Anarchism
Anarchism and anarchists and anything associated with the thinking, the people, or the history generally get a raw deal from the media and even mainstream historians. It is true that anarchism is profoundly anti-authoritarian, but its popular association with violence (wild-eyed bearded men throwing bombs) is exaggerated, even fictionalized by the very forces threatened by it, namely governments and the media with vested interests in things as they are.
As with any subversive political and economic movement, some proponents became impatient and felt justified in striking out in vengeance or justice. Thus you have Alexander Berkman and his attempted assassination of Pennsylvanian Henry Clay Frick in 1892 and Leon Czolgosz and his successful assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Berkman, however, served his time in jail, wrote a deep and insightful account of his experience and went on to write more worthwhile books on the subject which possessed his life. (Czolgosz did not have that opportunity, being executed forty-five days after the death of his victim.)
Anarchism survived its dramatic beginnings in the 19th Century, however, and interested readers can find its articulate concern with agricultural reform, labor rights, and prophetic worries about the growth of the surveillance state in many excellent books. Here you will find books and a superb documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti (as well as Woody Guthrie's cd of his investigation into the miscarriage of justice). Here you will find histories, biographies, anthologies, memoirs, and fiction. It is a rich tradition, relevant to this day and to the future.
The Creative Interventions Toolkit
The Creative Interventions Toolkit
The Creative Interventions Toolkit is a practical guide to community-based interventions to interpersonal violence, a process also known as community accountability or transformative justice. It is written for everyday people: survivors, people who caused harm, and friends or family who want to help without turning to the police or state services. Community-based interventions build on friendships, family connections, and caring relationships rather than policing and punishment. While friends and family are often the “first responders” to violence, many have lost basic tools to end and prevent violence. The Creative Interventions Toolkit aims to rebuild these skills and offer models that can help us with safety, accountability, and community self-determination.
The Creative Interventions Toolkit provides:
Basic information on the dynamics of interpersonal violence
Special sections for survivors of violence and people who have caused harm
Guides for facilitators, friends, and family
A basic model or framework to confront and transform violence
Lots of tools for safety, accountability, and coordination
Stories from everyday people who have used community-based interventions
Readers will gain knowledge and specific strategies to break isolation and create solutions that can be adapted to many different situations and communities.
Praise for the Creative Interventions Toolkit:
“The Creative Interventions Toolkit is my go-to reference whenever I begin a new community accountability intervention. I've often remarked that it is the Bible for most facilitators I know.” —Mariame Kaba, author of We Do This ’Til We Free Us
“This toolkit is essential reading for anyone interested in transformative justice and community responses to violence. It is accessible, concrete, thorough, and filled with years and years of lessons ... The Creative Interventions Toolkit offers practical information and practices for transformative justice/community accountability, without shying away from the very real challenges and complexities of this work. The importance of Creative Interventions' work cannot be overstated.” —Mia Mingus, founder of Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC)
“Creative Interventions is an invaluable, survivor-centered resource that provides practical tools that use community accountability and transformative justice as viable options instead of the criminal justice system. We can respond to violence without using violence, and Creative Interventions shows us the way.” — Aishah Shahidah Simmons, director of No! The Rape Documentary and editor of Love With Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse
“Instead of writing about transformative justice as a theoretical nice idea, The Creative Interventions Toolkit is packed with tools and readings to work through the real deal of interrupting violence without the cops ... In a bold time when we are closer than ever to making abolition and defunding police and prisons real, this toolkit is more necessary than ever.” —Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarahinsa, co-editor of Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
“The Creative Interventions Toolkit is one of the clearest and most practical resources to build transformative justice and community accountability skills that our movements have...If you want to deepen your practice, through one resource, start here.” —Ejeris Dixon, Co-editor of Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
“The Creative Interventions Toolkit is the in-depth practical guide that people looking to come together to support people experiencing violence need. It provides a roadmap for doing this important work, helping groups anticipate and navigate common problems. It is thorough and clear, and so essential to building the world we want.” —Dean Spade, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law