Join Village Well Books & Coffee for a powerful conversation on the far-reaching harms of the prison industrial complex with two leading voices for justice: Alec Karakatsanis, author of Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, and Bianca Tylek, author of The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits.

In Copaganda, prizewinning civil rights lawyer and Civil Rights Corps founder Alec Karakatsanis offers a powerful warning about how the media manipulates public perception, fueling fear and inequality, while distracting us from what truly matters 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.

In The Prison Industry, Bianca Tyler and Worth Rises—a criminal justice organization best known for campaigns that have revolutionized prison telecom and made prison and jail communication free in cities and states around the country—offer a meticulous exposé of who profits from incarceration, culminating in a compelling case for dismantling the prison industry and prison abolition more broadly.