Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective
When both levees and governments failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the anarchist-inspired Common Ground Collective was created to fill the void. With the motto of "Solidarity Not Charity," they worked to create power from below--building autonomous projects, programs, and spaces of self-sufficiency like health clinics and neighborhood assemblies, while also supporting communities defending themselves from white militias and police brutality, illegal home demolitions, and evictions.
Black Flags and Windmills--equal parts memoir, history, and organizing philosophy--vividly intertwines Common Ground cofounder scott crow's experiences and ideas with Katrina's reality, illustrating how people can build local grassroots power for collective liberation. It is a story of resisting indifference, rebuilding hope amid collapse, and struggling against the grain to create better worlds.
The expanded second edition includes up-to-date interviews and discussions between crow and some of today's most articulate and influential activists and organizers on topics ranging from grassroots disaster relief efforts (both economic and environmental); dealing with infiltration, interrogation, and surveillance from the State; and a new photo section that vividly portrays scott's experiences as an anarchist, activist, and movement organizer in today's world.
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Become an affiliate"scott crow's trenchant memoir of grassroots organizing is an important contribution to a history of movements that far too often goes untold."
--Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!
"This revised and expanded edition weaves scott crow's frontline experiences with a resilient, honest discussion of grassroots political movement-building."
--Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
"It is a brilliant, detailed, and humble book written with total frankness and at the same time a revolutionary poet's passion. It makes the reader feel that we too, with our emergency heart as our guide, can do anything; we only need to begin."
--Marina Sitrin, author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
"This book is a key document in that real and a remarkable story of an activist's personal and philosophical evolution."
--Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
"This is a compelling tale for our times."
--Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days
"The story of the Common Ground Collective is that of one of the greatest triumphs of democratic self-organization in American history."
--David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years
"Can anarchism actually work? Yes, as a matter of fact. scott crow's lucid first-hand account is a story that simply must be told. This book should be read as widely as possible."
--Ward Churchill, author of Wielding Words like Weapons
"...crow is a puppetmaster involved in direct action."
--Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)