Kevin Van Meter and Kristian Williams “Life During Wartime” 8/7 7pm San Francisco, CA Station 40
Wednesday August 7th, 7pm
Station 40
3030B 16th St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
COIN functions as the underlying logic that intersects with a number of key political realities currently: community policing / police brutality and the prison industrial complex, Global War on Terror, boarder militarization, the NSA / Snowden scandal and government spying, and repression of social movements. This talk will explore the domestic application of counterinsurgency strategy and community policing methods, which are predominantly directed at poor communities of color in the US.
Kristian Williams will provide an overview of policing and the domestic application of COIN. COIN has its origins in police / FBI operations against social movements in the 1960s and 70s as well as various post-Vietnam conflicts. Drawing on various pieces in the collection and his prior work (in Our Enemies in Blue), Williams will describe how a military logic has been used by police forces and other state apparati over the past three decades. By extension of Williams’s talk, Kevin Van Meter will explore the currently campaign of repression directed at radical environmentalists, animal rights activists, and others, referred to as the “Green Scare”. Drawing on a particular case from 2001-2004, Van Meter will describe this cycle of government repression and the efforts of activists to combat it.