Spirals of revolt

We study revolutionary change not simply to understand it. We study revolution to make it.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide prairie fire sparked by the rebellion in Minneapolis, we are in a period of upheaval and and the potential for revolutionary change is quickly growing. As organizers and activists press for further change, pushing back on white supremacy and toward the abolition of police and prisons alike, the powers that be are scrambling to contain the revolt and defang its more radical demands. With revolutionary change once again on the table, the time is ripe to sharpen the weapons of theory for the struggles looming on the horizon.

It was in this moment that Geo Maher put forth a call to investigate what a revolution is and how to make it. In a growing online (as everything was those days) reading group people gathered together to take up that call and think through the past, the present, and help us imagine the future we want. It was these impassioned discussions that birthed Spirals of Revolt.

Instead of beginning with fixed ideas of revolution, Spirals of Revolt understands history as a million acts of revolt spiraling, sometimes chaotically, toward liberation. Guided by the tension of the spiral, the book traces a double-helix of readings of revolutionary history (Eurocentric, canonical) and counter-histories (subaltern, decolonial) rooted in Black, Brown, and Indigenous traditions of resistance to colonialism and capitalism.

Spirals of Revolt asks you to join this discussion into how revolutionary history can guide revolutionary aspirations in the present. On your own or with comrades, this is a handbook for learning while doing and doing while learning, a study guide for letting a thousand study groups—and acts of revolt—bloom.