“[T]he collective lootings of Tottenham are a sufficient demonstration that one ceases to be poor as soon as one begins to get organized. There is a considerable difference between a mass of poor people and a mass of poor people determined to act together.

 

“Organizing has never meant affiliation with the same organization. Organizing is acting in accordance with a common perception, at whatever level that may be. Now, what is missing from the situation is not “people’s anger” or economic shortage, it’s not the good will of militants or the spread of critical consciousness, or even the proliferation of anarchist gestures. What we lack is a shared perception of the situation. Without this binding agent, gestures dissolve without a trace into nothingness, lives have the texture of dreams, and uprisings end up in schoolbooks.”

This reading group will be an attempt to develop this shared perception of the situation. We will be reading “To Our Friends” by the Invisible Committee, the infamous authors of “The Coming Insurrection” in 2007. More information on the book can be found here.

Copies of the full text will be available, including plenty of extras to take with and distribute amongst friends and co-conspirators.

We will be reading each chapter aloud, although no one is obliged to speak. We would like to encourage pauses for discussion at any point.

The first group will read the introduction “The Insurrections Have Come, Finally” and the first chapter “Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear.“