Spirals of Revolt: Study and Struggle to Abolish the Present
Spirals of Revolt: Study and Struggle to Abolish the Present
Geo Maher
We study revolutionary change not simply to understand it. We study revolution to make it.
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide prairie fire sparked by the rebellion in Minneapolis, we are in a period of upheaval and and the potential for revolutionary change is quickly growing. As organizers and activists press for further change, pushing back on white supremacy and toward the abolition of police and prisons alike, the powers that be are scrambling to contain the revolt and defang its more radical demands. With revolutionary change once again on the table, the time is ripe to sharpen the weapons of theory for the struggles looming on the horizon.
It was in this moment that Geo Maher put forth a call to investigate what a revolution is and how to make it. In a growing online (as everything was those days) reading group people gathered together to take up that call and think through the past, the present, and help us imagine the future we want. It was these impassioned discussions that birthed Spirals of Revolt.
Instead of beginning with fixed ideas of revolution, Spirals of Revolt understands history as a million acts of revolt spiraling, sometimes chaotically, toward liberation. Guided by the tension of the spiral, the book traces a double-helix of readings of revolutionary history (Eurocentric, canonical) and counter-histories (subaltern, decolonial) rooted in Black, Brown, and Indigenous traditions of resistance to colonialism and capitalism.
Spirals of Revolt asks you to join this discussion into how revolutionary history can guide revolutionary aspirations in the present. On your own or with comrades, this is a handbook for learning while doing and doing while learning, a study guide for letting a thousand study groups—and acts of revolt—bloom.
PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN: 9781942173458
Format: Paperback
Size: 5 x 8 in
Page count: 208
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.