Black Flags and Windmills

Scott Crow

Description

When both levees and governments failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the anarchist-inspired Common Ground Collective was created to fill the void. With the motto of “Solidarity Not Charity,” they worked to create power from below—building autonomous projects, programs, and spaces of self-sufficiency like health clinics and neighborhood assemblies, while also supporting communities defending themselves from white militias and police brutality, illegal home demolitions, and evictions.

Black Flags and Windmills—equal parts memoir, history, and organizing philosophy—vividly intertwines Common Ground cofounder scott crow’s experiences and ideas with Katrina’s reality, illustrating how people can build local grassroots power for collective liberation. It is a story of resisting indifference, rebuilding hope amid collapse, and struggling against the grain to create better worlds.

The expanded second edition includes up-to-date interviews and discussions between crow and some of today’s most articulate and influential activists and organizers on topics ranging from grassroots disaster relief efforts (both economic and environmental); dealing with infiltration, interrogation, and surveillance from the State; and a new photo section that vividly portrays scott’s experiences as an anarchist, activist, and movement organizer in today’s world.

Sujets

• Self-organization
• Direct action
• Social justice
• Anarchism

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604869972
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Black Flags and Windmills
1st edition named one of The Progressive magazine’s "Five Favorite Books of 2011"
"Can anarchism actually work? Yes, as a matter of fact. There is no better example than that of the Common Ground Collective’s remarkable accomplishments within the most oppressed communities in and around post-Katrina New Orleans. scott crow’s lucid first-hand account is a story that simply must be told. This book should be read as widely as possible."
Ward Churchill, author of Acts of Rebellion
"The real story of the storm, the story of the majority, is of heroic acts of solidarity from the outset and the volunteers who came later. It’s about generosity, courage, and the prefiguration of a better society. This book is a key document in that real and remarkable story"
Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
"The story of the Common Ground Collective is that of one of the greatest triumphs of democratic self-organization in American history. Their spectacular success in the wake of the devastation of Katrina made clear for all the world to see that in even in the midst of catastrophe, command structures are not only unnecessary but actually stand in the way of getting things done."
David Graeber anthropologist, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years
"Anarchist and veteran organizer and an aficionado of civil disobedience, Mr. Crow comes across as more amiable than combative."
New York Times
"Honestly this book would make an exciting movie. It’s got everything suspense, action, drama, good guys, villains. A real page-turner! But more important is the message what ordinary people were able to achieve through working together without leaders telling people what to do. This is a book for every activist and anyone who wants to know more about how private efforts can work effectively."
Sharon Presley, professor, author, and coeditor of Exquisite Rebel: Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre
"Ultimately, Black Flags and Windmills is about envisioning a better world and trusting ourselves to believe that our dreams actually contain the paths to make it happen, not as voters, not as consumers, but as participants in a spontaneous, horizontal democracy that looks different everywhere but meets the needs of the people where they are."
The Indypendent
"This revised and expanded edition weaves scott crow’s frontline experiences with a much-needed discussion of movement building. For decades he has approached his political organizing with humility, resilience, and honesty, and he continues to do so in Black Flags & Windmills. In many ways this work is about dealing with trauma socially, politically, personally and responding with courage."
Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
"There is a sense of no return that pervades this deep and intense work. In passionate and effusive prose, crow describes the nature of Hurricane Katrina’s impact as well as organizing efforts to support communities of color and poor people. But crow lends an equal amount of time to exploring the logistical aspects of organizing, and how they relate to anarchism. Radical in its self-critique and anarchist praxis, Black Flags and Windmills has become a classic in the genre of non-fiction, and an important tool for folks today working in the context of rising catastrophe."
EarthFirst! Journal
"It is a brilliant, detailed and humble book written with total frankness and at the same time a revolutionary poet’s passion. It makes the reader feel that we too, with our emergency heart as our guide, can do anything, we only need to begin."
Marina Sitrin, author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autuonomy in Argentina
"One of my favorite books and a classic of contemporary anarchism. Black Flags and Windmills is a superb piece of work by any standards. The revised edition gives us even more insight into how mutual aid communities are being formed and sustained. It deserves the widest possible readership."
Andrej Gruba i , professor in the Anthropology and Social Change Program at California Institute of Integral Studies, and author of Don’t Mourn, Balkanize: Essays after Yugoslavia
"The story scott crow tells is one of desperation and of hope. It shows us something of what people are capable of, even in the worst of circumstances. And it reminds us that we can count on each other, better than we can rely on the institutions of power."
Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America
"Common Ground reflected the anarchist philosophies both thought, action and proof that we don’t need the state to get things done."
Death and Taxes Magazine
"Black Flags and Windmills combines hands-on information about what it really takes to change this world, one big mess at a time, and a seeker’s vision of a better world."
Ragblog
"As someone who’s followed the Arab Spring and Occupy movements very closely, I find Crow’s account of organizing the Common Ground Collective extremely relevant to the problems the movement faces today."
Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society
"Black Flags and Windmills is an incredible book about a group of dedicated men and women who, faced with challenges from all sides of the United States government, built an oasis in a desert."
Razorcake
"A frenetic account of how grassroots power, block-to-block outreach and radically visionary approaches to sustainability can rattle the ruling class and transform people is positively searing."
Ernesto Aguilar, cofounder of People of Color Organize
"Crow’s testimony following in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina further indicts a flawed political and economic system that was bankrupt long before Hurricane Katrina. The reader will find within the pages a life built on principals that have propelled crow to fight injustice in a story well told!"
Robert Hillary King, former Black Panther, former U.S. political prisoner, and author of From the Bottom of the Heap
"Black Flags is less a cohesive story (or even set of stories) than a record of part of a conversation. crow took the format papers bound together with glue and a cover and made it his own."
The Anvil
"This book is an example that should be studied by activists of all stripes, to learn the lessons of wisdom inside. This is Anarchism-in-Action in a real world setting, and it is an example of mutual aid at its best."
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, former Black Panther and political prisoner, author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution
"Playful, irreverent, and deadly serious, Black Flags and Windmills is … a moving testimony of love, solidarity, betrayal, and the collective struggle for the freedom that so many of us yearn for."
David Naguib Pellow, author of Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice
"This is an excellent manual on community organizing. It’s a beautifully written raw story that does not try to downplay the difficulties, betrayals, and mistakes that are inevitable in authentic collective work."
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975
"… crow is a puppetmaster involved in direct action."
FBI (Joint Terrorism Task Force internal memo)
"Black Flags and Windmills introduced me to countless contemporary freethinkers and rule breakers whose very lives are emblematic of what is means to be liberated."
Diana Welch, coauthor of The Kids Are All Right

Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective Second Edition By scott crow

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License 2014
This edition © 2014 PM Press
Published by:
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Cover Graphics: John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Cover photos: Ann Harkness / www.annharkness.com
Inside photo credits: Liz Highleyman, Todd Sanchioni, Jackie Sumell, Jake Applebaum, David Ampersand Interior design by briandesign
ISBN: 978-1-60486-453-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956930
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan www.thomsonshore.com
This book is dedicated to everyone whose emergency hearts refuse to give up hope, who fight oppression and want to create futures where we are all free that we are only beginning to imagine.
Contents
Glossary
People and Organizations
FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION by John P. Clark
FOREWORD by Kathleen Cleaver
"Even before the thoughts occurred…"
INTRODUCTION Waking up from Oblivion
PROLOGUE It Takes a Spark to Start a Prairie Fire
Against Forgetting
Black Flags and Windmills
A Battle in Algiers
Barbed-Wire Hopes
Of Anarchists, Panthers, and Zapatistas
"Like concrete…"
Like Flowers in Concrete
With Thunder in Our Hearts
Raising Common Ground
POSTSCRIPT An Ending and a Beginning
"Dream the future…"
PHOTOGRAPHS
INTERVIEWS
Shifting Culture without Government by DJ Pangburn
Black Flags and Radi