#ak press

[garadinervi]

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, (2024), Survival Is a Promise. The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, Picador, London, 2025 [AK Press, Chico, CA]

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

AK Press made some of their e-books free for a little while. These are the free ones.

An exploration of how emergent strategies can help us meet this moment, survive what is to come, and shape safer and more just futures.

Practicing New Worlds explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.

Drawing on decades of experience as an abolitionist organizer, policy advocate, and litigator in movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice and the principles articulated by adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Ritchie invites us to think beyond traditional legislative and policy change to create more possibilities for survival and resistance in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism—and the cataclysms to come. Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the-ground organizers resisting state violence, building networks to support people in need of abortion care, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being.

In a style that bridges the divide between academia and activism, Street Rebellion develops a broader and more accurate understanding of how people struggle for liberation.

We are living in a time of uprisings that routinely involve physical confrontation—burning vehicles, barricades, vandalism, and scuffles between protesters and authorities. Yet the Left has struggled to incorporate rioting into theories of change, remaining stuck in recurring debates over violence and nonviolence. Civil resistance studies have popularized the term “strategic nonviolence,” spreading the notion that violence is wholly counter-productive. Street Rebellion scrutinizes recent research and develops a broad and grounded portrait of the relationship between strategic nonviolence and rioting in the struggle for liberation.

¡No Pasarán! is an anthology of antifascist writing that takes up the fight against white supremacy and the far-right from multiple angles. From the history of antifascism to today's movement to identify, deplatform, and confront the right, and the ways an insurgent fascism is growing within capitalist democracies, a myriad of voices come together to shape the new face of antifascism in a moment of social and political flux.

One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system like Windows or MacOS. Like a state, an operating system “governs” the programs and applications under it and networked with it, as well as, to some extent, the individuals who avail themselves of these tools and resources. No matter how different states seem on the surface they share core similarities, namely:

* The State is a relatively new thing in world history

* The State is European in origin and outlook

* States are “individuals” in the eyes of the law

* The State claims the right to determine who is a person

* The State is an instrument of violence and war

* The State is above the law

* The State is first and foremost an economic endeavor

Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the amateurish response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense. The state won’t solve our most pressing problems, so why do we obey? It’s time to think outside the state.

Joyful Militancy investigates how fear, self-righteousness, and moralism infiltrate and take root within liberation movements, what to do about them, and ultimately how tenderness and vulnerability can thrive alongside fierce militant commitment.

Why do radical movements and spaces sometimes feel laden with fear, anxiety, suspicion, self-righteousness, and competition? Montgomery and bergman call this phenomenon rigid radicalism: congealed and toxic ways of relating that have seeped into social movements, posing as the “correct” way of being radical. In conversation with organizers and intellectuals from a wide variety of political currents, the authors explore how rigid radicalism smuggles itself into radical spaces, and how it is being undone

Interviewees include Silvia Federici, adrienne maree brown, Marina Sitrin, Gustavo Esteva, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Walidah Imarisha, Margaret Killjoy, Glen Coulthard, Richard Day, and more.

Self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. A resolutely materialist spirituality based equally on science and science fiction: a wild feminist and afro-futurist ride!

Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

Worker-run. Collectively-managed. Anarchist publishing and distribution since 1990.

[clawleigh]

Worker-run. Collectively-managed. Anarchist publishing and distribution since 1990.

I've read Joyful Militancy, and I strongly recommend it.

Be sure to thank them for these free books. This is a great opportunity to learn!

[thoughtportal]

Worker-run. Collectively-managed. Anarchist publishing and distribution since 1990.

free ebooks by AK press

[adamgnade]

This is an excerpt from my new book After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different.

Reminder: all preorders are shipping immediately because of the holidays.

Get yours online from Three OneG, AK Press, or at my shop https://adamgnade.com/shop

[robertevansfan]

The Seeds of a Thousand New Worlds by Firestorm Coop

A virtual interview about ATR, storytelling, and rural solidarity with Robert Evans and Margaret Killjoy.

[seem0reglass]

some graphics i made about a few radical publishers i know of

[queertheoryreader]

“The Queer population, in addition to others in the 60s and 70s, fought against the State and Capitalism, in large part because they had no material connection to the State. Queers found themselves outside of the nuclear family structure and the light of mainstream acceptance. This is why you see the great flight to San Francisco happen; this is why you see San Francisco become a Mecca of all things Gay. A home was needed and a home was found. This home, ironically, is the most symbolic of the radical change that happened in the Queer population in the last 40-50 years.

The Castro disctrict in San Francisco now stands as the most alienating piece of land to anyone that finds himself or herself not a rich, white, gay male. It is a destination for global tourism and one of the city’s biggest moneymakers. Commodities line the windows of almost every store and you’d be lucky to find a flat here that is under 4,000 dollars. A few years back, the residents of the Castro district refused to have a youth center be built in the neighborhood because it would ‘bring down property value,’ in their own words. The Castro is the perfect symbol of the complete bankruptcy and the co-option of the Queer Rights movement. Tourism and profit stand over the lives and safety of youth who desperately need to escape from their abusive families. This is what happens when the Queers desire to become mainstream. It becomes an issue of ‘who can comfortably assimilate and who can’t.’ And you can see what happens to those who can’t.

My problem with the hype and pressure around DADT [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] is that it distracts from the very things that Queer Liberation was founded on: Anti-imperialism, anti-racism, equal access to housing and health care, and struggles against patriarchy. It seems almost irrelevant to me whether or not gay soldiers can ‘come out’ in the military when the US military is not only carrying out two genocidal campaigns for US imperialism and corporate profit, but also when the war budget is draining the funds needed for almost every other service we so desperately need in this country. When I see the situation as such, not only does it become apparent to me that the Queer Movement must be anti-war, but also the movement, as is, has been hijacked by a few high-powered assimilationists dragging everyone along through corporate propaganda.”

Jones, Jamal Rashad, “Why I Won’t Be Celebrating the Repeal of DADT: Queer Soldiers are Still Agents of Genocide,” in Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion, ed. Ryan Conrad, 142-143. Chico, California: AK Press, 2014.