Download or read book The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising written by Shemon Salam and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was nothing but darkness in the spring of 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic raged and shut down the economy. But as right-wing protesters demanded an end to the lockdown, a much bigger social conflict was brewing under the surface. A rebellion exploded in Minneapolis in response to the brutal police murder of George Floyd in late May, during which a police station was overtaken and burned down. The uprising quickly spread across the United States as protesters looted downtown urban centers, set fire to cop cars, vandalized government buildings, and fought the police.The Black proletariat led the charge, but white, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous proletarians also joined the fight, demonstrating new possibilities for building alliances. While anti-police rebellions continued throughout the summer and fall, the uprising receded with the start of the winter. But this conflict is far from over. In an effort to think through the experience of the uprising and prepare for the great struggles that are coming, The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprisingprovides an in-depth analysis of what exactly happened during the 2020 uprising, its potentials, internal limits, and strategic implications.
Download or read book The George Floyd Uprising written by Vortex Group and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 2020, America experienced one of the biggest uprisings in half a century. Waves of enraged citizens took to the streets to streets in Minneapolis to decry the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police. Battles broke out night after night, with a pandemic weary populace fighting the police and eventually burning down the Third Precinct. The revolt soon spread to cities large and small across the country where protesters set police cars on fire, looted luxury shopping districts and forced the president into hiding in a bunker beneath the White House. As the initial crest receded, localized rebellions continued to erupt throughout the summer and into the fall in Atlanta, Chicago, Kenosha, Louisville, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Written during the riots, The George Floyd Uprising is a compendium of the most radical writing to come out of that long, hot summer. These incendiary dispatches—from those on the frontlines of the struggle—examines the revolt and the obstacles it confronted. It paints a picture of abolition in practice, discusses how the presence of weapons in the uprising and the threat of armed struggle play out in an American context, and shows how the state responds to and pacifies rebellions. The George Floyd Uprising poses new social, tactical, and strategic plans for those actively seeking to expand and intensify revolts of the future. This practical, inspiring collection is essential reading for all those hard at work toppling the state and creating a new revolutionary tradition.
Download or read book From I CAN T BREATHE to BLACK LIVES MATTER written by David Serero and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: May 26, 2020, is a date that no one will ever forget. That day, we all saw the terrible death of George Floyd on social media. Sitting at the computer in his New York apartment, opera singer, producer, and author David Serero witnessed this horrific video, which went viral and made headlines on every news channel. Never had he ever seen a man agonizing and begging for his life under the knee of a Police officer in the United States of America, and thus in the 21st century. He was outraged and sad. This behavior was unacceptable, indeed criminal, and righteously prosecuted as such. As a Jew, it immediately reminded him of photos of Nazis who proudly killed Jews during the Holocaust. Although he didn't know yet the details of Floyd's arrest, he knew it was not right. Following George Floyd's tragic death, David Serero witnessed a series of events that he wanted to collect all within the same book, in the form of a Diary, to understand how the event led to another. He hopes that future generations will understand the escalation that led from an obvious crime to a protest, then to an American revolution, to hopefully a change for the better in a country still struggling with racism. During the unprecedented time of the quarantine and lockdown, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and while strict rules of self-distancing were applied, thousands of Americans took to the streets to protest police brutality and support the Black Lives Matter movement. Some protesters were peaceful, others very violent, creating chaos, which ultimately required the presence of the National Guard and a curfew. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, George Floyd struggled for his life and mentioned his sadly known I Can't Breathe...Mama.... David Serero's fact-based-only Diary, covered the events day by day from the tragic death of George Floyd to the protests, also the looting and burning of businesses, the curfews, demolishing statues, burning the American Flag, reporters being rioted, Police officers being attacked while others showed their support by putting a knee down for George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement. While some protesters showed their support for the police authorities, others provoked and attacked them. This prompted authorities to even request to 'defund the Police' and passing new bills in order to have officers liable for their actions, while...innocents civilians were brutally shot during the deadly weekend of Independence Day in several cities of America and thus by other civilians.After reading this Dairy, you will find the 100 Questions that he calls ILLOGICAL. Illogical as the tragic death of George Floyd and other events. Illogical because we have the solutions in our hands, but no one wishes to use them. Illogical because these questions shouldn't be asked since we modestly think that we have learned the lessons of our history, and therefore, had already solved this matter. He decided to call them The ILLOGICAL 100 and hopes that it will open a healthy dialogue and reflection for everyone to debate in the most peaceful manner. David Serero is on the side of all Americans; it does not make any difference with anyone's ethnicity, religions, sexual orientations, or political views, though he likes to refer to a culture that defines us and is made to be shared and preserved. He often likes to say: Culture is what is left, once we have forgotten and lost everything. He was in the right position, as an Immigrant and observer, to witness a country sadly (still) struggling with race in the 21st century, at the time where History and education are so much available on the internet.Diary of The Events + The 'Illogical 100'
Download or read book Adventures with Mr Steve the Big Shift written by Bobby Mardis and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr. Steve notices on the school's weekly Zoom call, that some of the Black students are uncharacteristically quiet. He discovers that some of them have witnessed police brutality, protest marches and riots arising from the George Floyd incident and the continued killing of Black people. He realizes that the baffled and somewhat traumatized children need to clearly understand what they are witnessing in real time and that they need to express themselves verbally as part of their mental growth. Mr. Steve approaches the principal to request a special zoom meeting for Black students who don't clearly understand the current social environment, or even the deep rooted reasoning for the public outcry. The Principal agrees, but opens the Zoom call to any non-Black interested students as a learning experience in cultural understanding.In the Zoom call, Mr. Steve has a back and forth dialogues infusing historical significance to what the children are seeing in the streets, and on the news. Mr. Steve uses props, pictures and books to help the children understand the significance of injustice, inequality and protests for a cause they believe in. He also lets them know the basic understanding of the peaceful BLM movement and how some people are taking advantage of the protests. He lets them know that they are a part of a historical shift where even people who are not Black have changed their perspective. People all over the world who opposed the Black Lives Matters movement are now seeing the humanity of BLM, and for the very first time, collectively join in to fight for change towards equality for all.
Download or read book Represent and Destroy written by Jodi Melamed and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stinging critique of the link between global capitalism and U.S. multiculturalisms
Download or read book Three Way Fight written by Xtn Alexander and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What’s the relationship between combating the far right and working for systemic change? What does it mean when fascists intensify racial oppression and patriarchy but also call for the downfall of economic elites or even take up arms against the state? Three way fight politics confront these urgent questions squarely, arguing that the far right grows out of an oppressive capitalist order but is also in conflict with it in real ways, and that radicals need to combat both. The three way fight approach says we need sharper analysis of far-right movements so we can fight them more effectively, and we also need to track ongoing developments within the ruling class, including liberal or centrist efforts to co-opt antifascism as a tool of state repression and system legitimation. This book offers an introduction to three way fight politics, with more than thirty essays, position statements, and interviews from the Three Way Fight website and elsewhere, spanning from the antifascist struggles of the 1980s and 1990s to the political upheavals of the twenty-first century. Over fifteen authors explore a range of topics, such as fascist politics’ relationship with patriarchy and settler colonialism, Tom Metzger’s “Third Position” (anticapitalist) fascism, conflict within the business community over the 2016 presidential election, and the Trump administration’s shifting relationship with the organized far right. Many of the writings address issues of political strategy, such as tensions between radicals and liberals within the reproductive rights movement and the George Floyd rebellion, video gaming as an arena of political struggle, and the importance (and challenges) of approaching antifascist organizing in ways that are militant, community based, and nonsectarian.
Download or read book BLM written by Mike Gonzalez and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The George Floyd riots that have precipitated great changes throughout American society were not spontaneous events. Americans did not suddenly rise up in righteous anger, take to the streets, and demand not just that police departments be defunded but that all the structures, institutions, and systems of the United States—all supposedly racist—be overhauled. The 12,000 or so demonstrations and 633 related riots that followed Floyd’s death took organizational muscle. The movement’s grip on institutions from the classroom to the ballpark required ideological commitment. That muscle and commitment were provided by the various Black Lives Matter organizations. This book examines who the BLM leaders are, delving into their backgrounds and exposing their agendas—something the media has so far refused to do. These people are shown to be avowed Marxists who say they want to dismantle our way of life. Along with their fellow activists, they make savvy use of social media to spread their message and organize marches, sit-ins, statue tumblings, and riots. In 2020 they seized upon the video showing George Floyd’s suffering as a pretext to unleash a nationwide insurgency. Certainly, no person of good will could object to the proposition that “black lives matter” as much as any other human life. But Americans need to understand how their laudable moral concern is being exploited for purposes that a great many of them would not approve.
Download or read book Radiation and Revolution written by Sabu Kohso and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-11 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Radiation and Revolution political theorist and anticapitalist activist Sabu Kohso uses the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to illuminate the relationship between nuclear power, capitalism, and the nation-state. Combining an activist's commitment to changing the world with a theorist's determination to grasp the world in its complexity, Kohso outlines how the disaster is not just a pivotal event in postwar Japan; it represents the epitome of the capitalist-state mode of development that continues to devastate the planet's environment. Throughout, he captures the lived experiences of the disaster's victims, shows how the Japanese government's insistence on nuclear power embodies the constitution of its regime under the influence of US global strategy, and considers the future of a radioactive planet driven by nuclearized capitalism. As Kohso demonstrates, nuclear power is not a mere source of energy—it has become the organizing principle of the global order and the most effective way to simultaneously accumulate profit and govern the populace. For those who aspire to a world free from domination by capitalist nation-states, Kohso argues, the abolition of nuclear energy and weaponry is imperative.
Download or read book Afropessimism written by Frank B. Wilderson III and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wilderson’s thinking teaches us to believe in the miraculous even as we decry the brutalities out of which miracles emerge”—Fred Moten Praised as “a trenchant, funny, and unsparing work of memoir and philosophy” (Aaron Robertson,?Literary Hub), Frank B. Wilderson’s Afropessimism arrived at a moment when protests against police brutality once again swept the nation. Presenting an argument we can no longer ignore, Wilderson insists that we must view Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Radical in conception, remarkably poignant, and with soaring flights of memoir, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit.“Wilderson’s ambitious book offers its readers two great gifts. First, it strives mightily to make its pessimistic vision plausible. . . . Second, the book depicts a remarkable life, lived with daring and sincerity.”—Paul C. Taylor, Washington Post
Download or read book America on Fire The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s written by Elizabeth Hinton and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Not since Angela Davis’s 2003 book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, has a scholar so persuasively challenged our conventional understanding of the criminal legal system.” —Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr., Washington Post From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and “riots” that shatters our understanding of the post–civil rights era. What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors—and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past. Even in the aftermath of Donald Trump, many Americans consider the decades since the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s as a story of progress toward greater inclusiveness and equality. Hinton’s sweeping narrative uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. As she suggests, if rebellion and the conditions that precipitated it never disappeared, the optimistic story of a post–Jim Crow United States no longer holds. Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson launched the “War on Crime,” sending militarized police forces into impoverished Black neighborhoods. Facing increasing surveillance and brutality, residents threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Hinton draws on exclusive sources to uncover a previously hidden geography of violence in smaller American cities, from York, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, to Stockton, California. The central lesson from these eruptions—that police violence invariably leads to community violence—continues to escape policymakers, who respond by further criminalizing entire groups instead of addressing underlying socioeconomic causes. The results are the hugely expanded policing and prison regimes that shape the lives of so many Americans today. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s enduring strife, America on Fire is also a warning: rebellions will surely continue unless police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality.
Download or read book Twitter and Tear Gas written by Zeynep Tufekci and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements’ greatest strengths and frequent challenges To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti–Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. An incisive observer, writer, and participant in today’s social movements, Zeynep Tufekci explains in this accessible and compelling book the nuanced trajectories of modern protests—how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change. Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture—and offer essential insights into the future of governance.
Download or read book What Is an Event written by Robin Wagner-Pacifici and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a world of breaking news, where at almost any moment our everyday routine can be interrupted by a faraway event. Events are central to the way that individuals and societies experience life. Even life’s inevitable moments—birth, death, love, and war—are almost always a surprise. Inspired by the cataclysmic events of September 11, Robin Wagner-Pacifici presents here a tour de force, an analysis of how events erupt and take off from the ground of ongoing, everyday life, and how they then move across time and landscape. What Is an Event? ranges across several disciplines, systematically analyzing the ways that events emerge, take shape, gain momentum, flow, and even get bogged down. As an exploration of how events are constructed out of ruptures, it provides a mechanism for understanding eventful forms and flows, from the micro-level of individual life events to the macro-level of historical revolutions, contemporary terrorist attacks, and financial crises. Wagner-Pacifici takes a close look at a number of cases, both real and imagined, through the reports, personal narratives, paintings, iconic images, political posters, sculptures, and novels they generate and through which they live on. What is ultimately at stake for individuals and societies in events, Wagner-Pacifici argues, are identities, loyalties, social relationships, and our very experiences of time and space. What Is an Event? provides a way for us all—as social and political beings living through events, and as analysts reflecting upon them—to better understand what is at stake in the formations and flows of the events that mark and shape our lives.
Download or read book The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium written by Martin Gurri and published by Stripe Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.
Download or read book Marking Time written by Nicole R. Fleetwood and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A powerful document of the inner lives and creative visions of men and women rendered invisible by America’s prison system. More than two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and communities; it also exposes them to shocking levels of deprivation and abuse and subjects them to the arbitrary cruelties of the criminal justice system. Yet, as Nicole Fleetwood reveals, America’s prisons are filled with art. Despite the isolation and degradation they experience, the incarcerated are driven to assert their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanizes them. Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author’s own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions—including solitary confinement—these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison walls. Their bold works, many of which are being published for the first time in this volume, have opened new possibilities in American art. As the movement to transform the country’s criminal justice system grows, art provides the imprisoned with a political voice. Their works testify to the economic and racial injustices that underpin American punishment and offer a new vision of freedom for the twenty-first century."
Download or read book Black against Empire written by Joshua Bloom and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against black communities. In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the United States, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in sixty-eight U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world. Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence. Bold, engrossing, and richly detailed, this book cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement and its disastrous unraveling. Informed by twelve years of meticulous archival research, as well as familiarity with most of the former Party leadership and many rank-and-file members, this book is the definitive history of one of the greatest challenges ever posed to American state power.
Download or read book In Defense of Looting written by Vicky Osterweil and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy. Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. Even self-identified radicals distance themselves from looters, fearing that violent tactics reflect badly on the broader movement. But Vicky Osterweil argues that stealing goods and destroying property are direct, pragmatic strategies of wealth redistribution and improving life for the working class -- not to mention the brazen messages these methods send to the police and the state. All our beliefs about the innate righteousness of property and ownership, Osterweil explains, are built on the history of anti-Black, anti-Indigenous oppression. From slave revolts to labor strikes to the modern-day movements for climate change, Black lives, and police abolition, Osterweil makes a convincing case for rioting and looting as weapons that bludgeon the status quo while uplifting the poor and marginalized. In Defense of Looting is a history of violent protest sparking social change, a compelling reframing of revolutionary activism, and a practical vision for a dramatically restructured society.
Download or read book The Long Hot Summer of 1967 written by M. McLaughlin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seemed at times during the 1960s that America was caught in an unending cycle of violence and disorder. Successive summers from 1964-1968 brought waves of urban unrest, street fighting, looting, and arson to black communities in cities from Florida to Wisconsin, Maryland to California. In some infamous cases like Watts (1965), Newark (1967), and Detroit (1967), the turmoil lasted for days on end and left devastation in its wake: entire city blocks were reduced to burnt-out ruins and scores of people were killed or injured mainly by police officers and National Guardsmen as they battled to regain control. This book takes the pivotal year of 1967 as its focus and sets it in the context of the long, hot summers to provide new insights into the meaning of the riots and their legacy. It offers important new findings based on extensive original archival research, including never-before-seen, formerly embargoed and classified government documents and newly released official audio recordings.
