“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Assata Shakur, Assata
Join Abolitionist Common Library in reading Assata, An Autobiography [pdf]
Virtually on Mondays, 7pm-8:30pm
Monday, May 10
Forward(s) & Chapters 1-2
Monday, May 17
Chapters 3-5
Monday, May 24
Chapters 6-9
Monday, May 31
No Reading group this week
Monday, June 7
Chapters 10-14
Monday, June 14
Chapters 15-End
Send us an e-mail to let us know you would like to join!
abolitionist_common_library@riseup.net
“I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property.”
Assata Shakur, Assata
Past Reading Groups:
“We must accept the eventuality of bringing the U.S.A to its knees; accept the closing off of critical sections of the city with barbed wire, armored pig carriers crossing the streets, soldiers everywhere, tommy guns pointed at smoke level, smoke curling black against the daylight sky, the smell of cordite, house-to-house searches, doors being kicked in, the commonness of death.”
George Jackson, Blood in My Eye
Join Abolitionist Common Library in reading Blood in My Eye [pdf] by George Jackson paired with chapters from Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion [pdf] by Joy James and Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime [pdf] by Dylan Rodríguez
Virtually on Mondays, 7 p.m.
Monday, 1/25:
Blood in My Eye, Preface – 14
Imprisoned Intellectuals by Joy James, Preface (xi – xv)
Monday, 2/1:
Blood in My Eye, first full paragraph of 14 – 40
Monday, 2/8:
Blood in My Eye, 41 – 70
Monday, 2/15:
Blood in My Eye, 70 – 93
Monday, 2/22:
Blood in My Eye, 97 – 126
Monday, 3/1:
Blood in My Eye, 129 – 140
Forced Passages by Dylan Rodríguez, “Radical Lineages: George Jackson, Angela Davis, and the Fascism Problematic” 113 – 127
Monday, 3/8:
Blood in My Eye, 140 – 158
Forced Passages by Dylan Rodríguez, “Radical Lineages: George Jackson, Angela Davis, and the Fascism Problematic” 127 – 144
Monday, 3/15:
Blood in My Eye, 158 – 177
Monday, 3/22:
Blood in My Eye, 177 – end
Send us an e-mail to let us know you would like to join!
abolitionist_common_library@riseup.net
“Revolution encompasses and surpasses radicalism and rebellion to pursue a greater objective: freedoms safeguarded by institutions. Rather than merely revolt against repressive hierarchies or disobey unjust laws and customs, revolutionary politics seeks to build new structures and norms.” Joy James, Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion
“Jackson, alongside many of his peers, conceptualized and theorized the prison as a militarized focal point, or high-intensity war zone, within a larger geography and temporality of liberationist struggle against a white-supremacist (and capitalist) state.”
Dylan Rodríguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime
If there is a book you would like to read with others or a topic you would like to interrogate, send us an e-mail and we can organize other groups!
Abolitionist Common Library 