Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States

by Craig Hughes (Editor), Kevin Van Meter (Editor), Stevie Peace (Editor)

From housing struggles to food politics, from poor people's movements to radical art projects, from the Right to the City Alliance to the US Social Forum, Uses of a Whirlwind explores the current composition of social movements in the United States. With equal emphasis placed on movement history and movement building, Whirlwind is a call to action for a new decade of organizing. Contributors include Robin DG Kelley, Grace Lee Boggs, Michael Hardt, Chris Carlsson, Take Back the Land, Domestic Workers United, the Starbucks Workers Union, Brian Tokar, Dorothy Kidd, and Ashanti Alston. Team Colors is a geographically dispersed militant research collective.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Academia, Social Movements

420 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2010

Reviews

[Doug Brunell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I began this book thinking I would not enjoy it too much. Seeing as it is about organizing radical movements (and all that goes with it), I thought it would be fairly dry. Fortunately, I was wrong. It's actually an interesting read, and the three final interviews with Robin D.G. Kelley, Ashanti Omowali Alston, and Grace Lee Boggs bring all the theories and ideas found prior in the book home. Alston's interview was especially non-apologetic for the world he wants to see. These are people and groups who want to see the world changed, and this is how they think they have to go about getting it done.

The Team Colors Collective and AK Press put together something that is vastly needed by today's radical movements. Now, more than ever ...

[Soph Nova · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was useful to read but also extremely frustrating at the end of the day, because I agree with so little of the political analysis now. There’s lots of “activistism” here - doing something to feel like a “community” is being created and “prefiguring” the world we want to see, but there’s also more class analysis and grappling with the failures of the global justice movement + summit hopping tactics than many of the anarchist-oriented collections from the pre-Occupy era. Also is useful for a reminder that there wasn’t “nothing” happening between the early 90’s and the late 2000s, as some would say. Extremely missing an analysis of labor movement though - trade unions are called “authoritarian institutions” in one essay in the book which is laughable. Overall extremely uneven collection but probably still worth reading if you want to know more about the politics informing the immediate terrain before the current upsurge of the Left.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a great book to use for a radical reading group. it's an anthology of essays by or about contemporary radical movements in the US, so you don't need to read it front-to-back, but can skip around between "Organization Case Studies," "Movement Strategies," "Theoretical Analyses," and Interviews.

there's a lot of great stuff here, but some highlights are the John Peck essay on food sovereignty, the Michael Hardt and El Kilombo Intergalactico conversation, and of course the George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici contributions.

the stand-out, however, is Chris Carlsson's essay "Radical Patience: Feeling Effective Over the Long Haul." even if you just pick up this book for 15 minutes, read Carlsson's essay. it includes such provocations as, "For protesters and dissenters in our mad world, a difficult but urgent challenge is to convince people who do not already share our views to come along... How will life be better for most people in a post-capitalist, ecologically sane world?"

and this inspirational quote:

"Ultimately our ability to persist over the long haul, facing certain disappointments and defeats amidst our successes, depends on the pleasure we take from living our lives to the fullest. Avoiding the cycle of frenzied overwork and burnout in favor or a convivial life of good friends, good food, and full enjoyment is a political responsibility! We can change the world, and our everyday behaviors do make a difference. But we cannot subordinate our own pleasure of living to urgent political agendas—no matter how vital they might sound. Our enjoyment is a much more subversive force than our anger. Radical patience doesn’t mean waiting around for others to change things, but it does mean recognizing that history moves in fits and starts—sometimes your own work is part of a lurch forward (or sideways) but much more often, our political activities accrete slowly across time and space, giving others self-confidence and strength to carry on far from our immediate view. Keeping our inner fires burning steadily requires a good sense of history—fantasies of sudden, overwhelming change are fundamentally religious beliefs. Real change, deep and lasting, takes mutual aid and cooperation on a scale few of us can imagine and almost none of us have experienced."

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a rollercoaster. I was so bad to begin with that there was a preface, introduction, foreward and and all forty pages of this bullshit was the editors' attempts to prefigure what the reader was supposed to get out of the book. They listed which history was important and which movements mattered. What i found personally insulting was that they completely overlooked any contributions of the queer liberation movement.
Then this whole thing is so completely marxist and so many of these writers try to dismiss any usefulness of tactically organizing along identity lines, trying to say that the only struggle is class struggle and "why can't we all just put aside our differences until after the proletarian vanguard has overthrown our masters." Like, serious old left bullshit.
That being said, once i realized i could skip chapters and didn't have to read everything, i started to relax and enjoy it a bit. I personally found "DIY Activism and Queer Activism" as well as "Getting to Know Your City and the Social Movements That Call It Home" pretty useful. I think the second one should be required reading for people trying to organize in urban areas. The interviews with Ashanti Alston and Grace Lee Boggs were also outstanding.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays and interviews centered around radical movements and organizing in the United States. This book was pretty engaging, and draws from a wide variety of groups, people and issues. I don't believe resistance needs to be organized to change the world, but there is certainly value in the work the people and groups they talk to are doing. Pick up this book and you'll hear from people active around justice for immigrant farmworkers, building takeovers for housing, homelessness, and more. However, echoing some other reviewers, I would have preferred less theoretical analysis and more of a look at how people and groups are doing what they're doing. The exceptional exception to this is Silvia Federici's piece on feminism and the destruction of common property. Not that the other analyses are bad - most of them are fine.

A word of warning - the first essay by a member of Bluestockings collective in NYC is incredibly dense and abstract. I'd recommend skipping it for the first one you read.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nominated this book for the Indie Booksellers Choice Awards, but alas, it didn't make it into the finalists. But here was my pitch for that:


How do we "go from being in the wind, grouped in whirlwinds, to making a revolution"? The editors of this volume, in order to answer this question, bring together theoretical pieces on social change with case studies and profiles of on-the-ground organizations doing the difficult work of resisting destructive social systems while building socially just alternatives. Written for the 2010 US Social Forum, it remains a prime example of the type of intellectual work we need if we want to see genuine, truly democratic and sustainable change here in the United States. Collectively authored and edited, it is the book on independent politics from an independent press this past year.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bunch of excellent essays/interviews edited by the Team Colors Collective, a whole bunch of them (earlier versions) available here www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org...

Silvia Federici's article 'Feminism and the POlitics of the Commons in an Era of Primitive Accumulation' was ace; also Maribel Casas-Cortes piece on radical/militant research.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

As an anthology, it could be more coherent. The introduction's not great. The idea behind the book is good, and several of the chapters were very interesting. All in all, could have been better but glad to have read (most) of it.