The riot, the revolt, however ephemeral, urgently unmasks this reality by sabotaging the time and space of order, the temporalities and geographies of control, creating, (self)-generating, what can be called “a people”. The riot is an end in-itself; halting time, transgressing borders and limits, it tears away at the envelope of “normality”, thereby becoming a…
Category: law
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: “The Unknown History Of Black Uprisings”
“More than fifty years after the Kerner Commission, we have seen in the past eight years the return of Black rebellions in response to growing inequality that has been managed by the forces of racist and abusive policing. This is not history repeating itself; it is evidence that the problems that gave rise to earlier…
Rinaldo Walcott on Riots, Policing, and Traditions of Black Refusal
“The Black riot is a refusal of entrenched policing practices that has boiled over. The riot is an expression of revolt with a historical basis in slavery. In activist circles, riots have been renamed uprisings, thereby giving their actions a deeper meaning. And the difference isn’t merely semantic. Riots often garner the attention of state…
Johnisha Levi: “A Tale of Two Insurrections”
“The Capitol insurrection and the 1898 Wilmington coup share key similarities. They both divided our citizenry between those wanting to guarantee rights for a broader cross section of individuals versus those wanting to restrict them to a privileged few. Both events were also orchestrated from the top down in an attempt to place party above…
Andrew Lee: “The revolutionary potential of abolitionist demands”
“If abolition may not be fulfilled by the state, to abolish the police is not a task for the mayor but a task for us. It is necessarily us, the people in the street and the bystanders who may join us, encouraging each other to complete the abolition together. Just as the Occupy movement called…
Nathan J. Robinson: ‘Why Property Destruction Isn’t “Violence”’
‘More than simply being a definitional quibble about a particular term, defining violence carefully is about making sure “what happens to people” is placed at the center of our analysis. What happened to George Floyd is not the same as what happens to a looted Target, and while there are those who will want to…
“Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War”
‘Armed extremists are showing up to protests and urging a “boogaloo” — code for civil war — online.’
David Sirota: “Who Exactly Is Doing the Looting, and Who’s Being Looted?”
‘Working-class people pilfering convenience-store goods is deemed “looting.” By contrast, rich folk and corporations stealing billions of dollars during their class war is considered good and necessary “public policy” — aided and abetted by arsonist politicians in Washington lighting the crime scene on fire to try to cover everything up.’
“‘Modi is afraid’: women take lead in India’s citizenship protests”
“Strikingly, the loudest voices of dissent have largely been women. From activists and lawyers to students, housewives and grandmothers, both Hindu and Muslim, women across India have been at the forefront of the resistance to the new citizenship law, and a nationwide citizenship test, known as the NRC, which could result in millions of Muslims…
Alex Kostantopoulos: “The Law of the Zapatista: A Presentation about the Laws Passed by EZLN”
“In the autonomous municipalities of Zapatistas, laws that are passed from the Council of Governance are not enforced by police or a judicial system but through a way that treats offenders as members of the community. Justice is delivered by the authorities of the Zapatistas. They resolve issues among the members of the community and…