On Friday, 4/28, at 730pm, we will begin reading To Our Friends. We will read aloud & discuss the preface and the first chapter together, so no prior preparation is required. Read and print versions are available for download here. Some copies will also be available at Breakaway.
Tea, coffee, and snacks will be served, as usual.
4.14 730p, @Breakaway:
We’ll be collectively reading (out loud) and discussing QUEER FIRE, on the George Jackson Brigade and queer prisoner rebellion.
This week we will continue with Chapters 3-5 of Moten & Harney’s The Undercommons. See our previous post for links to the text. We will meet at 730pm at Breakaway Social Center. Tea, coffee and snacks as usual. All welcome.
On Friday March 17th, we will be engaging with the work of Fred Moten. We will listen to him read some of his poems about Ferguson, and discuss chapters one and two of his (and Harney’s) book The Undercommons. Printable and “read” versions are here:
Moten – The-Undercommons-Fugitive-Planning-Black-Study – READ
Moten – The Undercommons Fugitive Planning and Black Study (PRINT)
We will meet as usual at Breakaway Social Center. All are welcome. (please try to read in advance for this one). Tea, coffee and snacks provided.
note: For those with little familiarity with afropessimism or the thought of Frank Wilderson (with whom Moten is frequently in dialogue these days) we recommend checking out this interview with Wilderson [zine / listen], which provides a relatively accessible starting point. A rough overview of Afropessimist theory is also offered in part II of this zine.
“One part of this society has every interest in its continuing to rule, the other in everything collapsing as soon as possible. Deciding which side one is on is the first step.”
On friday, feb 10, at 730pm we will be reading At Daggers Drawn, a classic of “insurrectionary anarchism”. Its anonymous author presents a critique of the left, classical anarchist practices, and politics, and proposes the idea of insurrection as an alternative approach.
This Friday we will continue reading the Call out loud (prop.’s 4~end) and discussing as we go. See the previous post for links to the text in EN and ES.
On Thursday, Jan 12 we will we discussing propositions 1-4 of Appel [The Call]. The format will differ slightly, in that we will be reading the text line-by-line out loud, and discussing as we go. The text is available here in both English and Spanish. We will meet as usual at Breakaway (2306 S. Kedzie Blvd).
On Friday Dec 30, 730pm, we’ll be reading “Yes, And…”. The article appeared online in April 2012, attributed to the “North American Society for the Advancement of Criminal Science”. Largely unknown, it resurfaced recently in a zine collection entitled War in the Streets – Tactical Lessons from the Global Civil War, PDF’s of which can be downloaded here.
From the text:
“Imagine the event of an insurrection as either a complex experimental symphony or a drawn out improvisational drama, with a touch of comedic elements and heroism. In either situation, all the participants will rst begin with almost no plan or shared sense outside of their environment or their knowledge of their instruments—most times no one will have any intent on playing together. Something happens, someone begins to play, and when the rhythm touches others they join in. Or in the latter case someone speaks, asks a question, and others respond and build on the narrative. In each case the primary operation must be endowed with a force of seduction. is is not to say erotic or pleasurable even, but decisive in how it approaches its environment. e operation must pose a question that is irresistible to answer. An experimental com- poser once said “the hidden secret that makes this thing function is that the audience wants to be a part of the […] plot” is originary operation, the gesture that repeats itself even as it grows in complexity, must solicit the response “Yes, and.” is is how we can measure the success of the black bloc.”
As always, we will meet at Breakaway Social Center, at 2306 S. Kedzie. Free coffee and tea will be served.
UAW-MF were an anarchist street gang operating in the lower East Side of NYC in the late 1960’s. An outgrowth of the militant Dadaist group Black Mask, the “Motherfuckers” (or the “Family”, as they referred to themselves) took over apartment buildings, storefronts, theaters and above-all the ‘public space’ of neighborhood streets and transformed them into a dense network of conflictual and vibrant experimental life. Equally hostile to organized political parties as well as “New Left” formations, the Family built-up a fiercely autonomous fabric of hippy-dropouts, Puerto-Rican street kids, homeless wino’s, disaffected intellectuals, radicalized students and others, who self-organized into a collective social force of struggle and experimentation. Operating in New York from roughly 1967-1969, theirs is a rich and complex example of territorially-immersed destituent life, whose lessons have yet to be fully drawn, in part due to the prevalence of competing narratives from this period in history, and in part due to the overall secrecy surrounding many aspects of their existence until now.
The main reading is the zine “Black Mask and UAW-MF”, but we encourage everyone to peruse the posters, leaflets, and writings of these comrades collected here.
