“The explosion was always going to begin in Los Angeles. But now that the fire has started, it is beginning to expand. Protests have spread to dozens of cities across the country. [] What follows are some lessons from the battle of Los Angeles that could prove useful today, as the movement to stop the…
Category: revolt
CrimethInc.: “Anarchists in the Movement against Police and White Supremacy”
From the Los Angeles Riots to the George Floyd Uprising: A timeline tracing the trajectory of anarchist contributions to uprisings against the police from the Rodney King riots of 1992 to the uprising in Minneapolis in 2020. This story has never been told in full; we hope this cursory effort will help participants in tomorrow’s…
David Brooks: “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.”
“It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement.”
Robert Darnton Interviewed by Disha Karnad Jani: “The Revolutionary Temper”
“Darnton traces how the antecedents to revolution circulated among the Parisian public in the decades before the storming of the Bastille, through their everyday oppositions to the rising price of bread, the overreaches of the monarchy, and the policing of poor neighborhoods. Through their growing sense that the powerful in their society were not governing as they should,…
Thomas Meaney: “You Can’t Trust Elites. Just Ask a 500-Year-Old German Peasant.”
In “Summer of Fire and Blood,” Lyndal Roper tells the story of the serfs who fought for a better life and the elites who co-opted their movement.
“April 1964-April 2024: The origins of a symbol”
“Furthermore, the intent behind recounting the circumstances which surround its genesis is twofold: to debunk fanciful tales circulating about its origins and to reaffirm the concept of anarchism embodied by the circled A. From its inception, the aim was for the symbol to be owned by no one so it could belong to all. And…
Sahar Delijani on the Legacies of the Arab Spring
“The revolution in Tunisia was born on the ashes of Mohammad Bouazizi’s body. The revolution in Egypt on the broken face of the 28-year-old Khaleh Said beaten to death by security forces for posting a photo on social media. The revolts in Syria erupted when little boys were arrested and tortured by the police for…
Jean Vioulac: “Revolution and Destruction: The Fascist Obstacle”
“The revolution is not an ideal or a utopia; it is the fundamental movement of our time. For two centuries, private life and society, art and religion, technology and science, everything has been revolutionised.”
Tyler McBrien: The Struggle Continues: On Vincent Bevins’s “If We Burn”
“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…
Carlo Greppi: “Happy Birthday, Toussaint Louverture”
The French Revolution, “confronted with the colonial question,” had to “confront itself,” and “the principles from which it had sprung,” Aimé Césaire writes. It hesitated, wavered, and ended up engulfing itself. But it also learned, thanks to the determination of Toussaint Louverture and his slave army, that freedom is not a force you can stop…