COPAGANDA | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

"Alec Karakatsanis exposes our criminal injustice system for what it is: a bureaucracy of punishment, propped up by a biased media machine that feeds mass incarceration. After Copaganda, you'll never read the news the same way again." –Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

In this groundbreaking expose, essential for understanding the rising authoritarian mindset, award-winning civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis introduces the concept of "Copaganda." He defines Copaganda as a special kind of propaganda employed by police, prosecutors, and news media that stokes fear of police-recorded crime and distorts society's responses to it. Every day, mass media manipulates our perception of what keeps us safe and contributes to a culture fearful of poor people, strangers, immigrants, unhoused people, and people of color. The result is more and more authoritarian state repression, more inequality, and huge profits for the massive public and private punishment bureaucracy.

For readers of Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, Copaganda documents how modern news coverage fuels insecurity against these groups and shifts our focus away from the policies that would help us improve people's lives--things like affordable housing, adequate healthcare, early childhood education, and climate-friendly city planning.

These false narratives in turn fuel surveillance, punishment, inequality, injustice, and mass incarceration. Copaganda is often hidden in plain sight, such as:

• When your local TV station obsessively focuses on shoplifting by poor people while ignoring crimes of wage theft, tax evasion, and environmental pollution
• When you hear on your daily podcast that there is a "shortage" of Pr*son guards rather than too many people in Pr*son
• When your newspaper quotes an "expert" saying that more money for police and prisons is the answer to violence despite scientific evidence to the contrary

Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" on the criminal legal system, Karakatsanis brings his sharp legal expertise, trenchant political analysis, and humorous storytelling to drastically alter the way we consume information, while offering a hopeful path forward. One towards a healed humanity--and media system--with a vested interest in public safety and equality.

Prizewinning civil rights lawyer, Alec Karakatsanis, is joining us on the Busboys stage to share more about “the ways in which journalists and academics reproduce inequality and immiseration by legitimating America's massive punishment bureaucracy” (Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing). Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Karakatsanis will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of COPAGANDA will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books

A former public defender, Alec Karakatsanis is the founder of the Civil Rights Corps, an organization designed to advocate for racial justice and bring systemic civil rights cases on behalf of impoverished people. He was named the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice and was awarded the Stephen B. Bright Award for contributions to indigent defense in the South by Gideon's Promise. The author of Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (The New Press), he lives in Washington, DC.

Host or Publisher Busboys and Poets