As Black As Resistance Finding The Conditions For Liberation – Zoe Samudzi (1)

Dual power means that you organize a number of collectives and communes in cities and town[s] all over North America, which are, in fact, liberated zones, outside of the control of the government. Autonomy means that the movement must be truly independent and a free association of all those united around common goals, rather than membership as the result of some oath or other pressure.[12] This model of organizing shies away from hierarchies, cultism, and performative militancy; it prioritizes people over cults of personality and traditional models of leadership that are highly centralized.

Ervin also writes: As Blacks and other oppressed peoples of color, we are living through some of the most perilous times in both American and world history. The white empire is declining, but in its desperation to cling to power, we face police murder and brutality, mass imprisonment of youth of color, racial profiling, degrading poverty and unemployment, repressive anti-terrorist legislation and new wars of conquest and yet we do not hear the voices of organized peoples of color in their millions in North America.

Instead, we are part of “someone else’s agenda” or “someone else’s political organization,” but it is time now to build our own and speak for ourselves. We must not only demand our “rights” in a Western capitalist society, but fight to build a new world.[13] It is not sufficient to simply center blackness in our understanding of resistance to subjugation.

We must also explicitly name different gendered and sexual identities within blackness. Any truly liberatory politics must speak to the unique needs and vulnerability of Black women and girls, particularly Black queer and transgender women and girls. There are ongoing murders of Black trans women across the country (and trans women around the world) because women’s safety is a non-priority of the state and because patriarchal gender structures are ultimately grounded in transmisogyny.[14] Black women are also being hunted, but this hunting season (unlike the open season on Black men) is grossly under-addressed because of the frequent de-gendering of antiracist politics, the invisibilization of Black women through diversity language like “women and people of color” that overlooks the intersections of race and gender, the erasure of Black women within “women of color,” and understandings of how state violence against Black people focuses on the humiliation and emasculation and almost sole targeting of cisgender black men.

As Black as Resistance is a searing indictment of the U.S. settler colonial project and a call to action to save ourselves from the forces of oppression and tyranny. The philosophy of the book might well be summarized as “we’re all we’ve got.” This book appears in a chaotic time when the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, when climate change is causing mass devastation, when fascism appears resurgent, and when the ever- expanding carceral state is criminalizing and prematurely killing millions.

In this context, William C. Anderson and Zoé Samudzi insist that our current political moment demands that we reject liberalism and embrace a more radical program to transform our conditions. They argue persuasively that grounding ourselves in the Black radical tradition offers the best path forward toward freedom and liberation. In 1970, artist and activist Ossie Davis penned a preface for a reprint of the 1951 We Charge Genocide petition to the United Nations that contended with the historical debasement of Black people in the United States: We say again, now: We will submit no further to the brutal indignities being practiced against us; we will not be intimidated, and most certainly not eliminated.

We claim the ancient right of all peoples, not only to survive unhindered, but also to participate as equals in man’s inheritance here on earth. We fight to preserve ourselves, to see that the treasured ways of our life-in-common are not destroyed by brutal men or heedless institutions.[1] Davis stresses, like Anderson and Samudzi do, that Black people have been consistently subjected to inordinate violence, considered disposable and easily killable.

In the late nineteenth century, a remark was attributed to a southern police chief who suggested that there were three types of homicides: “If a nigger kills a white man, that’s murder. If a white man kills a nigger, that’s justifiable homicide. If a nigger kills a nigger, that’s one less nigger.”[2] White supremacy has always held Black life cheap. Davis’s words embody defiance and so do those written by Anderson and Samudzi. Just as Davis claims an inherent right to self-defense, As Black as Resistance highlights a long tradition in Black communities by people like Robert F.

Williams, who invoked the right to armed self-defense. In 1955, Williams joined the NAACP in his hometown of Monroe, North Carolina, after having served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He quickly became president of the chapter and rebuilt it to include many veterans, farmers, and working-class people. In 1956, the Monroe NAACP started a campaign to integrate the only swimming pool in the city.

It had been built with federal funds, yet blacks were barred from access.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 3788a0af88116289
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,284,918 bytes (4.086 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781849353168, 9781849353151
• Pages: 94
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 134.62 minutes
• Total Words: 26,924
• Total Characters: 174,847
• Average Words per Page: 286.43
• Average Characters per Page: 1860.07

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