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An exploration of how emergent strategies can help us meet this moment, survive what is to come, and shape safer and more just futures. Practicing New Worlds explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive. Drawing on decades of experience as an abolitionist organizer, policy advocate, and litigator in movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice and the principles articulated by adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Ritchie invites us to think beyond traditional legislative and policy change to create more possibilities for survival and resistance in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism—and the cataclysms to come. Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the-ground organizers resisting state violence, building networks to support people in need of abortion care, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being.
An exploration of how emergent strategies can help us meet this moment, survive what is to come, and shape safer and more just futures. Practicing New Worlds explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive. Drawing on decades of experience as an abolitionist organizer, policy advocate, and litigator in movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice and the principles articulated by adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Ritchie invites us to think beyond traditional legislative and policy change to create more possibilities for survival and resistance in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism--and the cataclysms to come. Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the ground organizers resisting state violence, building networks to support people in need of abortion care, empowering youth in the sex trades, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being.
Featuring voices from the contemporary witchcraft community, A Confluence of Witches is an invitation to explore the authentic intersections of magic, spirituality, personal development, and social justice. A Confluence of Witches aims to highlight how witchcraft has always been a diverse, constantly evolving, culturally specific practice with many lineages and rich traditions. It features essays, spells, and reflections from witches, traditional healers, herbalists, and artists on themes of magical activism, animism, and merging ancient practices with modern technologies, among other mystical subjects. The diverse representation of contributors will honor and celebrate the multicultural and multivalent ways that the witch operates within our society. With an increased interest in and practice of witchcraft comes a greater need for authentic sources of wisdom that are culturally relevant and sensitive to the many lineages and traditions of witchcraft, healing work, and magic. A Confluence of Witches provides insights and perspectives from a diverse range of people who in one form or another identify as a "witch." The anthology's contributors are diverse, representing the African diaspora, Indigenous, Latine, and Romani traditions, as well as voices from the LGBTQ witch community--each with their own sacred blend of spirituality to share. These voices come together to illuminate the multitude of ways one can practice. Contributors to this anthology include: adrienne maree brown, Aja Daashuur, Alejandra Luisa León, Amanda Yates Garcia, Angela Mary Magick, Ariella Daly, Aurora Luna (aka)Baby Reckless, Damiana Calvario, Dori Midnight, Edgar Fabián Frías, Eliza Swann, Jessie Susannah Karnatz, Jezmina Von Thiele, Kiki Robinson, Kimberly Rodriguez, Liz Migliorelli, Madre Jaguar, Maria Minnis, Olivia Ephraim Pepper, Rachel Howe, Sanyu Estelle, Star Feliz
A Washington Post most anticipated fall book | One of Literary Hub's most anticipated books of 2024 A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia—and sought to transform their lives. How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine’s chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today. Alongside the Shrine’s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism. The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces—both ideological and physical—where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making—one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.
For thirty-five years, the New Orleans-based Black feminist collective Women With A Vision (WWAV) has fought for the liberation of their communities through reproductive justice, harm reduction, abolition feminism, racial justice, and sex workers' rights. In 2012, shortly after one of WWAV's biggest organizing victories, arsonists firebombed and destroyed its headquarters. Fire Dreams is an innovative collaboration between WWAV and Laura McTighe, who work in community to build a social movement ethnography of the organization’s post-arson rebirth. Rooting WWAV in the geography of the South and the living history of generations of Black feminist thinkers, McTighe and WWAV weave together stories from its founders’ pioneering work during the Black HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and its groundbreaking organizing to end criminalization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina---with other movements for liberation as accomplices. Together, the authors refuse the logics of racial capitalism and share WWAV’s own world-building knowledges, as well as their methods for living these Black feminist futures now. Fire Dreams is a vital toolkit for grassroots organizers, activist-scholars, and all those who dream to make the world otherwise.
A vital anthology exploring the intersections between caregiving and abolition Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, “What if abolition is something that grows?” As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. Contributors include: Beth Richie Harsha Walia EJ, 6 years old Dorothy Roberts Ruth Wilson Gilmore Dylan Rodríguez Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn Shira Hassan Victoria Law Mariame Kaba The PDX Childcare Collective adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown and more
In recent years, many formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews have documented leaving their communities in published stories, films, and memoirs. This movement is often identified as "off the derech" (OTD), or off the path, with the idea that the "path" is paved by Jewish law, rituals, and practices found within their birth communities. This volume tells the powerful stories of people abandoning their religious communities and embarking on uncertain journeys toward new lives and identities within mainstream society. Off the Derech is divided into two parts: stories and analysis. The first includes original selections from contemporary American and global authors writing about their OTD experiences. The second features chapters by scholars representing such diverse fields as literature, history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, religion, and gender studies. The interdisciplinary lenses provide a range of methodologies by which readers can better understand this significant phenomenon within contemporary Jewish society.
The play element at the heart of our interactions with computers—and how it drives the best and the worst manifestations of the information age. Whether we interact with video games or spreadsheets or social media, playing with software shapes every facet of our lives. In Playing Software, Miguel Sicart delves into why we play with computers, how that play shapes culture and society, and the threat posed by malefactors using play to weaponize everything from conspiracy theories to extractive capitalism. Starting from the controversial idea that software is an essential agent in the information age, Sicart considers our culture in general—and our way of thinking about and creating digital technology in particular—as a consequence of interacting with software’s agency through play. As Sicart shows, playing shapes software agency. In turn, software shapes our agency as we adapt and relate to it through play. That play drives the creation of new cultural, social, and political forms. Sicart also reveals the role of make-believe in driving our playful engagement with the digital sphere. From there, he discusses the cybernetic theory of digital play and what we can learn from combining it with the idea that playfulness can mean pleasurable interaction with human and nonhuman agents inside the boundaries of a computational system. Finally, he critiques the instrumentalization of play as a tool wielded by platform capitalism.
This book brings abolitionist ideas into higher education contexts as a way to address the problem of sexual violence on college campuses. Despite college and university administrators spending millions of dollars each year to address sexual violence among students, rates of sexual violence have not budged. This cutting-edge book examines the histories of policies enacted to address sexual violence on campuses, drawing parallels between campus movements and mainstream feminist movements, describes contexts contributing to ongoing harm and violence among students with minoritized identities, and explores healing through community accountability processes. Thinking Like an Abolitionist to End Sexual Violence in Higher Education provides promising strategies for leaders in higher education to consider, including embracing mistakes, moving through fear, facilitating individual and collective healing, and employing transformative approaches to accountability. With suggestions for engaging in reflection and specific calls to action, practitioners, researchers, activists, educators, and policymakers alike will find this resource to be a transformative keystone text.
Eloquent and passionate, Caitlin Breedlove's cancer-focused memoir is rooted in her activism. It's often said that cancer does not discriminate. But some groups are more likely to suffer from cancer, and some are more likely to die from the disease. And we know classism and racism increase exposure to some carcinogens, including pesticides, corroded public water systems, and workplace toxins. Diagnosed with a deadly form of ovarian cancer in her 30s, Caitlin Breedlove draws on lessons offered by her political work, early motherhood, and her values in All In: Cancer, Near Death, New Life. With the lens—and heart—of an organizer, she chronicles harms caused by our profit-driven health care system; explores the rigors of single parenting while living with acute, chronic illness; and reveals her challenges with addiction. And like Audre Lorde (The Cancer Journals) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Brightsided) Breedlove calls out the insidious impact of "toxic positivity" on women who live with cancer. As she shares her individual journey, Breedlove connects it to broader struggles for health and social justice. The result is a intensely powerful narrative, centering experiences elided in other narratives.