Civil Rights and Structural Attacks: Conversations with Walter Riley
by Walter Riley
by Walter Riley
Edited by Jesse Strauss
Foreword by Boots Riley
Legacy Left Books, 2026
Foreword by Boots Riley
Legacy Left Books, 2026
[Publication date: June 23, 2026]
Eighty years of lessons from the Black freedom struggle, labor movements, and internationalism.
Raised among the entrails of chattel slavery in Durham, North Carolina, Walter shares political reflections and lessons from decades of movement experience. This includes 1950s and early 1960s mobilizations against Jim Crow apartheid laws and welcoming Freedom Riders to Durham, followed by later 1960s student and labor organizing with the Progressive Labor Party, early Black Panther Party formations, anti-war activities, and co-leading the Peace and Freedom Party’s Black Caucus.
In the 1970s, Walter became a leader in the national Progressive Labor Party and led labor and welfare organizing in Chicago and Detroit. In the 1980s he became a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer and organized against South Africa’s apartheid system. His more recent work supporting infrastructure for Haitian movement-building and confronting police violence in Oakland allowed him to draw parallels between the dangers of international structural adjustment programs abroad, and the pitfalls of the nonprofit industrial complex at home.
This text is a multi-generational conversation between legendary Civil Rights organizer Walter Riley and longtime friend and Oakland organizer, Jesse Strauss. Together, they reflect on the importance of political action as the primary venue for learning and reflection. Walter Riley has a never-ending commitment to building a better world and he’ll challenge readers to avoid the paralysis of analysis that slows movements down and to avoid getting caught in the missives of ego. Includes a foreword by Walter Riley's son, Boots Riley.
REVIEWS:
"At a time when a lot of people are disconnected from actual movements, I hope my father’s legacy reminds you that it is each of our responsibility to participate in changing the world." —Boots Riley, from the foreword
“Walter Riley is one of the great revolutionary thinkers and strategists of our time–often compared with Amilcar Cabral or Walter Rodney. If you didn’t know this before, thanks to Jesse Strauss, now you know. You will find in these pages the critical insight, wisdom, and direction organizers need to meet the moment. And because Riley shares his own story of a life in struggle, you know why he is a beacon of light and brilliance for our movements.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“Walter Riley is my political mentor and hero. Like Ella Baker, his lifelong commitment to the fight for freedom and justice has been powerful, persistent, and unassuming. As a union organizer, radical movement intellectual, people’s lawyer, and courageous freedom fighter, Walter’s contributions to a wide range of liberation movements over many decades is unmatched. An unflinching opponent of capitalism, colonialism, and racism from Haiti to Oakland, Walter is an exemplary champion of oppressed people the world over. No exaggeration. My only critique of this short bio-narrative is that it should be longer. There are so many important stories Walter could tell us, and lessons he could convey. Read, learn, and be inspired and fortified for the struggles ahead.” —Barbara Ransby, activist, historian, and author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
“Walter Riley is a Movement Man—the kind of essential organizer/activist/thinker/doer who keeps the Movement moving. Here is an urgent intergenerational dialogue, the ideal vehicle for unlocking the wisdom of a veteran freedom fighter whose organizing work centers on principled unity and whose vast experience is wholly relevant to the demands of radical movement building today. Riley knows that eighty years is a long time in the life of a man but the blink of an eye in the life of a struggle, and so he’s neither nostalgic for a ship that’s already left the shore nor interested in burnishing a legacy. Rather, he’s still leaning forward, still on the move and in the mix, still asking the most insistent and burning questions: How do we name this political moment? Where do we go from here? What does the known demand of us now? Read Civil Rights and Structural Attacks: Conversations with Walter Riley as a challenge as well as an invitation to join Walter Riley on today’s barricades—we have a world to win.” —Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground and author of When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer
“The haymaker punch is named after the wide swinging motion of the scythe—the 14th Century agricultural tool used to reap edible grains and chop down undesirables. Name linked to the Latin scindere (to cut), the scythe’s broad arcing swing reaps abundance. Walter Riley’s deft dialectic introduces openness, risk, willingness to struggle, and revolutionary contingency to the scythe’s movement. In Walter’s words: ‘A haymaker in boxing is when you don’t know where the punch is going to land but you know it has power in it and you hope it’ll work. At the same time, you leave yourself open. People tend not to do that in actual boxing, but in this concept of being out in struggle, do some haymakers! Go after folks that are oppressive! Go after institutions! Go after ideas and thought processes that inhibit folks! Be intentional about it! Think about it but don’t hold back!’ This forcefully urgent volume is full of revolutionary insight, a ledger of radical praxis from my friend Walter Riley enriching our understanding of organizations and masses in motion: NAACP, CORE, The Black Panther Party, Progressive Labor Party, Fanmi Lavalas, and so much more. The geographical expanse is vast—NorthCarolina, Chicago, Detroit, Port-au-Prince, and of course, Oakland, California. Walter and Jesse Strauss’s text models through praxis its title formulation of ‘Quiet Leadership’—which like Assata Shakur’s notion of the ‘reluctant warrior’ opens up a treasure trove of insight informing their respective texts and archive of revolutionary praxis. This includes: the centrality of planning, the problem of leadership, the temptations of individuation, lessons of cadre building, mass base building, active listening, the nuance in Walter’s sense of ‘ante-revolutionary’ and anti-revolutionary. Thank you—Walter and Jesse—for this record of struggle—for feeding us, sustaining radical memory and current praxis, and cutting our enemies down to size. The pen is mightier than the scythe, but keep a scythe around just in case. Unite the many to defeat the few and while doing the damn thing—study this book and commence the throwing.” —Jeremy Matthew Glick, author of The Black Radical Tragic: Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution
"Every city, every town, every village on this planet has iconic figures who spend their entire life being on the side of justice and clarity, being decent and warm hearted. Walter Riley is that person for northern California—a link to earlier struggles with his eyes firmly positioned on a future that is beyond the ugliness of the present. These conversations offer the education a new generation requires in how to be in the struggle for a lifetime and more." —Vijay Prashad, director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
"Throughout his lifetime on the front lines of struggle, Walter Riley’s dialectical clarity has energized and sharpened people’s movements from Durham to Oakland to Haiti to Palestine. Civil Rights and Structural Attacks is not just a memoir but a practical roadmap for the next generation of activists: a profound, personal, and necessary manifesto on revolutionary change guided by core political principles, deep love, and a few well-timed haymakers against the centers of power." —Nora Barrows-Friedman, journalist, author and editor of The Electronic Intifada
Raised among the entrails of chattel slavery in Durham, North Carolina, Walter shares political reflections and lessons from decades of movement experience. This includes 1950s and early 1960s mobilizations against Jim Crow apartheid laws and welcoming Freedom Riders to Durham, followed by later 1960s student and labor organizing with the Progressive Labor Party, early Black Panther Party formations, anti-war activities, and co-leading the Peace and Freedom Party’s Black Caucus.
In the 1970s, Walter became a leader in the national Progressive Labor Party and led labor and welfare organizing in Chicago and Detroit. In the 1980s he became a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer and organized against South Africa’s apartheid system. His more recent work supporting infrastructure for Haitian movement-building and confronting police violence in Oakland allowed him to draw parallels between the dangers of international structural adjustment programs abroad, and the pitfalls of the nonprofit industrial complex at home.
This text is a multi-generational conversation between legendary Civil Rights organizer Walter Riley and longtime friend and Oakland organizer, Jesse Strauss. Together, they reflect on the importance of political action as the primary venue for learning and reflection. Walter Riley has a never-ending commitment to building a better world and he’ll challenge readers to avoid the paralysis of analysis that slows movements down and to avoid getting caught in the missives of ego. Includes a foreword by Walter Riley's son, Boots Riley.
REVIEWS:
"At a time when a lot of people are disconnected from actual movements, I hope my father’s legacy reminds you that it is each of our responsibility to participate in changing the world." —Boots Riley, from the foreword
“Walter Riley is one of the great revolutionary thinkers and strategists of our time–often compared with Amilcar Cabral or Walter Rodney. If you didn’t know this before, thanks to Jesse Strauss, now you know. You will find in these pages the critical insight, wisdom, and direction organizers need to meet the moment. And because Riley shares his own story of a life in struggle, you know why he is a beacon of light and brilliance for our movements.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“Walter Riley is my political mentor and hero. Like Ella Baker, his lifelong commitment to the fight for freedom and justice has been powerful, persistent, and unassuming. As a union organizer, radical movement intellectual, people’s lawyer, and courageous freedom fighter, Walter’s contributions to a wide range of liberation movements over many decades is unmatched. An unflinching opponent of capitalism, colonialism, and racism from Haiti to Oakland, Walter is an exemplary champion of oppressed people the world over. No exaggeration. My only critique of this short bio-narrative is that it should be longer. There are so many important stories Walter could tell us, and lessons he could convey. Read, learn, and be inspired and fortified for the struggles ahead.” —Barbara Ransby, activist, historian, and author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
“Walter Riley is a Movement Man—the kind of essential organizer/activist/thinker/doer who keeps the Movement moving. Here is an urgent intergenerational dialogue, the ideal vehicle for unlocking the wisdom of a veteran freedom fighter whose organizing work centers on principled unity and whose vast experience is wholly relevant to the demands of radical movement building today. Riley knows that eighty years is a long time in the life of a man but the blink of an eye in the life of a struggle, and so he’s neither nostalgic for a ship that’s already left the shore nor interested in burnishing a legacy. Rather, he’s still leaning forward, still on the move and in the mix, still asking the most insistent and burning questions: How do we name this political moment? Where do we go from here? What does the known demand of us now? Read Civil Rights and Structural Attacks: Conversations with Walter Riley as a challenge as well as an invitation to join Walter Riley on today’s barricades—we have a world to win.” —Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground and author of When Freedom is the Question Abolition is the Answer
“The haymaker punch is named after the wide swinging motion of the scythe—the 14th Century agricultural tool used to reap edible grains and chop down undesirables. Name linked to the Latin scindere (to cut), the scythe’s broad arcing swing reaps abundance. Walter Riley’s deft dialectic introduces openness, risk, willingness to struggle, and revolutionary contingency to the scythe’s movement. In Walter’s words: ‘A haymaker in boxing is when you don’t know where the punch is going to land but you know it has power in it and you hope it’ll work. At the same time, you leave yourself open. People tend not to do that in actual boxing, but in this concept of being out in struggle, do some haymakers! Go after folks that are oppressive! Go after institutions! Go after ideas and thought processes that inhibit folks! Be intentional about it! Think about it but don’t hold back!’ This forcefully urgent volume is full of revolutionary insight, a ledger of radical praxis from my friend Walter Riley enriching our understanding of organizations and masses in motion: NAACP, CORE, The Black Panther Party, Progressive Labor Party, Fanmi Lavalas, and so much more. The geographical expanse is vast—NorthCarolina, Chicago, Detroit, Port-au-Prince, and of course, Oakland, California. Walter and Jesse Strauss’s text models through praxis its title formulation of ‘Quiet Leadership’—which like Assata Shakur’s notion of the ‘reluctant warrior’ opens up a treasure trove of insight informing their respective texts and archive of revolutionary praxis. This includes: the centrality of planning, the problem of leadership, the temptations of individuation, lessons of cadre building, mass base building, active listening, the nuance in Walter’s sense of ‘ante-revolutionary’ and anti-revolutionary. Thank you—Walter and Jesse—for this record of struggle—for feeding us, sustaining radical memory and current praxis, and cutting our enemies down to size. The pen is mightier than the scythe, but keep a scythe around just in case. Unite the many to defeat the few and while doing the damn thing—study this book and commence the throwing.” —Jeremy Matthew Glick, author of The Black Radical Tragic: Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution
"Every city, every town, every village on this planet has iconic figures who spend their entire life being on the side of justice and clarity, being decent and warm hearted. Walter Riley is that person for northern California—a link to earlier struggles with his eyes firmly positioned on a future that is beyond the ugliness of the present. These conversations offer the education a new generation requires in how to be in the struggle for a lifetime and more." —Vijay Prashad, director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
"Throughout his lifetime on the front lines of struggle, Walter Riley’s dialectical clarity has energized and sharpened people’s movements from Durham to Oakland to Haiti to Palestine. Civil Rights and Structural Attacks is not just a memoir but a practical roadmap for the next generation of activists: a profound, personal, and necessary manifesto on revolutionary change guided by core political principles, deep love, and a few well-timed haymakers against the centers of power." —Nora Barrows-Friedman, journalist, author and editor of The Electronic Intifada
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
Walter Riley grew up as a civil rights activist in the Jim Crow South, chaired Durham, North Carolina’s Young Adult NAACP, organized voter registration, sit-ins, job campaigns, and was a Field Secretary for CORE in the Southeast Region. He became a San Francisco State University activist for ethnic studies, and was a member of the Black Student Union and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Riley has worked as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer since the 1980s. He is a loving father and grandfather.
Jesse Strauss is an anti-imperialist and abolitionist cultural worker, community organizer, musician, and journalist born and raised in Oakland and Berkeley (unceded Ohlone/Chochenyo land). He is an anti-zionist descendent of Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide and was raised by parents engaged in radical queer healthcare and immigration asylum access work in the Bay Area. As a journalist, Jesse has a long working relationship with KPFA Radio, where he co-created the first-ever daily abolitionist radio show, Law & Disorder. He was a producer for Al Jazeera during the so-called “Arab Spring” and “Occupy” movements.
Boots Riley is a writer, director of the film Sorry to Bother You, musician, rapper with The Coup, and producer from Oakland, CA.
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
Simon and Schuster, 2026
[Publication date: June 23, 2026]
A riveting, intimate, and revelatory account of the most radical and consequential presidency of our time.
From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Regime Change covers the first year of Trump’s second presidency—a term liberated from every constraint that defined his first. The generals who once told him “no” are gone, and the lawyers who remain have learned to pick their battles. His administration has flouted court orders and he has claimed powers that Congress once checked. What remains is a President willing to take enormous risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state; an imperial President operating almost entirely on instinct alone.
Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader inside the Situation Room and into the secret Oval Office deliberations that have launched a new war in the Middle East and seen Trump seal the border, surge National Guard troops into cities, and send immigration agents into deadly clashes with protestors. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan bring us behind the scenes of a presidency that has transformed the culture, turned the Justice Department into an agent of retribution against the President’s enemies and the office itself into a brazen vehicle for profit. They reveal a second term propelled by a historical irony that Trump himself has come to understand: that the indictments, the convictions, the assassination attempts, and four years of exile made him not weaker but far more powerful, more vengeful, and more willing to gamble than any President in modern history.
This is the story of how Trump has used that power, who has tried to stop him, and why nearly all of them have failed. It is also the story of something American journalists are more accustomed to chronicling in distant capitals than in their own: a President who has fundamentally altered the nature of the office he holds—and, with it, how the rest of the world understands American power. It is an account of Regime Change right here in America—a landmark real-time history of a modern presidency like no other.
REVIEWS:
From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Regime Change covers the first year of Trump’s second presidency—a term liberated from every constraint that defined his first. The generals who once told him “no” are gone, and the lawyers who remain have learned to pick their battles. His administration has flouted court orders and he has claimed powers that Congress once checked. What remains is a President willing to take enormous risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state; an imperial President operating almost entirely on instinct alone.
Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader inside the Situation Room and into the secret Oval Office deliberations that have launched a new war in the Middle East and seen Trump seal the border, surge National Guard troops into cities, and send immigration agents into deadly clashes with protestors. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan bring us behind the scenes of a presidency that has transformed the culture, turned the Justice Department into an agent of retribution against the President’s enemies and the office itself into a brazen vehicle for profit. They reveal a second term propelled by a historical irony that Trump himself has come to understand: that the indictments, the convictions, the assassination attempts, and four years of exile made him not weaker but far more powerful, more vengeful, and more willing to gamble than any President in modern history.
This is the story of how Trump has used that power, who has tried to stop him, and why nearly all of them have failed. It is also the story of something American journalists are more accustomed to chronicling in distant capitals than in their own: a President who has fundamentally altered the nature of the office he holds—and, with it, how the rest of the world understands American power. It is an account of Regime Change right here in America—a landmark real-time history of a modern presidency like no other.
REVIEWS:
“Regime Change is exceptional. It transcends its genre...the book is packed with news that will stay news...This is reporting of consequence.” —David Remnick, The New Yorker
“A flabbergasting feat of political reporting.”
—Tina Brown
“Riveting and richly textured...What the authors add is the vivid detail that makes these events feel actual. They wrest reality itself back from the distorted world of entertainment, illusion, fantasy and denial that Trump has generated around himself. It is this flood of provocation, atrocity, self-dealing and fabrication that makes Haberman and Swan’s counternarrative so vital.” —Fintan O’Toole, The New York Times
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. A New York City native, Haberman worked at the New York Post, New York Daily News, and Politico, before joining the Times in 2015. She has covered six US presidential elections and several gubernatorial and New York City mayoral races. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. In 2021, she was part of a team that was a Pulitzer finalist for coverage of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. She has received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award, as well as the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page Award for Journalist of the Year. She is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. She lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.
Jonathan Swan is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Originally from Sydney, Australia, he has reported on Donald Trump since 2015, covering all three of his campaigns and his first term in office. Previously at Axios and The Hill,he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Trump and received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award. He began his career as a teenage copy boy at a Sydney newspaper and later covered federal politics in Australia’s capital for The Sydney Morning Herald. He became a US citizen in 2024 and lives in Virginia with his wife and two children, with a third on the way.
The Conviction Machine: Prosecutors, Politicians, and Police Violence in Chicago
by Flint Taylor
Haymarket Books, 2026
[Publication date: May 19, 2026]
“Riveting and richly textured...What the authors add is the vivid detail that makes these events feel actual. They wrest reality itself back from the distorted world of entertainment, illusion, fantasy and denial that Trump has generated around himself. It is this flood of provocation, atrocity, self-dealing and fabrication that makes Haberman and Swan’s counternarrative so vital.” —Fintan O’Toole, The New York Times
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. A New York City native, Haberman worked at the New York Post, New York Daily News, and Politico, before joining the Times in 2015. She has covered six US presidential elections and several gubernatorial and New York City mayoral races. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. In 2021, she was part of a team that was a Pulitzer finalist for coverage of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. She has received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award, as well as the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page Award for Journalist of the Year. She is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. She lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.
Jonathan Swan is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Originally from Sydney, Australia, he has reported on Donald Trump since 2015, covering all three of his campaigns and his first term in office. Previously at Axios and The Hill,he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Trump and received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award. He began his career as a teenage copy boy at a Sydney newspaper and later covered federal politics in Australia’s capital for The Sydney Morning Herald. He became a US citizen in 2024 and lives in Virginia with his wife and two children, with a third on the way.
The Conviction Machine: Prosecutors, Politicians, and Police Violence in Chicago
by Flint Taylor
Haymarket Books, 2026
[Publication date: May 19, 2026]
A captivating account of the most corrupt and blood-soaked chapters in Chicago law enforcement history
In December 1969, the FBI, the Chicago Police Department, and the office of States Attorney, led by rising political star Edward V. Hanrahan, conspired to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and then flagrantly covered up their misconduct. Thirteen years later, Jackie Wilson was tortured by the same police department and wrongfully incarcerated for thirty-six years.
Drawing on unique insights from his role as a leading opposition lawyer in both cases, award-winning author Flint Taylor details the vast political corruption uncovered in the Hampton case and the twists and turns of Wilson's forty-year effort to win his freedom.
With blistering clarity and righteous indignation, The Conviction Machine shines a penetrating light on the sordid world of prosecutorial misconduct and police violence.
REVIEWS:
"In this alarming exposé, civil rights attorney Taylor (The Torture Machine) reveals decades of government collusion to hide evidence of racist police violence in Chicago....The result is a painstaking, vital record of institutionalized corruption." ―Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review
"At last, Flint Taylor has given us an intimate, accurate, behind the scenes, forceful portrayal of the murderous machinations of the underbelly of American justice. I’ve been anxiously awaiting Flint’s exemplary work. Taylor vividly expresses the politically motivated, taxpayer-financed, and treacherous shenanigans of our nation’s political establishment and its enforcement apparatus; the American police departments, who area all too frequently in cahoots with the FBI, ICE, CIA, etc. Racism is its idealized engine, its raison d^etre.
The assassination of a young brilliant, gifted and courageous Black leader, Fred Hampton, was in a real sense its ultimate achievement. Fred’s assignation was not just a localized Chicago travesty of justice. It was the only officially sanctioned taxpayer-financed assassination of an American citizen for political reasons and political objectives by the U.S. Government in American history. And I was to be included in its deadly, deliberate undertaking! Fred’s assassination is the framework, the backdrop, the murderous modus operandi that still permeates our American law enforcement policy. Minneapolis and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by America’s police operatives are our most recent reminders that much more remains to be done, and it must be done by the power of the people, common ordinary people.
Thank you, Flint Taylor, for "connecting the deadly dots". The "Conviction Machine" is a must-read for all freedom-loving, justice-seeking, and people-loving people.
In December 1969, the FBI, the Chicago Police Department, and the office of States Attorney, led by rising political star Edward V. Hanrahan, conspired to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and then flagrantly covered up their misconduct. Thirteen years later, Jackie Wilson was tortured by the same police department and wrongfully incarcerated for thirty-six years.
Drawing on unique insights from his role as a leading opposition lawyer in both cases, award-winning author Flint Taylor details the vast political corruption uncovered in the Hampton case and the twists and turns of Wilson's forty-year effort to win his freedom.
With blistering clarity and righteous indignation, The Conviction Machine shines a penetrating light on the sordid world of prosecutorial misconduct and police violence.
REVIEWS:
"In this alarming exposé, civil rights attorney Taylor (The Torture Machine) reveals decades of government collusion to hide evidence of racist police violence in Chicago....The result is a painstaking, vital record of institutionalized corruption." ―Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review
"At last, Flint Taylor has given us an intimate, accurate, behind the scenes, forceful portrayal of the murderous machinations of the underbelly of American justice. I’ve been anxiously awaiting Flint’s exemplary work. Taylor vividly expresses the politically motivated, taxpayer-financed, and treacherous shenanigans of our nation’s political establishment and its enforcement apparatus; the American police departments, who area all too frequently in cahoots with the FBI, ICE, CIA, etc. Racism is its idealized engine, its raison d^etre.
The assassination of a young brilliant, gifted and courageous Black leader, Fred Hampton, was in a real sense its ultimate achievement. Fred’s assignation was not just a localized Chicago travesty of justice. It was the only officially sanctioned taxpayer-financed assassination of an American citizen for political reasons and political objectives by the U.S. Government in American history. And I was to be included in its deadly, deliberate undertaking! Fred’s assassination is the framework, the backdrop, the murderous modus operandi that still permeates our American law enforcement policy. Minneapolis and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by America’s police operatives are our most recent reminders that much more remains to be done, and it must be done by the power of the people, common ordinary people.
Thank you, Flint Taylor, for "connecting the deadly dots". The "Conviction Machine" is a must-read for all freedom-loving, justice-seeking, and people-loving people.
―Bobby Rush, former U.S. Congressman and former Deputy Minister of defense of the Black Panther Party
"Most often, popular history tells the story of the predator and not the prey. This is not that story.My Brother, Beloved Atty. Flint Taylor is the David who slew the Goliathan: the CHICAGO POLITICAL/POLICE MACHINE. If you keep hope alive and stay in the fight, you will win; even in the face of the most daunting odds and intimidating foes, you will win. This book is your blueprint."
"Most often, popular history tells the story of the predator and not the prey. This is not that story.My Brother, Beloved Atty. Flint Taylor is the David who slew the Goliathan: the CHICAGO POLITICAL/POLICE MACHINE. If you keep hope alive and stay in the fight, you will win; even in the face of the most daunting odds and intimidating foes, you will win. This book is your blueprint."
―The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, and his daughter, Santita Jackson, Producer/Host of the "KEEP HOPE ALIVE with REV. JESSE JACKSON and the SANTITA JACKSON Radio Shows.
“A masterful chronicle of Fred Hampton's murder and its aftermath, Taylor's insider account reveals the shocking depth of official conspiracy and cover-up while celebrating the tireless advocates who refused to let the truth die with Hampton.”
“A masterful chronicle of Fred Hampton's murder and its aftermath, Taylor's insider account reveals the shocking depth of official conspiracy and cover-up while celebrating the tireless advocates who refused to let the truth die with Hampton.”
―Chesa Boudin
“Flint Taylor is a gift to Chicago and the nation. This rigorous, unsparing and brilliant dissection of decades-long racism, corruption, and lies by Chicago law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges should be required reading in law schools nationwide. We can only hope it triggers a long overdue reckoning with the true character of our criminal legal system.”
―Dr. Martha Biondi, author of The Black Revolution on Campus and We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation
“Flint Taylor exposes the absurd, cowardly and racist machinations of Chicago officials, who permitted police to get away with torture rather than take a stand to stop them. The book reads like a novel by Kafka―except it’s true.”
―Ben Joravsky, journalist and host of The Ben Joravsky Show podcast
"The Conviction Machine is a scathing, jaw-dropping indictment of our criminal justice system and the conspiratorial ways prosecutors are complicit in police murder. Flint Taylor, a true legal legend, exposes the truth that we must acknowledge: the Chicago police tortured and murdered in cold blood, prosecutors were complicit, and this history must be retold to understand the battles we face today." ―Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, PhD Author of Crook County and Crime Fictions
"Only a legal practitioner of Flint Taylor's skill and vast experience could have written this diagnosis of the routine cruelties and frequent absurdities produced by a criminal justice system built on a bedrock of unacknowledged racism. Drawing on two epic cases, he provides a devastating account of the interactions between police abuse, prosecutorial misconduct, and political machinations. A brilliant and necessary book." ―Jamie Kalven, Founder of the Invisible Institute, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist
Praise for The Torture Machine:
"If it was not for Flint Taylor I would still be languishing in prison. He brought hope to a hopeless place."
―Darrell Cannon, torture survivor
"It is impossible to fully understand the continuing challenges created by unjustifiable police violence against black and brown people without appreciating the historical backdrop that sustains this national crisis. Flint Taylor's powerful new book, informed by his decades as one of the most effective advocates addressing these issues, is a must-read."
―Bryan Stevenson, best-selling author of Just Mercy
"Taylor is a walking passcode to CPD misconduct. It was Taylor and his colleagues who unearthed the crimes committed by the “Midnight Crew,” a squad of racist cops who tortured blacks to extract their false confessions."
―Rolling Stone
"[A] searing memoir... essential reading for all who care about this country―past and future."
―Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Blood in the Water
"Incredible and devastating."
―Jeremy Scahill
"[A]n unsparing dissection of foundational racism in the criminal justice system ... It could not be more timely."
―Jamie Kalven, Investigative Reporter and Founder, Invisible Institute
"Each victim's case is a fascinating story in itself while the totality of the lawyers' efforts fighting a resistant establishment is staggering."
―The Observer
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
As a law student, Flint Taylor was a founding member of the People’s Law Office and has been a partner of the PLO since 1972. As a student and lawyer, he has been dedicated to litigating against police violence and racism for more than fifty-four years. Among the landmark cases that Taylor has litigated are the Fred Hampton Black Panther case; the Greensboro, North Carolina case against the KKK, Nazis and Greensboro police; and a series of cases arising from a pattern and practice of police torture and cover-up by Chicago police Commander Jon Burge, former Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, and numerous other law enforcement officials. He has represented, and continues to represent, many wrongfully convicted persons, including police torture victims who have spent decades in prison and on death row. He has chronicled his work and that of the People’s Law Office in an award-winning historical memoir titled The Torture Machine.
Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism
by Brian Kwoba
The University of North Carolina Press, 2026
The significance of Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927)—as a journalist, activist, and educator—lies in his innovation of radical solutions to radical injustices. He witnessed staggering luxury for the few alongside crushing poverty for the many. White mob violence continually haunted Black communities, while imperial conquest and world wars wrought wanton destruction upon entire nations of people. These conditions sparked a global political awakening to which Harrison gave voice as a leading figure in cutting-edge struggles for socialism, internationalism, free love, freethinking, and free speech. He did far more than cultivate the rich, dark soil in which the so-called “Harlem Renaissance” would take root. Harrison also played a pivotal role in the rise of Marcus Garvey and the emergence of the largest international organization of African people in modern history. Because of his fearless radicalism, however, he has been erased from popular memory.
Hubert Harrison presents a historical restoration of Harrison’s numerous intellectual and political breakthroughs. Offering a fresh interpretation of his contributions to social movements for economic, racial, and sexual liberation, Brian Kwoba’s richly textured narrative highlights the startling and continued relevance of Harrison’s visionary thinking across generations.
[Publication date: July 17, 2025]
by Brian Kwoba
The University of North Carolina Press, 2026
The significance of Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927)—as a journalist, activist, and educator—lies in his innovation of radical solutions to radical injustices. He witnessed staggering luxury for the few alongside crushing poverty for the many. White mob violence continually haunted Black communities, while imperial conquest and world wars wrought wanton destruction upon entire nations of people. These conditions sparked a global political awakening to which Harrison gave voice as a leading figure in cutting-edge struggles for socialism, internationalism, free love, freethinking, and free speech. He did far more than cultivate the rich, dark soil in which the so-called “Harlem Renaissance” would take root. Harrison also played a pivotal role in the rise of Marcus Garvey and the emergence of the largest international organization of African people in modern history. Because of his fearless radicalism, however, he has been erased from popular memory.
Hubert Harrison presents a historical restoration of Harrison’s numerous intellectual and political breakthroughs. Offering a fresh interpretation of his contributions to social movements for economic, racial, and sexual liberation, Brian Kwoba’s richly textured narrative highlights the startling and continued relevance of Harrison’s visionary thinking across generations.
[Publication date: July 17, 2025]
REVIEWS:
“Brian Kwoba has written a beautiful, intellectual biography as radical and original as its subject. He excavates Hubert H. Harrison—brilliant Marxist, Black nationalist, internationalist, and gender rebel—revealing dimensions even his most scrupulous chroniclers missed.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“Hubert Harrison shaped movements from the Harlem Renaissance to Black studies. Brian Kwoba admirably highlights this formidable Caribbean American intellectual, who deserves a more central place in African American and African diaspora history.”—Carole Boyce Davies, author of Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones and Black Women’s Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power
“Through an engagement with Hubert Harrison and his expansive ideas, this compelling book provides a theoretically nuanced account of the connections and ruptures within Black intellectual and social thought. ”—Claudrena Harold, University of Virginia
“Captivating and compelling. Many are praised for novel interventions, but few achieve what Kwoba has. Hubert Harrison shifts the ground and sets the standard for twenty-first-century research on Harrison. We owe Kwoba a great debt.”—Tommy J. Curry, University of Edinburgh.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brian Kwoba is associate professor of history at the University of Memphis.
“Brian Kwoba has written a beautiful, intellectual biography as radical and original as its subject. He excavates Hubert H. Harrison—brilliant Marxist, Black nationalist, internationalist, and gender rebel—revealing dimensions even his most scrupulous chroniclers missed.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“Hubert Harrison shaped movements from the Harlem Renaissance to Black studies. Brian Kwoba admirably highlights this formidable Caribbean American intellectual, who deserves a more central place in African American and African diaspora history.”—Carole Boyce Davies, author of Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones and Black Women’s Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power
“Through an engagement with Hubert Harrison and his expansive ideas, this compelling book provides a theoretically nuanced account of the connections and ruptures within Black intellectual and social thought. ”—Claudrena Harold, University of Virginia
“Captivating and compelling. Many are praised for novel interventions, but few achieve what Kwoba has. Hubert Harrison shifts the ground and sets the standard for twenty-first-century research on Harrison. We owe Kwoba a great debt.”—Tommy J. Curry, University of Edinburgh.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brian Kwoba is associate professor of history at the University of Memphis.
