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I only recently learned of the work (writing, political leadership, organizing) of Nikil Saval. Ran into this book in a small bookshop and immediately grabbed it after having heard Saval speak at two union-related events in Philly during the last month.

In 1964, in response to police violence in Harlem, June Jordan wrote to Buckminster Fuller to propose a speculative redesign of Harlem. Saval tells that story in a book that is a recreation of a lecture he gave on zoom during Covid restrictions and during his campaign for Pennsylvania Senate (an election he won). It's an interesting story and worth the read.

It's striking to read Jordan's account of what it's like to move through the grid of a city when you feel like you're constantly in the crosshairs:

"Given our goal of a pacific, life-expanding design for human community, we might revise street patterning so that the present patterns of confrontation by parallel lines would never be repeated. The existing monotony limits pleasures of perspectives. rigidly flat land is ruled by rectilinear for. The crisscrosing pattern too often becomes a psychological crucifixion; an emergence from an alleyway into a danger zone vlunerable to enemies approaching in at least two directions that converge at the target who is the pedestrian poised on a corner." (67)

Jordan and Fuller propose large towers (that resemble nuclear cooling towers) that reorient life away from "the street" and is various dangers and toward something more collective and something that would prioritize public safety (safety from, among other things, the police).

15 years ago, I likely would have read this book and rolled my eyes a bit. Now? I'm kinda with Mander:

"Computers, like television, are far more valuable and helpful to the military, to multinational corporations, to international banking, to governments, and institutions of surveillance and control – all of whom use this technology on a scale and with a speed that are beyond our imagining – then they ever will be to you and me." (3)

But beyond this discussion of the damage computers and telecommunications network had done and would do to everyone, Mander is focused on the impact it was having on Indigenous peoples. The effects on Indigenous languages, on traditional storytelling practices, and on communal gathering.

He doesn't get everything right, but This book is worth a read both as a historical document and, honestly, as a way to think about legitimate modes of resistance and refusal when it comes to tech.