Rise Up or Die!: The Struggle Against the Genocide of Black People in Brazil
Rise Up or Die!: The Struggle Against the Genocide of Black People in Brazil
Andréia Beatriz Silva dos Santos & Hamilton Borges dos Santos
Edited and Translated by João H. Costa Vargas
Black Liberation / Latin America / Abolition
Call it “bad manners,” but the militants of Rise Up or Die!—Brazil's radical Black liberation movement—refuse to abide by the rules of a society that is killing Black people.
Confronting centuries of hyper-exploitation and dehumanization of Black people in Brazil, Rise Up or Die! invented a new political vocabulary for Black self-determination, introduced sexual health and food justice initiatives, attracted militants and activists from the most marginalized spaces of one of the largest Black nations in the world, and founded an autonomous Pan-Africanist school as part of their broader struggle for collective liberation.
As the activists of Rise Up or Die! say, “Creative hatred is what makes you build new things,” and indeed they have relentlessly pursued invention as the necessary alternative to the nation’s genocidal model of racial democracy. Known in Brazil as Reaja ou Será Morto/Reaja ou Será Morta, this is the story of their organization, in their own words, as they resist a culture that simply hates Black people.
Product Details
ISBN: 9781945335280
Published: August 26, 2025
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9 in
Page count: 240
Other Formats
ISBN: 9781945335686
Format: EPUB
Call it “bad manners,” but the militants of Rise Up or Die!—Brazil's radical Black liberation movement—refuse to abide by the rules of a society that is killing Black people.
Confronting centuries of hyper-exploitation and dehumanization of Black people in Brazil, Rise Up or Die! invented a new political vocabulary for Black self-determination, introduced sexual health and food justice initiatives, attracted militants and activists from the most marginalized spaces of one of the largest Black nations in the world, and founded an autonomous Pan-Africanist school as part of their broader struggle for collective liberation.
As the activists of Rise Up or Die! say, “Creative hatred is what makes you build new things,” and indeed they have relentlessly pursued invention as the necessary alternative to the nation’s genocidal model of racial democracy. Known in Brazil as Reaja ou Será Morto/Reaja ou Será Morta, this is the story of their organization, in their own words, as they resist a culture that simply hates Black people.
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“Rise Up or Die! is a fundamental work for understanding the multiple layers of the ongoing Black genocide in Brazil. But the book goes beyond denunciation — it offers a political project of reinvention, guided by the power of ancestry and by the refusal to accept death as destiny. Through an unflinching analysis of structures of power, while simultaneously sowing the seeds of a quilombist future, Andreia and Hamilton present us with a disturbing mirror for the global debate on the fight against racism. This book must be read and studied with the urgency that our time demands.” —Djamila Ribeiro, philosopher and professor at MIT
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Andréia Beatriz Silva dos Santos is a cofounder and main organizers of Reja ou Será Morto/Reaja ou Será Morta (Rise Up or Die!). She is trained as a medical doctor.
Hamilton Borges dos Santos is a cofounder and main organizers of Reja ou Será Morto/Reaja ou Será Morta (Rise Up or Die!); Hamilton is a poet, writer, amateur gardener.
João H. Costa Vargas is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside and the author of The Denial of Antiblackness: Multiracial Redemption and Black Suffering.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface: Joy James
Introduction: João Costa Vargas
1. Beginnings
How Andréia and Hamilton’s personal and community experiences prepared them for the formation of Rise Up in 2005, from their childhood to the consolidation of their political perspective.2. Phases
The distinct phases of Rise Up, including its expansions, retractions. A description of the ways in which Rise Up went from a campaign against the genocide of Black people to a political organization.3. Fundamentals
The key concepts informing the development of Rise Up, as well as the analytical perspectives that emerged out of Rise Up’s trajectory of struggle.4. Futurity
Rooted in yet modifying Abdias do Nascimento and Beatriz Nascimento’s concepts of Quilombismo, this final chapter focuses on Rise Up’s perspective on a desired future that is autonomous and Black affirming.Afterword: Dylan Rodríguez
Abolition Journal Working Group
Abolition / Black Liberation
The inaugural issue of the movement-focused and future-forward Abolition Journal quarterly after it was relaunched by the Philadelphia-based Abolition School.
This pilot issue of the revived Abolition Journal is produced by the Philadelphia-based W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction. It brings together two dozen urgent and timely interventions in political debates around abolition and aims to show how this abstract idea manifests itself in our daily lives.
These interventions, authored by a diverse cast of contributors, including academics and attorneys, so-called felons and physicians, artists and educators, and parents, playwrights and poets, explore the everyday experiences that come with trying to live out an abolitionist politics. In the words of the editors, these experiences include “the daily victories and errands, reflections and runarounds, gestures and drama, habits and heartbreaks, setbacks and surrenders, excuses and evasions, breakdowns and breakthroughs.”
The issue curates a variety of content, including political essays, short stories, poetry, interviews, and speeches, each resonating and reflecting in their own unique way on the central theme “Everyday Sh!t.” They offer thoughts and reflections on structure, practice, care, and direction to deepen existing movement knowledge and invite new audiences to see themselves mirrored within this work.
Without exception, these are stories of sincere experience mixed with radical poetic visions culled from the issue contributors’ plurality of pasts, presents, and prefigurative futures. Grounded in Philadelphia, yet looking out onto the whole wide world, Abolition Journal aims to reflect the lived complexity that can be messy and self-defeating, but equally authentic and inspiring.