“Bevins chronicles the protest movements that made the 2010s the most politically active in history, considering why such unprecedented mass protests so often had the opposite effect from what the protesters intended. Still, rather than focusing solely on these losses, he tracks the small wins, as well as the lessons learned and edifying counterfactuals disseminated…
Category: power
Michael A. Allen & Julie VanDusky-Allen: “The ‘Barbie’ and ‘Star Wars’ universes”
Both “Barbie” and “Andor” are useful for those who want to understand why revolutions happen and what it takes for them to happen. Their fundamental point: Before the start of any revolution, the oppressed have to first recognize their oppression.
Julius Gavroche: “In praise of riots”
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…
Kristin Ross interviewed: The commune as a form of life
“For me, Les Soulèvements de la Terre are a contemporary example of a Commune form because they have managed to create a common front, and they have created it from very different groups and people. It’s a very specific form. It’s not a political party, it’s not a class- or ethnicity-based organisation, and yet it’s…
CrimethInc.: “Learning from the Flames”
“The succession of high-intensity movements in France has showed that the conditions that could trigger a revolutionary movement are present. At the same time, it has also revealed the factors that are delaying the emergence of such a movement. Generally speaking, when violent repression extinguishes a revolt, the consequent trauma stifles the rebellious desires of…
Mansa Musa interviewed: “George Jackson’s unfinished revolution”
“52 years since his death at the hands of California prison authorities, George Jackson’s legacy has left an indelible imprint on the ongoing struggles for liberation from capitalist exploitation and the prison state.”
Silvia Federici: “The revolution is now”
“Enough with this idea of the revolution which has become in the future, so one day the children of my children will live better. No. The revolution is now. We have one life. Every day is precious. We cannot think of the revolution in the future. If we struggle, it is because the life that…
pari-luttes.info: “Let us be ungovernable”
‘An uprising against the dominance of economics over life is underway. The conflict spreads and draws ever larger segments of the population into an antagonistic, irreversible opposition. Fronts are opening up everywhere, outside of the places and times provided for this purpose. The assemblies of strikers make their law; the “conscious” and organized segments of…
Shelton Stromquist: “The Paris Commune Was a Unique Experiment in Running a City for Its People”
“Before the Commune’s demise, the people of Paris had set about reconstructing authority and governance in the city along unprecedentedly revolutionary lines, grounded in the popular euphoria surrounding the central government’s retreat from Paris on March 18, 1871. Despite near-constant threats to the Commune’s existence from the rival government occupying Versailles, the audacious common folk…
Giorgio Agamben: “On Anarchy Today”
“Anarchy, therefore, is first and foremost the radical disavowal not so much of the state or simply of administration but rather of power’s claim to make the state and administration coincide in the government of men. It is against this claim that the anarchist fights, in the name ultimately of the ungovernable, which is the…