Announcing the George Floyd Uprising Reader

via It's Going Down

Announcing a collection of texts from the George Floyd rebellion across the so-called United States.

A group of anarchists and autonomists in the Bay Area/ occupied Ohlone land collected writings animated by the 2020 uprisings that ignited the so-called United States after the police murder of George Floyd. Now just over one year after George Floyd’s murder, our intention is that this reader inspires people everywhere to engage in deeper conversations about all aspects of the uprising, including its significance and context to the US Black Liberation struggle. We believe these discussions are vital to shaping ongoing and future struggles for liberation, improving tactics, and rendering ineffective the insidious narratives that aim to crush our collective power.

https://archive.org/details/GeorgeFloydUprisingReader

We have organized these selected writings into two volumes:

Volume 1: Insurgency and Beyond shares on-the-ground accounts from various sites of struggle: the challenges faced, victories won, analysis sharpened, and lessons learned. Each writing, specific to its physical and cultural landscape, affirms the necessity of insurrection while grappling with its impermanent nature and the questions of how we move forward together from such eruptions.

Volume 2: Belligerent Identities in the Face of Counter-Insurgency examines identity politics, Black anarchists’ role in the uprisings, the racialized nature of “looting”, among other dynamics. The concept of Belligerent Identities is taken from the Latin Bellum Gerere which translates as “to wage war,”, a term for guerrilla soldiers used by the state. If a belligerent identity is that of the enemy combatant, then we seek to reclaim and weaponize this term. The writings in this volume speak to how the far-right, police, state, media, and liberals use everything from live ammunition to tired rhetoric to douse the flames of rebellion and diffuse the potentials of solidarity.

As non-Black anarchists and autonomists gathering and framing writings about an uprising that is centered around Black liberation, our positionality lends itself to a possibility of missing important elements and perspectives. However, we hope that you find this reader thought-provoking. Through critical analysis and fierce practice, may the fire in our hearts burn brighter as we love stronger and fight smarter in our collective struggle for liberation.

For an online copy of the reader, please visit: archive.org/details/GeorgeFloydUprisingReader.

You can also obtain a printed copy by visiting the Tamarack Free Library at 1501 Harrison St in Oakland on Sundays from 2-4PM or email tamarackfreelibrary@protonmail.com to coordinate in-person pickup at a different time. If you are outside of the Bay Area, contact us at GeorgeFloydReader@protonmail.com to coordinate shipment. You can also email us with questions or feedback. Suggested donation per reader is $5-$10 to cover cost of printing, no one denied for lack of funds. To donate please send money to cash.app/$GFreadercollective.

There are 6 Comments

Maryam Henein has a documentary and book coming out regarding George. She has spent a lot of time researching Mr Floyd and his links to other, should be worth watching and reading.

The link for the PDF only has the first volume. Is the second online somewhere?

Could you share printable versions so that this could be redistributed?

Judging from the blurb here the politics of this appeared to be a kind of racialized third world Stalinism. This speaks to the way that this brand of US anarchist doesn't really use points of reference from historical anarchism, like Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, or people like Marx and the Situationists or whoever, but gets their analysis from stuff more akin to the most shrill race-is-everything 1970s New Left types like Prairie Fire and people like that.

The best part of these uprisings, which is you look at everything that happened was not uprisings, but the most important things that happened were done by people who may not identify with any political label or maybe anarchists but not in the same political label that U.S anarchists identify as

anarchists were too busy trying to police and create a better world with identity politics and respectability politics, the best things were the people BIPOC or non-BIPOC that just set shit on fire and looted stores without a political meaning, message, or consensus

Some of what you post here is accurate, especially about self-styled anarchists in the US. But for whatever undeniable authentic subversive social content and historical legitimacy events like these have, the big problem with outbreaks of rioting and looting is that they burn off fast and leave nothing behind to build on. A little sporadic social unrest doesn't ever add up to a full-scale social revolution. If anything, afterwards the more politically-minded people who participate in these events tend to get more plugged into work-within-the-system type reforms, not anti-capitalist system efforts.

They definitely head toward the door to work in the system. You are quite wrong if you think they were ever destined for anything else and even more wrong if you think their influence on the people trying to live opposite society was anything other than negative.

They were always preparing their CV, the difference is, they bolted at the first sign of trouble. Can't have riots on your tenure application.

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