Synopses & Reviews
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, n.32, "Power," 2021. 208 pages, $16. Cover Art by Kai Lumumba Barrow. Inside art by Gallery of the Streets. Perspectives collective: Theresa Warburton, Hillary Lazar, Maia Ramnath, Lara Messersmith-Glavin, Paul Messersmith-Glavin. Production Coordinator: Paul Messersmith-Glavin. Produced by the Institute for Anarchist Studies.
The Perspectives collective collaborates with Kai Lumumba Barrow who provides art from Gallery of the Streets in the new 208 page Perspectives' "Power" issue. Gallery of the Streets is a network of autonomous artists, activists, and scholars committed to abolitionist movement building. Led by queer Black feminist politics, their work is created by people who live, love, fight, work, and play in the margins of racial and gendered capitalism, carceral control, and environmental violence. Lovingly laid out with full color art and design by Eberhardt Press in Portland, Oregon this is an impressive publication, produced despite the pandemic and amidst the Uprising. This issue features essays on surrealism and climate change; Rojava and anarchism; solidarity and mutual aid from Puerto Rico to the embattled streets of Minneapolis and Portland; building online power, raising money, lessons in organizing, working out, building community; police abolition, and insights into George Floyd Square; organizing amidst this age of protest and pandemic; David Graeber and the power of imagination; building another world of communalism against Covid capitalism; surviving the pandemic, what to do if you're teargassed; recovering from trauma; successfully organizing revolution; and new book reviews!
"Whether we think of power figuratively, literally, or somewhere in between, perhaps one of the most aphoristic answers to the question of what happens when the power goes out is that 'it is better to light a candle than curse the dark.' … It takes new and old strength, new and old knowledge, new and old relationships to remember the infrastructures we already had when we’ve become dependent on others. It takes just as much work to build new ones. And, it can be tiring, inviting us into the comfort of something known if not trusted and warm if not consoling. But instead of sleeping when the power goes out, we rise!"
-From the Introduction