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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Alec Karakatsanis
@equalityAlec
founder, @CivRightsCorps civil rights lawyer author of usual cruelty (2019) and copaganda (forthcoming 2024)
EricStoner Profile picture Ella Sanders Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture eDo Profile picture For thou art an holy people unto TMHYah thy Elohim Profile picture 65 subscribed
Jul 26 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD. A few years ago, we were worried about the hidden epidemic of prosecutor misconduct. Why do so many prosecutors break the law? Why does nothing happen to them? Why does it stay secret? So, we tried to do something. What we found was more shocking than we imagined. We worked with a group of the country's leading law professors to file ethics complaints against prosecutors in cases where either judges or their own prosecutor offices had already found them to have broken the law. We filed FIFTY of these complaints in New York alone.
Jul 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I’m not sure I’ve seen anything more depraved and dishonest in my tracking of the New York Times. In its article about Netanyahu’s speech, it not only fails to report that Netanyahu flagrantly lied, but it repeats the lie with no acknowledgment Israeli media has proven it false.
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Image You can read more about some of the most astonishing lies, and the grotesque applause for them here. But how is the reaction of a *newspaper* simply repeat the lie. It's some of the most shameful complicity in genocide imaginable, and yet normal.
Jul 23 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In a landmark federal court victory yesterday, we won our 1st Amendment lawsuit against New York judges and officials concerning secretive ethics proceedings against prosecutors. In most cases no one knows why the state does nothing when DAs break the law. Much more to come... This work--to shed light on how officials in the punishment bureaucracy, from police to prison guards to prosecutors to probation officers to judges, evade accountability at every level--is more and more vital in times of rising authoritarianism.
Jul 22 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. One of the things I explore in my new study of the propaganda surrounding police body cameras in the U.S. media and by Democratic politicians are its similarities to both international development propaganda and colonial counterinsurgency strategy. As James Ferguson has shown in one of the seminal studies of the issue, decades of discourse about “reforming” the bureaucracy of international development follows a similar pattern.
Jul 15 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD. If we have any hope in these times of rising authoritarianism, the liberals in media, academia, and non-profits who played a role in putting a credible, smiling face on mass surveillance, mass incarceration, and mass family separation need to have accountability. While there are many grifters in "criminal justice reform," there are also many well-meaning people who did a lot of harm by not having sufficiently clear, critical analysis and relentless integrity in the face of powerful professional incentives to go along with bad stuff.
Jul 11 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD. I didn't fully know what to expect when I started digging into over a decade of records, statements, financial data, and other information about police body cameras. I suspected it to be troubling, but what I found shocked even me. I also examined hundreds of news articles about police body cameras. The result? The public campaign to sell police body cameras as a liberal "reform" is one of the great frauds of modern domestic U.S. propaganda. It carries profound lessons for anyone who cares about democracy.
Jul 9 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Many of the political elite I interact with have not come to grips with what it means that people like Elizabeth Warren and most Democrats knew that the most serious crimes against humanity were being committed and decided to join in their commission rather than stopping them. These people know that the Israeli right is genocidal. They talk about it. They talk about mass starvation of children, torture, ethnic cleansing, etc. They have conversations about whether campaign cash would dry up if they said it publicly. And they cannot summon the courage…
Jul 8 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
There are no more words for this. Leading Democrats privately knew for a long time that the death toll from the genocide was far higher than reported. Not only did they keep funding the genocide, but they've done profound damage to basic notions of truth that democracy requires. People can see the images for themselves, and they can listen to what Israeli settlers, soldiers, and far-right government are saying. And yet, leading U.S. and European politicians deny it, change the subject, ignore it, and even justify it with grotesque lies.
Jul 2 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. Since a lot of people are talking about immunity after yesterday, I wanted to share a few practical thoughts. First, many people don't realize this, but decades ago the Supreme Court concocted, entirely out of thin air, absolute immunity from civil liability for judges and prosecutors, as well as qualified immunity for police.
Jun 21 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Yesterday's New York Times story on how fascism may be the only way to stop antisemitism looks like it was conceived by Rupert Murdoch, written by the person who wrote the Willie Horton campaign ad, edited by a neo-Nazi Seinfeld fan, and sponsored as a full-page ad for AIPAC.
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Image More on the article itself here. Yikes.
Jun 19 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. Over the last four years, I have published a lot of critiques of the New York Times. I have never read anything more depraved than today's morning newsletter about why aid is not getting to Gaza. The premise of the article is it's an objective news "explainer" for liberal readers about why aid is not arriving in Gaza. NYT needs to say something to those who might have been hearing about mass child starvation, amputations without anesthetics, and other horrors of genocide. Image
Jun 16 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD. Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times is having a public breakdown before our eyes. It's like watching a small child emerge from the wild after having been raised by a pack of far-right wolves. Image Kristof's brain is like an AI algorithm told to absorb every right-wing trope and then to regurgitate them in words more familiar to liberals. I will hand it to him though, he is right about one thing: Image
Jun 14 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD. Last week, I had one of the great honors of my career representing a group of children in Flint. The brave kids are bringing one of the most important civil rights cases of our time, arguing that they have a constitutional right to see, touch, and hug their parents. The courtroom was packed with kids who are suing the Sheriff and a large jail telecom company, alleging a conspiracy to profit from forcing families into expensive calls instead of free in-person visits with their parents, most of whom are jailed only because they can't pay cash.
Jun 9 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. The New York Times just published a diary entry about the moment a liberal realized he was a fascist. It's very very weird. Image This will come as no surprise to many of you, but the premise of the entire article--its unstated moral core without which it disappears into thin air--is that the lives of "native born Americans" are worth more than the lives of immigrants.
I think of a neighbor of mine, a surly seventh-grade dropout who in the 1970s was earning more than $20 an hour (around $150 an hour today). That job disappeared, and he later ended up in part-time and minimum wage positions and lost his home. He was hurt by many factors — the decline of unions, globalization and the impact of technology — but he was also outcompeted by immigrants with a well-earned reputation for hard work
It’s often said that native-born Americans aren’t interested in the jobs that immigrants take, but that doesn’t tell the full story. Many native-born Americans may not be willing to toil in the fields or on a construction site for $12 an hour, but perhaps would be for $25 an hour.
Jun 5 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There is a campaign by some Democrats to portray the U.S. as “underpoliced” despite historic cop budgets. They also omit that U.S. now has a record of *1 million* privately employed cops. Here’s a photo from my local dc metro. These armed private cops apparently don’t count.
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Image A couple years ago, two Harvard professors even published an academic article claiming the U.S. was underpoliced where they sneakily omitted several hundred thousand cops and also *all private police* from their numbers. (Ironic given the private police employed by Harvard.)
May 30 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD. If you haven't heard about the children we are representing in Michigan who are seeking to establish a constitutional right to hug their parents, please take a moment to hear the story of how they were banned from even looking into the eyes of their moms and dads in jail. Millions of children all over the country are barred from contact with their parents, and it's one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen to watch them fighting back. The story says a great deal about our legal system and society:
May 25 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD. This is one of the most depraved copaganda campaigns in modern history. Biden's behavior here is shameful, and many Democrats who know better are going along, hoping people won't actually read what is being proposed. The new law pushed by Biden in George Floyd's name on the anniversary of George Floyd's death would do nothing to make police less violent. It's cynical propaganda:
May 22 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
This quote from a tenured Princeton professor in Harper’s Magazine is a remarkable historical artifact. Yes, it’s false in that the largest meta-study on policing concludes otherwise, but that’s just the beginning. Image First, note this method of argumentation is anti-intellectual. Not only is he arguing that his pro-police view is correct, but he’s telling liberals that there is “no way to argue” against him. Entire careers of experts and fields of study and empirical evidence are erased.
May 4 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD. Last night, the White House quietly sent out a press release notifying reporters that Biden would be seeking $37 billion for, among other things, 100,000 new cops. This is one of the most dangerous developments imaginable. We are living at a time of rising authoritarianism. The situation is very precarious. Biden thinks this will make people vote for him over Trump. He's wrong. It will hurt him. And create fear and build narrative and physical infrastructure for fascism. theguardian.com/politics/2024/…
May 1 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The violence is being perpetrated *by pro-Israel mobs* and *police.* It’s all on video. Look how New York Times describes it—trying to convey falsely that it is people protesting peacefully against genocide.
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Image How institutions like media, universities, legal system bureaucrats, etc behave now—whether they choose fascism or justice—will go a long way toward whether semblance of democratic life survives in our society. So far, NYT is walking us into the sea.
Apr 26 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As we see police in dozens of cities beating philosophy professors, tackling economics scholars, body slamming Fox camera people, and putting chains on 100s of students singing songs and enjoying seder, it's important to see that these are not a few bad apples. What we are seeing is one of the primary functions of armed government bureaucrats. Police enforce *some* laws against *some* people at *some* times in *some* places