Confronting Counterinsurgency: Cop Cities and Democracy's Terrors

by Joy James (Editor)

As we step into an era of rising fascism and normalized genocide, Confronting Cop Cities and Democracy's Terrors is an invaluable contribution to the fightback. 

Joy James brings together the voices of frontline activists, artists, and organizers from movements against militarism and state violence in the USA, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Palestine, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and within prison walls. The book includes accessible and revealing discussions of the role of institutions, universities and nonprofit organizations in the suppression of radical movements. It introduces and analyzes contemporary militarized policing projects like Cop City, ICE, and the School of the Americas, and links them to historical and contemporary settler colonialism and slavery. 

Made as an offering of revolutionary love, Confronting Counterinsurgencies will be a crucial tool for deepening and radicalizing our analysis and learning from each other's movements, in order to strengthen our resistance and unite to fight for a better world.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

Published August 20, 2025

About the author

Joy James is the John B. and John T. McCoy Presidential Professor of Humanities and College Professor in Political Science at Williams College. She is the author of Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture, and her edited works on incarceration and human rights include States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons and Imprisoned Intellectuals: America's Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion.