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The #BlackCommunistReadingList - AAIHS
Here is a list of recommended books on African Americans and Communism. As a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I read many of these books to gain an intellectual understanding of why black Americans and other people African descent saw Communism as a political ideology through which to achieve black liberation. Harry Haywood’s
News for Black America - NewsOne
Breaking news for and about Black America: politics, original stories, diverse opinions, current events and their impact on Black lives.
A Black Feminist Apocalypse/Dystopian Survival Resource Compilation
A Black Feminist Apocalypse/Dystopian Survival Resource Compilation With the awful realization that we are indeed in a fight for our very survival coming over me for the past few years, I’ve asked myself this question: what can I do right now, today? With my resources limited or tapped out, I’ve...
Waging a good war: a military history of the civil rights movement, 1954-1968
"A new history of the Civil Rights Movement with an emphasis on its nonviolent use of military tactics and strategy"--
The Root – Black News, Opinions, Politics and Culture
Their Side Is Organized; We Need to Be Organized, Too
Trump and his far-right acolytes wield their power to disinvest from public services, terrorize our neighborhoods with ICE agents, and ensure that opposition to genocide becomes a fireable, and deportable, offense. In the face of these grim and terrifying developments, it could scarcely be more urgent that we learn lessons from movements and organizing traditions that confronted repression, surveillance, and powerful opposition in the (recent and distant) past. We’ve put together a reading list of key books to help inform ongoing efforts to build and sustain durable organizations, and forge effective strategies, for both short term survival and long term social transformation. What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. “Anyone trying to rebuild an effective U.S. labor movement needs to read Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns. He lays out the fundamental principles that UE has tried to uphold for the last 85 years. For a union to be worthwhile to the working class, it needs to know which side it is on and it has to recognize that the fight itself is what allows workers to gain the knowledge and power they need.”—Carl Rosen From two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. A collection of essays from the Stop Cop City movement on the fight for police abolition and for a liveable planet for all, with gripping reporting from activists on the ground and rousing articles from renowned radical academics. In this remarkable collaborative work, leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie surface the often unrecognized genealogies of queer, anti-capitalist, internationalist, grassroots, and women-of-color-led feminist movements, struggles, and organizations that have helped to define abolition and feminism in the twenty-first century. This guide, based on the collective experience of organizers and workers in non-unionized workplaces, is a critical tool to help you and your coworkers organize for justice at work. Drawing from over twenty years of activism on local and national levels, this striking book offers an organizer’s perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition. At a political moment when Liberatory Harm Reduction and mutual aid are more important than ever, this book serves as an inspiration and a catalyst for radical transformation of our world. Even the River Starts Small is a collection from the movement to stop construction of the Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, featuring anonymous writing, art, and photos spanning nearly a decade, and including reflections on many of the diverse experiences that made up this grassroots resistance. “Tracing revolutionary uprisings from 1989 to 2019, this book is a map of resistance and resilience in the face of tremendous odds. The case studies, as well as the introductory essay, lead us through situations where the victory of capitalism over humanity was anything but assured. And yet the book is not a wistful history about what could have been. Rather, it is a strategic assessment of near-victories to prepare us for the fire next time.” —Tithi Bhattacharya As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But together, our debts can make us powerful. What does the politics of solidarity look like in practice, and how can left-wing organizations grow—in numbers and power—while remaining accountable to the broader movements of which they are a part? An oral history and critical genealogy of “accountability,” the complex abolitionist concept that pushes us to ask: just what do we mean by “community?” Environmentalism from Below takes readers inside the popular struggles for environmental liberation in the Global South. These communities—among the most vulnerable to but also least responsible for the climate crisis—have long been at the forefront of the fight to protect imperiled worlds. This volume—the Socialist Register’s first-ever reader—grapples with the question of whether political organization is a necessary part of the struggle by the working-class to overthrow capitalism. In pieces published over the course of publication’s entire history contributors, from Ralph Miliband to Jean-Paul Satre, examine various aspects of this theme. The Socialist Challenge Today presents an essential historical, theoretical, and critical perspective for understanding the potential as well as the limits of three important recent phenomena: the Sanders electoral insurgency in the United States; the Syriza experience in Greece; and Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. This book surveys revolutionary socialist ideas and engages a gallery of contentious political thinkers, offering an indispensable assessment of the place of revolutionary collectives in this radical tradition. A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-read for the next generation of organizers seeking to learn from the successes, failures, and contradictions of the past. In an era of stark racial injustice, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to revolution, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at age nineteen. In My People Are Rising, he traces the course of his own radicalization, and that of a generation. SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tracks the extraordinary development of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as they became two of the landmark political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely heralded as one the most important books on the Black liberation movement. A landmark account of a key radical feminist organization, offering lessons for today’s women’s liberation movement. Boston Female Liberation member Nancy Rosenstock expertly weaves together the reflections of her fellow-activists, describing how they became feminists, recounting the breadth of their organizing work, and linking their achievements and experience to contemporary struggles against sexism. In this rousing and insightful participant's account, Hal Draper recounts the now iconic events of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. From the impromptu speak out atop a police car after the administration decided to clamp down on students “distributing communist literature,” to the inspiring Student Strike that shut down the entire campus, Draper's narrative captures the energy and dynamism of each twist and turn in the struggle, and offers invaluable analysis along the way. From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. During the first two decades of the twentieth century the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism developed into a major influence within the trade union movement. Committed to destroying capitalism through direct industrial action and revolutionary trade union struggle, the movement raised fundamental questions for activists across the world. In this thorough, concise, and accessible introduction to Lenin’s theory and practice of revolutionary politics, Paul Le Blanc gives a vibrant sense of the historical context of the socialist movement (in Russia and abroad) from which Lenin’s ideas about revolutionary organization spring. What emerges from Le Blanc’s partisan yet measured account is an image of a collaborative, ever adaptive, and dynamically engaged network of revolutionary activists who formed the core of the Bolshevik party.
Black against Empire by Joshua Bloom | East Bay Booksellers
This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles to fight police brutality against black communities.
Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People
Kekla Magoon relays an essential account of the Black Panthers—as militant revolutionaries and human rights advocates.
United Black Library
Discover, read, and save Black History and African Diaspora content—ebooks, lectures, documentaries, and films. Access a vast catalog, subscribe or purchase content, and join a community of learners.
The revolution will not be funded: beyond the non-profit industrial complex
Introduction : the revolution will not be funded / Andrea Smith -- The political logic of the non-profit industrial complex / Dylan Rodríguez -- In the shadow of the shadow state / Ruth Wilson Gilmore -- From black awakening in capitalist America / Robert L. Allen -- Democratizing American philanthropy / Christine E. Ahn -- The filth on philanthropy : progressive philanthropy's agenda to misdirect social justice movements / Tiffany Lethabo King and Ewuare Osayande -- Between radical theory and community praxis : reflections on organizing and the non-profit industrial complex / Amara H. Pérez -- Native organizing before the non-profit industrial complex / Madonna Thunder Hawk -- Fundraising is not a dirty word : community-based economic strategies for the long haul / Stephanie Guilloud and William Cordery -- "We were never meant to survive" : fighting violence against women and the fourth world war / Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo -- Social service or social change? / Paul Kivel -- Pursuing a radical anti-violence agenda inside/outside a non-profit structure / Alisa Bierria -- The NGOization of the Palestine liberation movement : interviews with Hatem Bazian, Noura Erekat, Atef Said, and Zeina Zaatari / Andrea Smith -- Radical social change : searching for a new foundation / Adjoa Florência Jones de Almeida -- Are the cops in our heads and hearts? / Paula X. Rojas -- Non-profits and the autonomous grassroots / Eric Tang -- On our own terms : ten years of radical community building with Sista II Sista / Nicole Burrowes ... [et al.]
Living for the City
In this nuanced and groundbreaking history, Donna Murch argues that the Black Panther Party (BPP) started with a study group. Drawing on oral history and unt...
About — NBUF Website
To struggle for self-determination, liberation and power for Black people in the United States.
The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland
"Tearing down myths and distortions on virtually every page, The Revolution Has Come is the first substantive account of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland chapter—the iconic gathering that birthed the party and held on to its very last breath. Robyn C. Spencer’s incisive attention to gender, state repression, black radical alliances, philosophical and ideological debates, and the organization’s long decline makes this one of the most original studies of the Panthers to appear in years." - Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
American Babylon
A gripping portrait of black power politics and the struggle for civil rights in postwar Oakland
National Black Food & Justice Alliance
The National Black Food and Justice Alliance represents hundreds of Black urban and rural farmers, organizers, and land stewards based nationwide working together towards an intergenerational, urban/rural movement to map, assess, train and deepen the organizing, institution building and advocacy work protecting Black land and work towards food sovereignty.
More notes on Organizing, Mutual Aid, and Activism on decentralized social networks
Part 3 of a series. See If not now, when? Mutual aid and organizing in the fediverses, the ATmosphere, and whatever comes next and Notes (and thoughts) on organizing in the fediverses and the ATmosphere for previous installments and a reading list. "Mutual aid. Organizing. Sharing, contextualizing, and making meaning
