Forthcoming Team Colors Book on Radical Currents & Organizing

Friends,

Team Colors is pleased to announce that AK Press will be publishing the collective’s first book, Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States. The volume will be released June 2010 to coincide with the US Social Forum in Detroit.

“Will you join us in the middle of a whirlwind?” This is the question Team Colors has asked organizers, activists, artists, and theorists as we have sought to understand the current composition and strength of radical movements in the United States. In utilizing the metaphor of a whirlwind to describe the myriad of struggles that are taking place currently and those that have been blowing across the planet over the past decade, Team Colors has conducted an inquiry and examination of movements in the United States, which has resulted in the collection Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States (Whirlwinds). Whirlwinds provides case studies, movement strategies, theoretical analysis and interviews on radical community organizing—toward making social change possible!

Contributors to Whirlwinds include Malav Kanuga | Bluestockings Books & Activism Center, Direct Action to Stop the War, Roadblock Earth First!, Industrial Workers of the World - Starbucks Workers Union, Marina Karides | United States Social Forum Documentation Committee, Student/Farmworker Alliance, Harmony Goldberg | Domestic Workers United & Right to the City Alliance, Basav Sen, John Peck | Family Farm Defenders, Brian Tokar, Benjamin Shepard, Julie Perini, Jen Angel, Daniel Tucker | AREA Chicago, Maribel Casas-Cortes & Sebastian Cobarrubias | Producciones Translocales, Michael Hardt & El Kilombo Intergaláctico, George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, Peter Linebaugh, Chris Carlsson & others; interviews with Robin D.G. Kelley, Ashanti Omowali Alston & Grace Lee Boggs; artwork by Kristine Virsis | Justseeds Artists Cooperative.

Team Colors, AK Press and many of the Whirlwinds contributors will be present at the US Social Forum in Detroit. Team Colors will also be visiting a number of cities across the US in the summer of 2010 to speak about the collection and current radical community organizing. Please contact teamcolors@warmachines.info to bring the collective to your area.

Survey: Making the Collection Useful

In seeking to construct a collection that is useful to and utilized in radical community organizing efforts, Team Colors has a short survey of questions to help shape Whirlwinds. Please fill out the questionnaire below, return it to info@whirlwinds.info, and share the survey with others involved in radical community organizing and community-building work.

Name: Organizational Affiliation (if any): Email Address: City, State / Region:

1. What organizations or projects do you participate in? How would you characterize the work that you do? 2. What sources of information do you use to find out about current radical movements? What books, magazines, blogs, and other media do you access to understand power relationships in society and how to overcome them? 3. What is missing from current accounts of radical organizing and politics that you would like to see in a collection such as Whirlwinds? 4. What struggles and movements do you see as important to focus on in Whirlwinds? 5. What role should a collection such as Whirlwinds play in your organizing efforts? What would be useful for your own organizing, and what is needed to strengthen radical community organizing efforts in the United States?

Fundraising Appeal

Uses of a Whirlwind will provide detailed analysis, thoughtful criticism, and substantive writing on current organizations and campaigns in the US.

Team Colors and AK Press are committed to extensively outreaching the collection. The reason for this is simple: we do not want Whirlwinds to reach only those who identify as anarchists, radicals or activists. Our audience includes those involved in anti-capitalist and anarchist projects, but Whirlwinds is also targeted toward anyone interested in building and sustaining the power necessary to transcend current forms of oppression and exploitation.

Team Colors is asking our friends, colleagues, and supporters to donate toward printing posters and postcards, mailing costs, and other efforts to promote the collection, as we work with AK Press’s own substantive and widespread outreach campaigns. As a small volunteer collective, Team Colors needs your support to help find Whirlwinds the audience it deserves!

Visit www.warmachines.info/contacts.html to contribute and sign up on the mailing list!

Wholeheartedly,

Craig Hughes, Stevie Peace, Kevin Van Meter, and Benjamin Holtzman

Team Colors Collective www.warmachines.info teamcolors@warmachines.info Facebook: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76355745428 Myspace: www.myspace.com/teamcolors

Uses of a Whirlwind www.whirlwinds.info info@whirlwinds.info

AK Press Publishing & Distribution www.akpress.org

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