With ongoing unrest around the country and with the quadrennial political conventions approaching this summer, it’s important to examine the type and breadth of police tactics used to suppress dissent and how activists can use the legal system as a tool to resist that repression.

Join activist and PM Press author Kris Hermes on Thursday, April 28th at 7pm at Bluestockings Bookstore for a discussion of his new book Crashing the Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000. An engrossing combination of social history and courtroom drama, the book explains the origins of contemporary protest policing and the creative resistance used to overcome it.

Over the past fifteen years, people in the United States--and dissidents in particular--have witnessed a steady escalation of the National Security State, including invasive surveillance and infiltration, indiscriminate police violence, and unlawful arrests. These concerted efforts to criminalize dissidents and undermine meaningful social change are made more repressive by the coordination of numerous local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.

An award-winning legal worker with the National Lawyers Guild and a member of multiple radical law collectives, Hermes will discuss how the playbook of tactics developed during the 2000 Republican convention protests are still used to stifle dissent across the U.S. today. Hermes will also discuss ways in which activists can employ radical, innovative and confrontational forms of resistance to the legal system.

Copies of Crashing the Party will be available after the talk for purchase and signing.