixth edition of Hard Crackers Magazine. Malcolm X once said about this country, “the South is everything south of the Canadian border.” In keeping with this general principle, we are tackling the South here. The Webster’s Dictionary definition of the word south is “the direction to the right of one facing east.” That’s enough of that. We would rather share the Medgar Evers position, “I don’t know if I’m going to heaven or hell, but I’m going there from the South.”

If you can't make it, pick up a copy here... and once you're doing being a reader, consider becoming a contributor!

Morbid Symptoms, Part II: Attack on Rikers Island

I have published the second of six reviews chronicling the pseudonymous Fred S. Kreider’s Rikers Island Series, a horror franchise set on present-day Rikers Island. In the first installment we met protagonist Nicholas Billings, a rookie guard whose scrupulous recounting of guard life at Rikers is often more grim and terrifying than the book’s horror story, constituting detailed workplace writing evincing an intimate knowledge of the island’s institutional life.

In Attack on Rikers Island, the island is beset by an army of malevolent mutant rodents, the legacy of the island's history as a landfill worked upon by forced labor in the early twentieth century.

Two down, four to go. 

Living and Dying on the Factory Floor

I recently interviewed Dave Ranney about his new book Living and Dying on the Factory Floor. In 1976, Dave gave up his tenured academic job to organize in the South Side of Chicago. There he helped provide pro bono legal assistance at the Workers’ Rights Center, and organized with political groups including the Sojourner Truth Organization and News and Letters. Dave also worked in a number of factories in Chicago and Northwest Indiana, home at this time to roughly one and a half million industrial jobs, making it one of the greatest concentrations of heavy industry in the world. Living and Dying reflects on the factory and community life Dave encountered in this period, and the enduring lessons these experiences pose for today.

Check out the interview in Jacobin, and be sure to pick up a copy of the book from PM Press. 

Hard Crackers Issue 6 Now Available

The sixth issue of Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life is now available, featuring contributions from Curtis Price, Mike Morgan, Tanzeem Shaneela, Jenny Morgan, John Garvey, and other fantastic writers. While perhaps our best issue to date, this one is bittersweet, as it is dedicated to the late Lowell May, a Hard Crackers editor who passed away late last year. Rest in power, Lowell. 

Pick up your copy here, and keep your eyes peeled for a release event in a city near you. 

Remembering the Prisoners who Built Rikers Island

Jayne Mooney and I have a new article in the International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, entitled "New York City's Captive Workforce: Remembering the Prisoners who Built Rikers Island." In it we unearth the intricate institutional life of Rikers Island for the three decades prior to its traditionally acknowledged birth as a penal colony. In the process we examine the lived experiences of white supremacy and the criminalization of poverty in early twentieth century New York, and chart the resistances prisoners adopted to confinement on the Rikers Island penal colony in the years before the opening of the original Penitentiary. If you would like to read this article and are having a hard time accessing it, contact me ;)

Carceral Crisis Speaker Series

On February 13th, I will deliver the inaugural lecture of the Carceral Crisis Speaker Series, part of New York University's Prison Education Program. It's a real honor. Come say hi!

Rikers Island and the History of Carceral Reform

Wednesday, February 13th
20 Cooper Square 4th Floor 6:30pm

Jarrod Shanahan will be presenting research from his dissertation and  forthcoming book, co-authored with colleague Jayne Mooney, Rikers: A Social History of New York City's Island of the Poor (Temple Unviersity Press, 2020). Jarrod is a critical criminologist, activist-scholar, and doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center. He publishes regularly on the social history of police, courts, and jails in New York City. 

Also check out the rest of this exciting series: 

March 6th: Crime and Punishment in America
An evening with Tony Platt (2019) Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in America

March 27th: Mass Incarceration and the Limits of Police Reform
Alex Vitale will be presenting from his book (2017) End of Policing

April 17th: The Carceral Complex in the Lives of Working-Class Youth of Color in NYC
Zhandarka Kurti will be presenting on young people's experiences with criminal courts and probation and current reform efforts.

April 24th: Incarceration and Debt
NYU's Prison Education Program will be presenting on their research on incarceration and debt.

May 8th: Reform or Abolish?
No New Jails Coalition presents on their efforts to fight against local jail expansion in NYC.