“How can you tell if a society is in a revolutionary state? I wonder if you ever can. Everyone who remembers the 1979 revolution will tell you that up to the very last day, most people were living their lives as if nothing was happening. Iran today is not different. Intense, bloody clashes between protestors and the police are interspersed with days of calm. Everyday life goes on at the same time as massive protests. If you go out on the street, you can collect evidence for both an imminent revolution and total peace.”
Category Archives: justice
François Dosse: “Félix Guattari & The ‘Molecular Revolution’: Italy, Germany, France”
“Félix Guattari was dreaming of building a federation of regional protest movements, which could open up secondary fronts and weaken the Nation-State. Despite his extensive network of contacts, he never managed to realize this perilous project, which was located on the cusp between democratic combat and terrorist action.”
Éric Morales-Franceschini: ‘Cuba Libre: On the Revolutionary Epic as “Redemptive Impatience”’
‘The revolutionary epic is never a “finished” narrative, let alone uniquely nefarious. The unruly and dense “archives” that revolutions (or an epic past) embody are liable to tell different stories, stories that bequeath different “lessons” and, thereby, possibilities.’
Jared Marcel Pollen: “For Percy Bysshe Shelley, Literature Was the Spark of the Revolution”
After the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, the young radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley proclaimed he was deserting “the odorous gardens of literature” for “the great sandy desert of politics.” Instead, he infused literature with revolutionary political ideas.
Glenda Gilmore interviewed: “The Civil Rights Movement Was Radical to Its Core”
“Gilmore’s narrative follows a path of struggle through Southern, American, and world histories that links together the Russian Revolution, the rise and fall of fascism, and the “long civil rights movement” in the United States”.
Posted in disobedience, justice, Nota Bene, resistance, rights
Tagged Civil Rights, race
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: “Thoroughly Modern Maxie: Robespierre’s Relevance for Democracy Today”
“But Robespierre’s challenge remains relevant today: what can we do now, in the face of furious backlash from those who oppose #BlackLivesMatter, feminism, and other social movements, to confront those who would rather deform democracy than see society become more just and egalitarian?”
Posted in governance, justice, Nota Bene, revolution, terror, violence
Tagged French Revolution, Robespierre
Zeynep Tufekci: “I Wish I Could Ask Alaa Abd el-Fattah What He Thinks About the World Now”
“These days, I wonder even if he would turn into a cynic, observing how far the world has turned its back on the Arab Spring generation of young men and women who dared to hope. Many are languishing as political prisoners, often under horrendous conditions. I can’t ask what he thinks, though, because he’s been in prison for most of the past eight years.”
Posted in defeat, freedom, justice, Nota Bene, revolution, tragic politics
Tagged Arab Spring, Egypt
Maximillian Alvarez: “Lessons from Wisconsin’s 2011 worker uprising”
“The 2011 statewide protests in Wisconsin were among the largest in US history, but they didn’t stop the passage of Act 10. One decade later, we ask: How can the labor movement recover?“
Posted in In The News, justice, power, revolt, the Left
David Palumbo-Liu: “Rise Up in Anger and Hope: How Eruptive Protests Can Propel Urgent Issues to the Center of Political Debate”
“The fact that the protests erupted in cities, suburbs, rural areas, and in every state of the Union inspiring protesters old and young, and of many races, should not be overlooked; nor should the fact that the demonstrations spread beyond our borders, even in the midst of a global pandemic that made public gatherings dangerous.”
Posted in emergency, justice, Nota Bene, resistance, rights
John Tarleton: “The Rise of Occupy Wall Street: The Movement Moment That Revived The U.S. Left”
“Ten years ago this fall a protest movement took root in Lower Manhattan that transformed how we think about inequality and reinvigorated the Left.”
Posted in disobedience, emergency, justice, Nota Bene, power, resistance
Tagged Occupy
