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As this book is finalized, the United States is on fire. With the failure of the American socio-economic system to sufficiently prepare and respond to the Coronavirus pandemic, tensions grew, culminating in an explosion after the murder of George Floyd. The US experienced a what authors have described as a Black-led multi-racial working-class rebellion against racism and systemic oppression, which in some cities sedimented into autonomous spaces reclaimed from the state and capitalism. This has arguably been the most significant social movement to emerge in the United States since Black Power in the late 1960s. While the Capital Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) autonomous zone in Seattle and the Occupation of New York’s City Hall (OCH) have already been evicted by the police, these movements have built on people’s experiences and capacity to theorize beyond the moment, offering glimpses of a better world free of racism, classism, and patriarchal exploitation. In this text, we explore the intellectual foundations of social movements that, similar to CHOP and OCH, were organized by workers defending themselves and their families from capitalism, and by Brown and Black people’s revolts against patriarchy, colonization and slavery. We offer you this book as a framework for thinking of today’s rebellions and the autonomous spaces created within them, theorized through the lenses of radical thinkers.

Our focus is the history of social thought in the West, studied through a decolonial critique. Most of the readings assigned are primary sources, texts written by people who were living and writing at the time of the events addressed. The ideas expressed in these readings are the result of thinkers analyzing complex social processes, allowing for people to contemplate and create new ways of living that pushed the world into unchartered territories. Some of the thinkers we will engage with were considered perverts or godless, and several were executed, jailed, banned, committed, or sent into exile. Regardless, their theories contributed to movements that sparked momentous changes across the globe, with their effects still felt in our lives today.

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