Community Safety in the Fourth World War

We are living through what the Zapatistas call the 'Fourth World War'--a war waged by the forces of colonial and racial capitalism that insists we forget our victories, relinquish our practices of care, and abandon our struggle. For communities targeted and ravaged by policing and militarization, safety is a paramount concern. But where do we turn? To the state, with its warped ideas of security and all its attendant violence?

Drawing on more than a decade of 'insurgent learning' through struggle in the San Francisco Bay Area and dialogue with Indigenous and non-Indigenous struggles from Oaxaca to Argentina, the authors argue for revolutionary, self-organized community safety. They define this safety through five critical elements: community self-defense, fierce care, assembly, knowledge production and self-representation, and autonomous justice.

Advancing conviviality as praxis, as a counterforce to the death machine of racial patriarchal capital, this book aims to re-enchant the world through a focus on life and to provide tools, strategies, and theorizations that build from below to cross-pollinate struggles everywhere.