research and destroy new york city
“No edition but the open edition”
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New York's Worst Responders: NYPD and 9/11
Through its pointless rivalries and competition for city dollars, the New York Police Department allowed hundreds of firefighters to die in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Cops looted retail shops at Ground Zero, violently suppressed protests by firefighters trying to recover the bodies of their dead friends, and arrested multiple fire department union leaders in jealous retaliation. The NYPD spent the next decade-plus building an intelligence apparatus with more legal powers than the FBI. Cops have systematically scammed the government in doctor-aided plots to secure lucrative disability pensions and federal payouts, lying about 9/11-related PTSD and "fear of crowds" while selling cannolis in Little Italy during the Feast of San Gennaro. The media has made sure that the rare flashes of heroism from New York's Finest will never be forgotten, but stories of their misdeeds and incompetence have since fallen into a memory hole as deep as a billion-dollar memorial pool. 68 pp. 2021. (PDF / Read online) |
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The Only Way Out Is Always Through the Police: A History of the 2020 New York Riots
A reportback from the 2020 George Floyd uprising in New York City. 48 pp. 2020. (PDF / Read online) |
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NYPD Challenge Coins: Members Only
An annotated collection of cop memorabilia offering a look inside a culture usually kept unseen. 68 pp. 2017. There are many stories about the origin of challenge coins, all probably apocryphal. What is certain, though, is their roots in American military culture, their rise in popularity after World War II, and their eventual adoption by law enforcement over the proceeding decades. When fellow service members or officers meet for the first time, they might “challenge” each other to show their unit’s or division’s coin as a way to verify that the other is not, in colloquial terms, a poser. Some coins commemorate historical events or “battles,” while others are merely inside jokes shared among friends and coded in obscure cop lingo and arcane insignia. |
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The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Teen Epistolary
An unfiltered, journalist-free quasi-oral history of the 2015 teenager-led uprising following the killing of Freddie Gray in the back of a Baltimore police van. 268 pp. 2015. (Review) (Peer-Reviewed Review) |
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Jean Crones 100th Anniversary Poster
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the chef Jean Crone's poison deed. 2014. |
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Why Don't You Write
A record of unreciprocity, 1905-1953. 64 pp. 2014. (Sample page 1) (Sample page 2) (PDF / Read online) |
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communiqué from an ex-cop
A heavily annotated edition of LAPD killer cop Christopher Dorner’s final statement to the world. Published on the one-month anniversary of his final act, extensive footnotes and primary-sourced appendices provide extensive historical context for Dorner’s grievances with, and criticisms of, his former employer: the Los Angeles Police Department. From its rigged internal tribunals to the racket of police overtime pay to the invention of the term “suicide by cop” by the academic-law-enforcement complex, this zine discards the “rambling manifesto” frame presented by the media and sincerely takes up Dorner’s challenge to journalists to investigate his allegations of a billion-dollar institution rife with corruption, racism, and brutality. 2013. 94 pp. (Sample page) (PDF / Read online) |
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Rules for Picketing
“The disobedient strike begins with an unruly picket line.” Rules for Picketing was distributed at official union rallies and events during the ATU 1181 school bus drivers’ strike in New York City in 2013. It collects actual flyers from recent history made by leaderships of various unions that were intended to stifle militancy among their own striking rank-and-file members: internal guidelines dictating long lists of increasingly absurd and condescending “rules” to be obeyed on the picket line for maximum orderliness. 26 pp. 2013. (PDF / Read online) |
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brutal death ends a man's dream: and other stories of cops ruining christmas
A century of cops ruining Christmas, plus an uplifting 30-page epilogue of cops' own Christmases being ruined in retribution. 124 pp. 2012. (PDF / Read online) |
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Why is Cooper Union Being Occupied?
One of the nation’s last bastions of free education is under attack. This mini-zine, distributed to passersby during the initial 2012 occupation, contains the occupiers’ statements, leaked administration documents, and news articles explaining why Cooper Union was being occupied. 22 pp. 2012. (PDF / Read online) (“Cooper Union Update”) |
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SUPERSTORM SANDY AND NEW YORK CITY’S DARK RECOVERY, OR, THINGS TO BE SEIZED DURING THE COMING INSURRECTION
A dispatch from the flood zone. 5 pp. 2012. (Full text) (“Construction Materials Expropriated from Luxury Developments in Manhattan, Delivered to Victims of Sandy”) |
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a brief history of the 23rd precinct
For the 45th anniversary of the East Harlem riots/rebellion. 120 pp. 2012.
“We walked off together up to Third Avenue and it was already starting to happen. Everywhere we looked were policemen. I saw a bottle thrown out of a window. It looked like a star and when it hit the street, it made a long path of bright yellow fire, a Molotov cocktail. Then I saw another, and another, and intermingling with its bright light were defined screams and crystal sounds of what seemed to be thousands of bottles being smashed in.... I saw the running of the crowds in and out of the blocks and blocks beyond, and each time they came back on Third Avenue, more were added. Just then, more Molotov cocktails were thrown out of windows and the sounds of smashing bottles were like weird sounds of a street symphony. It reminded me of when, as a young boy, I had read Dante’s description of the Inferno.” |
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For the Pacific Northwest Grand Jury Resisters
Examining the plight of the imprisoned Pacific Northwest grand jury resisters [now since freed], this zine also functions as a primer on grand juries in general. It includes the resisters’ statements, newspaper articles, primary documents, tips on how to handle grand jury subpoenas, and a detailed history of grand juries and their use as a tool to suppress political organizing and radical struggle in the US. 75 pp. 2012. (PDF / Read online) |
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Mayday 1971: or, How to Lose Street Battles and Alienate People
A critique of the celebrated Mayday 1971 protests in Washington, DC told through original organizing documents, period newspaper articles, and first person accounts from participants on the ground. The protests have since been heavily mythologized by nostalgic baby boomer generation activists as a triumph in radical organizing and direct action against the Vietnam War. In reality, the protests were a demoralizing failure. Aimless, white, easily crushed by police, Mayday 1971 signaled the death of the American antiwar movement. 90 pp. 2012. (Review via UC Press) (PDF / Read online) |
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Welcome to Fear City
Reproduction of a 1975 pamphlet produced and distributed by the Council for Public Safety, a front group for NYPD police unions, during a contract dispute with the city. While intended to be semi-satirical, it serves as a cop's-eye view of urban space as a cesspool of crime and of a fragile society held together by sheer force of policing alone. 4 pp. (PDF / Read online) |
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Danger Unheard
A collaboration with the author of Deafula on deafness and the police: “the danger, the struggle, the role authority plays, and the ways that awareness and training fall short.” 30 pp. 2014. (Sample page) |
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