Towards Collective Liberation

Chris Crass

Description

Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy is for activists engaging with dynamic questions of how to create and support effective movements for visionary systemic change. Chris Crass’s collection of essays and interviews presents us with powerful lessons for transformative organizing through offering a firsthand look at the challenges and the opportunities of anti-racist work in white communities, feminist work with men, and bringing women of color feminism into the heart of social movements. Drawing on two decades of personal activist experience and case studies of anti-racist social justice organizations, Crass insightfully explores ways of transforming divisions of race, class, and gender into catalysts for powerful vision, strategy, and movement building in the United States today.

Over the last two decades, activists in the United States have been experimenting with new politics and organizational approaches that stem from a fusion of radical political traditions and liberation struggles. Drawing inspiration from women of color feminism, justice struggles in communities of color, anarchist and socialist movements, the broad upsurges of the 1960s and 70s, and social movements in the Global South, a new generation of activists has sought to understand the past while building a movement for today’s world. Towards Collective Liberation contributes to this project by examining two primary dynamic trends in these efforts: the anarchist movement of the 1990s and 2000s, through which tens of thousands of activists were introduced to radical politics, direct action organizing, democratic decision making, and the profound challenges of taking on systems of oppression, privilege, and power in society at large and in the movement itself; and white anti-racist organizing efforts from the 2000s to the present as part of a larger strategy to build broad-based, effective multiracial movements in the United States.

Crass’s collection begins with an overview of the anarchist tradition as it relates to contemporary activism and an in-depth look at Food Not Bombs, one of the leading anarchist groups in the revitalized radical Left in the 1990s. The second and third sections of the book combine stories and lessons from Crass’s experiences of working as an anti-racist and feminist organizer, combining insights from the Civil Rights Movement, women of color feminism, and anarchism to address questions of leadership, organization building, and revolutionary strategy. In section four, Crass discusses how contemporary organizations have responded to the need for white activists to lead anti-racist efforts in white communities and how these efforts have contributed to multiracial alliances in building a broad-based movement for collective liberation. Offering rich case studies of successful organizing, and grounded, thoughtful key lessons for movement building, Toward Collective Liberation is a must-read for anyone working for a better world.

Sujets

• Anti-racism
• Civil rights movement
• Anarchism
• Food Not Bombs

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604868470
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Towards Collective Liberation
"In Towards Collective Liberation, Chris Crass has shared with us a valuable collection of thoughtful, honest, and humble reflections on what it means to build the world that we are waiting for. Chris achieves the difficult task of practice driven-theory encouraging and allowing all of us to be present in our work, to lead with our hearts, and to embody the change that we seek. It is through these critical and sometimes painfully honest reflections that we as organizers, activists, and social change makers are given the courage to do the same."
Alicia Garza, People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)
"For those of us committed to thinking across, though, and between organizing and theory, Towards Collective Liberation promises to map novel itineraries for an anti-racist project that demands that the theoretical be known through transformative organizing."
Andrej Gruba i , anarchist organizer and author of Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! Essays After Yugoslavia and Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History
"As a young Affrilachian woman engaged in the struggle, it is refreshing to hear analysis that is contemporary from another young person who is connecting the dots between practice and theory in the struggle to smash white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. In Towards Collective Liberation, Chris’s openness in talking about his own process and experiences is timely as we try to build movements that don’t reproduce the systems that we’re trying to overcome. I look forward to sharing it with my comrades in struggle."
Ash-Lee Henderson, organizer with United Campus Workers and former steering committee member of Appalachia Rising
"With compelling honesty Chris Crass shares his journey toward understanding his own privilege in order to become a more effective ally in struggles for justice. Towards Collective Liberation provides inspiration and practical guidance for working across differences of race, class, sexuality, and gender. It is a thoughtful and engaging handbook for our times."
Barbara Smith, author of The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom, founding member of the Combahee River Collective, and editor of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
"Chris Crass offers a precious gift that new generations of young activists especially are starving for: a vision and strategy for social change rooted in love and soul. Unitarian Universalist youth movements in particular have found solace and hope in Crass’s words and leadership. And for all those struggling with cultures of critique and competition woven through our movements, this book provides a healing approach to the pursuit of collective liberation. As a long-time organizer, Crass has learned to prioritize his own spirituality, and link it with his work against systemic injustice. The result: a compelling resource blending personal testimony, lessons from a diversity of organizations, and historical insights to ground and sustain our efforts."
Betty Jeanne Rueters-Ward, adjunct faculty, Starr King School for the Ministry and former national youth organizer, Unitarian Universalist Association
"This anthology of essays is of vital interest to those of us interested in bridging longstanding race, class, gender, and generational divides to build more effective social justice movements for the twenty-first century. In clear and compelling prose, socialist-anarchist Chris Crass offers a multilayered critique of the oppressive hierarchies of capitalism and the nation-state. Bringing both practical and theoretical insights from his own and others’ experiences of the past two decades of tireless progressive movement building, Crass is at his best when he discusses his work as a white man to understand and uproot intertwining systems of racism and sexism. Powerfully attentive to the lessons of U.S. history from its margins, Chris Crass is part of a small but significant tradition of white radicals who have joined with people of color to shake the foundations of white supremacy ranging from John Brown to Anne Braden to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. In the odyssey described in these essays, he has become a major voice in the rise of new currents of white anti-racism in the twenty-first century."
Catherine Fosl, author of Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South and director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research
"A deeply important, engaged, and learned defense of anarchism, class politics, and anti-racism. Grounded in study, organizing, and struggle, Towards Collective Liberation is a significant contribution to the recent history of the U.S. left."
David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness and The Production of Difference (with Elizabeth Esch)
"Chris Crass offers penetrating analysis and a keen understanding of the political and cultural dynamics shaping the United States. He is one of the new generation of anti-oppression/collective liberation advocates and organizers. What I like about his writings is they offer more than just his opinions, but a framework that is the result of both reflection upon inequities and his experiences putting his analysis into practice. We can all learn from reading this."
Rev. David Billings, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and United Methodist Church Elder
"Chris Crass’s writings are compost on the seeds of a better world struggling to grow, blossom and bear fruit. They are also gasoline on the flames of a crumbling, ugly, racist empire. He takes on the hard obstacles to movement and alliance building and agree or not pushes us all to take responsibility and be part of the solution. His book provides new tools and sharpens a few old ones that everyone who wants to make a better world and community needs in their toolbox."
David Solnit, editor of Globalize Liberation and co-author of Army of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruiting, End War and Build a Better World (with Aimee Allison)
"In his writing and organizing, Chris Crass has been at the forefront of building the grassroots, multiracial, feminist movements for justice we need. Towards Collective Liberation takes on questions of leadership, building democratic organizations, and movement strategy on a very personal level that invites us all to experiment and practice the way we live our values while struggling for systemic change. Chris Crass is writer/activist who keeps his eye on the prize: to work for collective liberation, remembering that mine is interdependent with yours. To that end, the book draws crucial lessons from applying women of color feminism to anti-racist organizing in white communities, and feminist work with men lessons that need to be studied and applied widely."
Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez, founder of the Institute for Multiracial Justice and author of De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century
"In his activism and writings, Chris Crass has been able to articulate and practice a transformative model for social change. Guided by a vision of collective liberation that centers the experience and leadership of women of color, Chris has done groundbreaking work to realize the revolutionary potential of grassroots multiracial alliances. His essays and interviews over the past two decades provide tremendously valuable and concrete lessons for all those deepening social, political, economic, and spiritual change."
Harsha Walia, co-founder of No One Is Illegal and Radical Desis, and author of Undoing Border Imperialism
"In Towards Collective Liberation Chris Crass makes a subtle, but very important contribution to the movement for social justice that is critical for unity building in the ‘Occupy’ era. In Towards Collective Liberation, Chris shares his insight as a strategic bridge over the past twenty years between Anarchists, Marxists, Revolutionary Nationalists, and radical Feminist and Queer organizers and organic intellectuals. I firmly believe these insights will help those currently seeking to bridge ideological divides on the Left to build more insightful, transformative, and powerful social movements. Many of the theoretical and practical insights I have gained from working with Chris over the past ten years are on full display in this work. Insights that have helped me gain a deeper understanding of anarchism and radical queer theory that I have helped me struggle with my own limitations, biases and shortcomings. Towards Collective Liberation is a must-read."
Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
"In over two decades of organizing, Chris Crass has ignited countless young people to engage in long-term feminist and racial justice organizing. From developing political education models grounded in people of color led organizing, to a political practice of mentorship and leadership development, his writing and activism provide a vision for those of us with various forms of privilege to bring our full selves to movement work with accountability, passion, and love. His visionary analysis and years of organizing, as well as interviews with some of the most ground-breaking anti-racist organizers of our generation are distilled into this book, which will no doubt equip anyone who reads it with new inspiration, historical lessons, and practical organizing tools."
Leah Jo Carnine, Arizona Hummingbird Collective and Communities United for Racial Justice
"This book was not written by an armchair activist. It came together on the bus on the way to a direct action, in