Badges without Borders: How Global Insurgency Transformed American Policing (Stuart Schrader, University of California Press, 2019)

    There’s an evergreen relevance to books about the nature of policing in the United States and its history in racist vigilante violence. When I bought Schrader’s book in late 2019, I was thinking it would be an insightful read on the history of policing in this country with a particular focus on the beginning of Black Lives Matter as a social movement. That’s not quite what this book addresses. Still, Schrader tells an informative story through his research into connections between the professionalization of U.S. policing that came about as a result of military occupations overseas. Given the recent deployments of National Guard members in U.S. cities, Schrader's is a useful text that can help make sense of how this situation came to be.

    Because I am an asshole, I emailed Schrader about his book after I read it in the summer of 2020 to say I am also a former punk zine editor who has a Ph.D. Who cares? I thought it would be cool to tell him I thought of AGENT ORANGE (DEN) and NEGATIVE APPROACH after reading the intro paragraph to his book’s conclusion. (It mentions The Exorcist stairs.) Not only that—I also told him he had misspelled counterinsurgency on one page. I’m really helpful, you see. He graciously (and within a day!) replied that getting people to listen to those two bands was the precise reason he wrote the book—tongue firmly in cheek, I am sure. Like I said, I am great at making friends.

    Overall, Schrader's text discusses the racist roots of U.S. policing; how law enforcement became professionalized overseas; how law enforcement became professionalized and enmeshed domestically; how everyday experiences complicated police reform efforts overseas; how policing lessons from overseas came back to the U.S. in the form of “tear gas,” riot control, and SWAT teams; how counterinsurgent policing informed “broken windows” policing in the U.S.; and how the overseas counterinsurgent reformers came back to the U.S. to continue implementing counterinsurgent police practices on the streets of this country. 

    On the “fun fact” side of things, I learned that 911 did not exist as an emergency response number until 1968, five years after a similar service debuted in Venezuela. If you want a more succinct idea of the book’s thesis than the above road map paragraph, here you go: “Training, technologies, and tactics for emergency situations grew from overseas counterinsurgency and became integrated into everyday policing in the United States, recalibrating racialized social control” (p. 23). What does that mean? Could he put it to you any simpler? How’s this? “Keystone Kops could not catch Communists” (p. 14). That’s about it, really. And don’t get it twisted—police have always been militarized. No system works.

(This review originally appeared in a slightly different version in issue #2 of the zine Anxiety's False Promise, published in February 2023.)

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

Disillusioned by Benjamin Herold

Gaming Democracy by Adrienne Massanari

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (Amy Berg, Topic Studios / Disarming Films, 2025)

    Once again, I find myself reflecting on the nature of background knowledge and its interaction with a text. If you have none, then you are not going to get much of anything out of your reading. Background knowledge lacker is a description that matches me in the case of JEFF BUCKLEY. I’ve only listened to “Grace” once and that was well over a decade ago. It didn’t click for me, so I left it and the awful ending to his life behind. When Mrs. Tall Rob learned about It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, she suggested that we see it. She’s a fan, or enough of one, to have wanted to see it before it left the Siskel Film Center.

    There’s plenty that went in one eye and out the other as I watched, though I was surprised by the richness of our post-view discussion. Through the documentary, various of the talking heads and friends mentioned how Buckley didn’t quite fit in with some of the prevailing musical trends of the first part of the 1990s. That matched my understanding, so I asked Mrs. Tall Rob about her recollections of that time and she said she remembered hearing some of his songs on her local alternative station. If the same was true of mine, I don’t have that memory.

    Either way, Buckley’s music still stands on its own when contrasted with grunge detritus, industrial-lite, folk-ish pop, post-post-post-post-punk, or whatever else huddled under the umbrella of the alternative nation. (“Alternative to what?” my brother used to needle me.) That term ranges widely enough to encapsulate BAD BRAINS and MORRISSEY, two Buckley influences that came up in passing a few times during the film. Citing MORRISSEY as an influence and not having utterly maudlin or sassy, punny lyrics must mean his influence on Buckley was purely vocal. That tracks, as the higher end of Buckley’s apparently four-octave range recalls MORRISSEY’s falsetto at times. My musical training is limited at best, so the rapturous naming of that vocal range doesn’t really do much for me. I can’t imagine liking or disliking a singer because of a numerical value attached to some part of their performance ability. It’s harder to identify BAD BRAINS’ influence on Buckley’s music or vocals or lyrics. There’s nothing in the music on “Grace” that’s evocative of the band that invented the mosh part while also being capable of blistering speeds. Only after a quick internet search revealing a live-on-the-radio cover of “I Against I” did Buckley’s respect for BAD BRAINS make sense. Again, people who have never moshed typically praise BAD BRAINS for their tightness; they could play that hyper-speed trashy punk and the rhythmically oriented reggae songs with the same panache. They were punks who were as proficient at their instruments as any jazz musician. The tightness itself isn’t enough of a selling point for me—it’s all about their power. I’m left with the impression that Buckley likely appreciated their tightness and musicianship instead of their power or politics.

    The DIY nature and community spirit of early career BAD BRAINS is also something that doesn’t seem to have resonated with Buckley. This disconnect probably has something to do with his dad being famous enough in his own right to have given something of a launch pad for Buckley’s career when he was getting started, even though his dad had been long dead. What I mean by this is that his career trajectory was improbable then and seems impossible today. He went from being a busboy or server at a cafe who occasionally takes the open mic and drew enough of a crowd to get major label A&R goons to appear. What’s so strange about it to me is that his ascent from food service to major label contract pathway is that it happened after the indie rock boom of the 1980s. Like, read Our Band Could Be Your Life and try to make sense of the way his career went. The film makes it seem as though there wasn’t a “scene” per se that he came from or any kind of touring circuit or underground label or college radio support. Those elements were crucial to bands that would have made it on to alternative radio in the United States when Buckley’s career peaked. He was as close to an overnight success as one could be at the time.

    I’m reflecting on this seemingly sudden change of fortune for Buckley because it took a toll on him as well. The need to produce an album from nearly nothing (and without wanting to rest on the comfort of cover songs) on demand really is a tall order. All that pressure, plus the need to step out of his father’s shadow really seemed to plague him. As Julianne Escobedo Shepherd wrote about the film for Hearing Things, his closeness to his mom and many other women in his life made him distinct from many other male musicians who came to popular attention in similar ways. The film’s argument, like that of Escobedo Shepherd’s, is that his connection to femininity made him unique in a world of rock stars. Even the other guys in his band were aware of it. Their parts in the film do not give the sense of "guys being dudes" that other rock stories would have (i.e., practice space bonding, alcohol or drug fueled raging, misogynistic groupie abuse, onstage antics, etc.). Well, that is, aside from Buckley’s abiding love for LED ZEPPELIN. He’s a total sicko for them, which is usually the kind of credential that turns me off. But, Ben Harper’s story of Buckley climbing the scaffolding to get a unique look at the PAGE & PLANT set at Glastonbury 1995 proves that his devotion to their music was unparalleled.

    That monastic devotion to a sound, the sound, provides a through line for the film. The power of music to touch and change lives was central to Buckley’s existence. Even if his music hasn’t yet affected me as much as it has others, I still recognize that it is a burst of unadulterated humanity expressed through frequency and amplification.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

The CURE Songs of a Lost World

High Bias by Marc Masters

van den Broek et al. (1999) The Landscape Model of Reading

Trans History: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Alex L. Combs & Andrew Eakett, Candlewick Press, 2025)

    For folks who have learned about trans and nonbinary identities in the last 10-15 years of pop culture representation, this graphic text history of people who identify as trans will be a welcome addition to their reading lists. The library that I got it from had it classified as Young Adult, but don’t let that choice sway you. Though young adolescents may be its intended audience, it is full of information that readers of all ages need to know. I say that with plenty of hedging. What I might find new or useful might be old hat or misinformation to you. That’s the funny thing about background knowledge. A writer (and illustrator) have to assume it when creating a text, but everyone’s experiences (both lived and read) vary. It probably reveals more about me than the text when I say that I found it full of new information and names that represent trans and nonbinary identities throughout history.

    If nothing else, this text provides a firm rebuttal to the idea that transgender and nonbinary identities are a modern, western convention. It would be nice if bigots who are misinformed or uninformed of this history were required to read and discuss this book as part of their education. I couch that statement as a hypothetical not only because I know such people would never willingly read the book but also because simply exposing people to information does not automatically result in a change in their perspectives. Still, this book's utility in discussing its topics is so high that I am sure it will be subject to a book ban from those very bigots who are scared of their own shadows.

    As the subtitle indicates, the text addresses a variety of cultures and eras where people who lived outside the conventional gender binary have left their mark in the historical record. The authors begin with a helpful preface that reminds the reader that the “ancient history” section (and even some of the more recent sections) feature stories of people who might not recognize modern terms and identities discussed later in the book. Some of those names include Elagabalus, Antonio de Erauso, We’wha, and Lucy Hicks Anderson. Even so, the authors are correct to position the telling of these stories as a challenge to white, cishet histories that take up a great deal of space, especially in the United States.

    A really cool aspect of the book is the inclusion of primary sources and content experts in the eras and people in each chapter. When I pick up a book like this one, I assume it will be full of information that might be easily searchable online (if I were so motivated — and if search engines were as good as they were 5-10 years ago!). That is, I cynically think well, I could probably just read a couple of Wikipedia entries and get the same info that’s in this book. I’m glad to be wrong here. I, of course, would not have been informed enough to accurately search for 90 percent of the names mentioned in the book, and some of the experts quoted here have given their words directly to the authors. So, these quotes exist nowhere else. Simply searching the internet won’t get you the same reading experience that’s presented here, and that’s before you consider the value of the images that accompany the text. The choice to have shades of pink, purple, lavender makes it clear that this book foregrounds people with trans and nonbinary identities. There’s plenty of black and white to offset the richness of the other colors used; suffice to say that this book is a pleasure to look at.

    The book’s final section really pushed it over the edge from being merely interesting to being essential. Combs is the primary author, and he leads off this section by acknowledging his positionality as a co-creator of the text. Instead of leaving the “Present Moment” chapter up to himself as the sole interpretive source, he calls in a dozen other folks to tell their own stories or stories important to them. It’s no mere afterthought. He explains how “As I talked with and learned from them, I made new choices about what shape the entire book was going to take” (p. 258). It’s not like he invited an old friend onstage to cover a song that friend’s band used to sing just to give a compliment or credit. The welcoming of those friends onstage (if we’re keeping with the gig metaphor) caused a recalibration of the entire show to that point and necessitated wholesale revision of the setlist for next time. Combs’ extensive comments in each contributor’s section of the Acknowledgments prove that he took their input seriously throughout the project. There are references to sensitivity readers and other collaborators as well. Eakett’s part of the “Present Moment” section provides further evidence of the inherently collaborative nature of this work. He recounts some of the processes involved in supporting Combs with the text and remarks “At some point, we stopped calling it his book… and started calling it our book” (p. 334, emphasis in original). There are two names on the cover of the book, but that is a limitation of publication. There are dozens of collaborators, researchers, activists, artists, and authors—not to mention names from times before who are the focus of the text—that made this book possible. Do your part by reading it and sharing it with someone who could stand to learn from that example of community-inspired historical narrative.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

Roll for Love by M.K. England

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

FUCKED UP "Disabuse" b/w "Self-Driving Man"

Hardcore California: A History of Punk and New Wave (Peter Belsito & Bob Davis, Last Gasp of San Francisco, 1983)

    It’s a shame that this book isn’t widely available. It’s essentially a scene report from Los Angeles and San Francisco in the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s. The best part is that there are few authorial voices involved. I love punk oral histories that are written in retrospect (Please Kill Me, We Got the Neutron Bomb, NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980-1990, etc.), but there’s something to be said for having a document that captures the thoughts, feelings, and viewpoints of people from the scene at the time it was happening. Short of reading issues of Slash, Search and Destroy, Flipside, or Ripper, you’re not going to get this kind of info anywhere else. I deliberately did not list punk Bible Maximum Rocknroll because that zine started at the tail end of the events covered in this book. In fact, it is striking to see it referenced as a radio show that “Tim Yohannon, Jeff Bale, Jello Biafra, Ruth Schwartz, and Ray Farrell” (p. 96) started as a way to get underground music and hardcore punk on the radio. That is the story, at least according to author and editor Peter Belsito’s write-up of the SF scene circa 1979. Contributors Craig Lee and Shreader (then only 16!) give their complementary perspectives on the LA scene in the first half of the book. With the analysis limited to these three voices (as well as a brief intro by Jonathan Formula and a Preface by Belsito and Bob Davis), you are getting an authentic take on what the scene was like at the time. Not a perfect image, not the final word, but a genuine reflection of what it meant to be in California and to participate in transition from punk to hardcore punk, art punk, post-punk, rockabilly, new wave, and more. This is an indispensable document.

    What makes this contemporary account so fascinating is the double-edged sword of hindsight. On one side of the blade, it is wild to read in 2025 about the explosion of hardcore in 1981-1982 as some kind of death knell for the punk scene writ large. It’s humbling to think that just a few years, even months, after some of these bands had formed that the scene was dying or over or stale or on its way out. For many, that was the case. The violence, the popularity (in relative terms), the changing sound were all factors that participants could point to for proof that things had changed and it was time to move on. On the other side of the blade, you have many of these bands still going today in some form or another (e.g., BLACK FLAG, DEAD KENNEDYS, X, CIRCLE JERKS, The GO-GO’s). There are also plenty of bands that stopped in the timeframe of this book that are deeply influential to this day (e.g. GERMS, The MIDDLE CLASS, SCREAMERS, The BAGS, etc.). The reason it’s interesting to read about these bands in an account from that time is there is no consideration given to their legacy or their impact. They are just another band in the endless list of those around at the time. For instance, this is likely one of the only places you can read hickish as a description for DESCENDENTS. Both Lee and Shreader use that term to discuss the version of that band that had yet to record “Milo Goes to College.” You’ll also see a full-page spread of a crowd doing “The Huntington Beach Shuffle,” which is the beginning of moshing (as distinct from pogoing) as we know it. The fact that the location name is spelled out instead of being an initialism and that it’s the “shuffle” instead of the “strut” dates this book to a particular point in time. Anyone who has read about the history of Washington D.C.’s punk scene knows that its members took this style of dancing back with them to the east coast and told everyone it was “the HB strut.” Little moments like these capture the changes in language that occurred because of the changes in the scene. Noticing those details is part of the fun of reading something written for posterity but without the benefit of hindsight.

    As interesting and informative as the words are, the photos are even more incredible. You’ve got some Glen E. Friedman and Ed Colver shots you’ve probably seen before (and do need to see again) along with others that for all I know are exclusive to this book. I hadn’t heard of f-stop Fitzgerald before opening this book; he has possibly the best punk photographer name I’ve ever heard. Some of the band photos are cool and all, but there are just as many pictures of punks who achieved enough notoriety to be worthy of photographing. Those images, along with flyers and album art, make this a great resource for learning about punk visual aesthetics. (Either Fucked Up and Photocopied or Radio Silence would be good places to look for additional info on visual manifestations of punk.) The bittersweet part of looking at the photos is knowing there were at least twice as many that didn’t make the final cut for the book. I love that they put a BAD POSTURE photo on the cover. You can hardly tell it’s them unless you know that their singer was seven feet tall. I didn’t know that until I read this book and their name suddenly makes a lot more sense. “Get Tough” is an all-timer.

    Anyway, I’m rambling, so I will wrap this up with a rhetorical question that comes to mind every time I read a book like this one or hold an excellently done punk or HC reissue in my hands. Frank Hanney of FOURTEEN OR FIGHT asked it on “Aggressive Collector” from their demo and first record in 2002. He wondered “wouldn’t the scene today be infinitely better if angry kids from Bogotá to Wichita had access to the music and collective history of the disillusioned kids that came before them?” Yeah they would. And, as Frank laments on that song, eBay (and now Discogs) puts crucial documents like records, tapes, zines, books, and flyers beyond the reach of anyone but collectors who are willing to pay top dollar for these cultural artifacts. If not for the Chicago Public Library’s closed reserves, I never would have been so lucky to have been able to access this book and its incredible historical perspectives.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

Neighborhood of Fear by Kyle Riismandel

Get in the Van by Henry Rollins

KRIEGSHÖG Love & Revenge