A Discussion with Alec Karakatsanis about Copaganda

This will be a hybrid event – and is FREE for all attendees

Attendees can opt to participate in person at the HUUB (35 Cleveland Street, Orange, NJ) or virtually via Zoom. Registration is required for both as spaces are limited. There is no charge for attendees. Copies of “Copaganda” will be available for purchase at the event.
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About Alec Karakatsanis

Alec is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps.  He has pioneered constitutional civil rights cases to challenge the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States. lec has also worked with directly impacted communities across the U.S. to design innovative new legal, advocacy, and narrative strategies for challenging widespread illegal and harmful practices of prosecutors, police, probation officers, judges, and private companies who work with them to profit from the punishment bureaucracy.  

Before founding Civil Rights Corps, Alec was a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia; a federal public defender in Alabama, representing impoverished people accused of federal crimes; and co-founder of the organization Equal Justice Under Law. Alec is the author of two books, Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (2019) and Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News (2025). He also writes a popular newsletter called Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter.

The above information on Alec Karakatsanis is an abbreviation of the full bio which is available on the Civil Rights Corp website.

About Copaganda

In this groundbreaking expose, essential for understanding the rising authoritarian mindset, award-winning civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis introduces the concept of “Copaganda.” He defines Copaganda as a special kind of propaganda employed by police, prosecutors, and news media that stokes fear of police-recorded crime and distorts society’s responses to it. Every day, mass media manipulates our perception of what keeps us safe and contributes to a culture fearful of poor people, strangers, immigrants, unhoused people, and people of color. The result is more and more authoritarian state repression, more inequality, and huge profits for the massive public and private punishment bureaucracy. Read more on The New Press website.

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