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alec karakatsanis

@equalityalec.bsky.social
20K followers 0 following 1.7K posts

founder, Civil Rights Corps civil rights lawyer author of usual cruelty (2019) and copaganda (2025) any views expressed here are my own, and not those of civil rights corps

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Reposted by alec karakatsanis
Prism @prismreports.org · 23/09/2026
Fighting terror is a ‘propaganda war,’ U.S. police learned in Israel. In Part 4 of Prism’s “The ASTI Files,” @glentalk.bsky.social uncovered that counterterrorism training nonprofit ASTI had instructors with a history in Israeli public relations run workshops for U.S. first responders.
prismreports.org
Fighting terror is ‘propaganda war,’ U.S. police learned in Israel
The Advanced Security Training Institute had instructors with a history in Israeli public relations run workshops for U.S. first responders
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
THREAD. Did you know that Minneapolis police deployed 101 personnel to a 7-person vigil held one morning at Renee Good's memorial? The cops generated $1.92 million in overtime cash for themselves.
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Reposted by alec karakatsanis
Candace Avalos @candaceavalos.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Now would be a good time to go read Copaganda if you haven't yet 📖🫡 Once you read it you can't unsee how everything connects back to the punishment bureaucracy that makes up all American systems. It helped me understand City Hall so much tbh. Go read it & follow author @equalityalec.bsky.social!
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
At this vital time in understanding propaganda and authoritarianism, a reminder that we have free copies of Copaganda for teachers, students, and anyone who sends books to people in prison. If you want copies, link is in next post! My grandma says the book is amazing.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
THREAD. This past week marks the 10-year anniversary of Civil Rights Corps. We have pioneered landmark civil rights litigation that has liberated hundreds of thousands of people from illegal confinement in jail cells.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is an important response to the recent nonsense spewed by some “pro police socialists” in Jacobin magazine and a few other venues. tempestmag.org/2026/09/in-d...
tempestmag.org
In defense of abolition
In defense of defund the police and abolish ICE movements, and in response to the growing anti-abolition and anti-woke political discourse.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
If you are in D.C., come join us at the MLK Library on Monday at 630pm in room 401-A for this fantastic event. We'll be talking about propaganda, repression, and what we can do about it together.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is one consequence of the left not being clear about reducing budgets for state repression. Every Democratic Party politician going on about “training” and “body cams” and every Jacobin author vaguely saying the left should not talk about repressive budgets leads to this:
Daily ICE arrests soar for people with no criminal record and ice getting closer to goal of 2,000 arrests per day
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It was a pleasure to sit for this interview about the strategic and moral catastrophe awaiting us all if the left abandons its focus on combating the repressive apparatus of the state.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Every time you hear a pundit or a politician mindlessly lying to you that they need to support current spending on prisons to "win elections" (even though supermajority prefers shifting $ to social services), remember they are supporting a system fully oriented toward doing this:
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
With all the talk on the center-left about supposedly needing to commit to existing levels of repression by preserving existing police, prison, and surveillance budgets, everyone seems to be forgetting ICE's new detention budget is 60% greater than entire federal prison system.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
There are people writing in Jacobin magazine who are telling socialists not to oppose police contracts for stuff like this giving money to people like this.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Private prisons making $1.4 billion charging corrupt ICE bureaucracy $307,000 “per bed” as top 15 cops in San Francisco make average of $700,000 is why shifting resources from systems of incarceration to systems of care is one of the most popular policies in 40 years of polling.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
One of the fundamental truths being erased by the recent pro-police rhetoric among fancy liberals is that there is no coherent way to draw a line between the horrors of contemporary policing and ICE.
INNOVATION
POLICE
The electric shock gloves ICE is spending up to $20 million on are already being given to police officers in Omaha public schools
By Sasha Rogelberg
Reporter
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
The same people who weaponized identity politics to avoid talking about material, structural reduction in inequality (e.g. liberals) are now leading a charge to lump the backlash to neoliberal identity rhetoric in with popular and important things like reducing state repression.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
THREAD. It is disappointing to see progressive publications like The American Prospect exhibit such a failure to understand how things work. Some aspects of its election analysis--just like MSNBC, NYT, and Jacobin--are ignorant and dangerous.
American Prospect headline:   Hong Campaign Postmortem: It Wasn’t the Socialism, It Was the Woke
Today on TAP: The right’s attacks actually don’t focus on socialism’s defining economics.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
THREAD. As you read chilling stories emerging about the illegal surveillance that Trump's DHS has been doing, recognize that federal law makes it nearly impossible for victims to sue feds for constitutional violations. A minimum part of Democratic platform should call for this.
U.S. Investigated Left-Leaning Groups During Minnesota Immigration Crackdown

The government conducted expansive surveillance, infiltrated group chats and obtained financial records of organizations never accused of crimes.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
A common tactic--including in the pages of Jacobin magazine--is to pretend to complain about the "slogan" of "defund" and to use that complaint to avoid conversation about common sense and popular policies like transferring $$$ from cops to health, education, and housing.
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Reposted by alec karakatsanis
Paisley Paisley Paisley! @drpaisley.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Very informative thread. Read.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
THREAD. Contrary to what you are being told, 40 years of polling have established that shifting money away from police/prisons toward social services is one of the most popular public policies among *all* political demographics. But it's not just that, it goes way deeper.
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Reposted by alec karakatsanis
M Hobart @mhobart.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
It is always worth reading Alec Karakatsanis: his writing is generous, thoughtful, grounded in actual credible social science research, and pragmatic. And it’s so critical now as Trump regime moves to increase oppressive surveillance and punishment structures which will impact all of us.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Almost everything you are hearing in mainstream news about the supposed lack of popularity of progressive policies on police and prisons is a lie. Shifting resources from police/punishment to social services is one of the most consistently popular policies polled for 40 years.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
THREAD. You should ask yourself who at the New York Times made the editorial decision to use the term "moderates" to describe a group of people who have some of the most factually indefensible and extreme position in the history of post World War II politics. And then ask why.
Democrats Face Their Next Big Fight Between Moderates and the Left
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madeline / testdevice @testdevice.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Definitely one of the most jaw dropping things I've learned about major city police departments from @equalityalec.bsky.social is the size of their PR departments. From his 2025 book copaganda which I've been working through:
On the day Chicago police murdered Laquan McDonald, a seventeen- rear-old Black teenager, in 2014, Chicago cops had six full-time public relations employees. As the city fought in court to keep evidence of the child's murder secret and then later to control the uproar when a judge ordered it to release a video of the shooting, Chicago increased its police budget to pay for twenty-five full-time public relations positions. As of early 2023, Chicago cops had forty-eight full-time positions devoted to manipulating public information. The 2024 budget funded fifty-five.
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Jason Schadewald (He/Him) @jschadewald.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"When asked about actual policy, overwhelming supermajorities of the population (Democratic, Independent, and Republican) all supported taking money from the police budget and giving it to various social services (70% support overall!)."
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
With politicians/pundits bashing misleading caricatures of the left's views on police/prisons, it's a perfect time to remind people that reducing size and power of repressive bureaucracy is one of the most consistently popular ideas over 40 years of polls: equalityalec.substack.com/p/convention...
equalityalec.substack.com
Conventional Wisdom and "Popularity"
And a weird debate I just had.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
THREAD. The New York Times just published a propaganda piece that portends dangerous trends in the coming months. Corporate media wants to help a group of sociopathic monied interests (called "moderates" here) to boost fascism by deceiving people about their true motives.
NYT headline about moderate democrats planning war on the left.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 07/08/2026
Everyone should read “The Body Camera The Language of Our Dreams” by @equalityalec.bsky.social
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Lena @puncake.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Excellent article by @equalityalec.bsky.social debunking some common pundit talking points on the necessity of excessive police investment equalityalec.substack.com/p/convention...
equalityalec.substack.com
Conventional Wisdom and "Popularity"
And a weird debate I just had.
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Reposted by alec karakatsanis
Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 02/08/2026
The diarrhea lettuce company, Taylor Farms, uses slave labor contracted from the Arizona Dept. of Corrections. The backbreaking labor is often performed by imprisoned Mexican nationals who would be otherwise ineligble to work in the US. They are paid $1.50 an hour.
futurism.com
The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor
The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
THREAD. After years of litigating against New York prosecutors and judges, we just won a landmark First Amendment case in the federal appeals court. The case could expose the secretive world that protects prosecutors when they break the law. But something deeper is going on.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
It's great to see this important local news reporting in Detroit debunking the absurd reporting on youth crime around the U.S. Helping people understand that world is what journalism is about: www.metrotimes.com/news/detroit...
metrotimes.com
Detroit’s ‘teen takeover’ panic revives an old racist media playbook - Detroit Metro Times
The ‘teen takeover’ story tells us more about the media than Detroit youth.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
THREAD. One special thing about working in the jails and courtrooms of our society, is that civil rights lawyers get to see exactly how repression works.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Another cold blooded execution by ICE today in Maine, just days after the murder in Houston. The only acceptable position for politicians is eliminating the agency. Do not for one minute tolerate any politician calling for "training" or "body cameras." The demand is clear.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Excited to see this article by criminology scholars in the main newsletter of the American Society of Criminology on the value of teaching my book Copaganda. And a good reminder for teachers: we have free copies of the book for your students if you want to teach it! asc41.org/wp-content/u...
asc41.org
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karen ward @kwardvancouver.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Mark Carney doesn't actually care about "crime" @equalityalec.bsky.social
Alec karakatsanis

one way you can tell people in power don't actually care about "crime" is their failure to promote the policies that all the evidence shows are the best for reducing interpersonal harm: universal access to healthcare, early childhood education, cash transfers, and housing
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
If you have not been involved in resisting the unprecedented expansion of ICE—and of all it represents about how our society has lost its way—now is the time to start. www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...
pbs.org
A Mexican father was shot and killed by an ICE officer. His son is demanding an independent probe
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo worked for 35 years from sunrise to sunset to send all three of his American citizen sons to college. He had also been working toward securing legal status in the U.S. after neg...
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Matt Shields @mattbshields.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
I have a new paper coming out called ‘Psychologizing, Authority, and Propaganda’: philpapers.org/rec/SHIPAA-15. When should we judge that other people’s beliefs and actions are a product of bad faith?
philpapers.org
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Stunning how dismissive he is of ideas he has clearly not thought much about, like critiques of militarized borders and the modern prison. He sounds like a flat-earther dismissing the idea of a spherical planet out of blind religious devotion to concepts he's never had the curiosity to question.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
THREAD. Last year, I explained that the Supreme Court was likely to permit Trump to fire the heads of "independent" federal agencies, but prevent too much direct presidential control over the Federal Reserve. Today, they've basically done that. But why?
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
THREAD. Stories like today's catastrophic Supreme Court ruling on pesticides go under the radar, but they shape our society and determine our lives.
The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with the manufacturer of the weedkiller Roundup, overturning a jury award for a Missouri man who claimed the widely used herbicide caused cancer in a decision that could have sweeping impacts on thousands of other Americans who similarly claim the product sickened them.

In the 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the majority found that a federal law that regulates pesticides barred the Missouri man’s lawsuit.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The sentences handed down today in Texas are a threat to the possibility of a democratic society. The prosecution is rife with constitutional violations, but 30 years in prison (more than anyone for January 6) for moving some magazines? 50 years for those not involved in even planning the protest?
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
THREAD. I ask a lot of politicians and journalists if they should be detained in a jail cell away from their families if the government merely accuses them of a crime. I've never had one say yes.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Ezra Klein is a serious threat to a world of true equality and justice because he is so effective at masking his service to the ruling class through (often faux) intellectual cooptation of progressive people who otherwise would support much more profound social change.
Hacked list of Peter Thiel secret society including musk and Kushner and Ted Cruz and Ezra Klein.
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Lïså Lōvê🪶 @lisalove420.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Everyone who labels themselves liberal or progressive needs to read Copaganda.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Ezra Klein is a serious threat to a world of true equality and justice because he is so effective at masking his service to the ruling class through (often faux) intellectual cooptation of progressive people who otherwise would support much more profound social change.
Hacked list of Peter Thiel secret society including musk and Kushner and Ted Cruz and Ezra Klein.
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
THREAD. The recent behavior of the District Attorney in San Francisco is shameful. Her new fear-mongering campaign is based on lies, and it's fomenting violence. But the background of how the New York Times SF Bureau Chief assisted in the fraud is a key lesson in propaganda.
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Civil Rights Corps @civrightscorps.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
More than two-thirds of Oklahoma county jails no longer allow families or friends to visit in-person, making costly phone calls and video messages the only way to stay in touch with detainees. Read more in this new article by @oklahomawatch.bsky.social oklahomawatch.org/2026/06/09/t...
oklahomawatch.org
"That's Not a Visit": How Pricey Video Calls Replaced Human Contact in Oklahoma Jails - Oklahoma Watch
More than two-thirds of Oklahoma county jails have eliminated in-person visitation, replacing face-to-face visits with costly video calls that generate revenue for counties and private contractors. Ad...
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Christine Mitchell @christinescd.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
finally finished listening to copaganda by @equalityalec.bsky.social on a long drive yesterday. i laughed, i cried, i clapped, i said "YUP" and "THAT'S RIGHT" a bunch of times out loud to myself. cannot recommend this book enough! thenewpress.org/books/978162...
thenewpress.org
Copaganda - The New Press
From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract […]
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MAN-E @man-eternally.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
@equalityalec.bsky.social eloquently lays out the way our news is manipulated by those in power, including here in Pittsburgh. #copaganda should be required reading for all who are engaged in the fight for social justice.
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