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 George 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 discussioninto 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.