Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective - Paperback

by Scott Crow (Author), Kathleen Cleaver (Foreword by), John P. Clark (Foreword by)

When both levees and governments failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the anarchist-inspired Common Ground Collective was created to fill the void. With the motto of "Solidarity Not Charity," they worked to create power from below--building autonomous projects, programs, and spaces of self-sufficiency like health clinics and neighborhood assemblies, while also supporting communities defending themselves from white militias and police brutality, illegal home demolitions, and evictions.

Black Flags and Windmills--equal parts memoir, history, and organizing philosophy--vividly intertwines Common Ground cofounder scott crow's experiences and ideas with Katrina's reality, illustrating how people can build local grassroots power for collective liberation. It is a story of resisting indifference, rebuilding hope amid collapse, and struggling against the grain to create better worlds.

The expanded second edition includes up-to-date interviews and discussions between crow and some of today's most articulate and influential activists and organizers on topics ranging from grassroots disaster relief efforts (both economic and environmental); dealing with infiltration, interrogation, and surveillance from the State; and a new photo section that vividly portrays scott's experiences as an anarchist, activist, and movement organizer in today's world.

Author Biography

scott crow is an anarchist activist, a community organizer, a writer, and the founder of social justice groups and education projects throughout Texas and the south, including Common Ground Collective, Dirty South Earth First!, the North Texas Coalition for a Just Peace, Radical Encuentro Camp, and UPROAR (United People Resisting Oppression and Racism). He has also trained and organized for many grassroots organizations, including ACORN, Forest Ethics, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and the Ruckus Society, and is currently collaborating on a number of sustainable cooperative projects. He lives in Austin, Texas. Kathleen Cleaver is a senior lecturer in law at Emory University and was the spokesperson and first female member of the Black Panther Party's decision-making body. She is the author of Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party and We Want Freedom. She lives in Atlanta.