The George Floyd Uprising

by Vortex Group (Editor)

In the summer of 2020, America experienced one of the biggest uprisings in half a century. Waves of enraged citizens took to the streets to streets in Minneapolis to decry the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police. Battles broke out night after night, with a pandemic weary populace fighting the police and eventually burning down the Third Precinct. The revolt soon spread to cities large and small across the country where protesters set police cars on fire, looted luxury shopping districts and forced the president into hiding in a bunker beneath the White House. As the initial crest receded, localized rebellions continued to erupt throughout the summer and into the fall in Atlanta, Chicago, Kenosha, Louisville, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Written during the riots, The George Floyd Uprising is a compendium of the most radical writing to come out of that long, hot summer. These incendiary dispatches—from those on the frontlines of the struggle—examines the revolt and the obstacles it confronted. It paints a picture of abolition in practice, discusses how the presence of weapons in the uprising and the threat of armed struggle play out in an American context, and shows how the state responds to and pacifies rebellions. The George Floyd Uprising poses new social, tactical, and strategic plans for those actively seeking to expand and intensify revolts of the future. This practical, inspiring collection is essential reading for all those hard at work toppling the state and creating a new revolutionary tradition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

288 pages, Paperback

Published January 24, 2023

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best part of this collection is the report backs on what was going on in the streets of Minneapolis, Philly, Atlanta, and other locales during 2020. At its best, the collection offers a sense of immediacy in the writing coming hot off those streets during that long hot summer and immediately afterwards.

"Prelude to a Hot American Summer" by Jarrod Shanahan and Zhandarka Kurti provides a useful sketching out of the historic conditions like the covid pandemic and the devastation unleashed by the Great Recession that provided fuel to the uprisings.

The analysis of the uprising and potential for instructing future organizing is a mixed bag. A rather good essay is "The Return of John Brown: White Race Traitors in the 20202 Uprising," which \ theorizes race and class in relationship to one another without dismissing people's concerns with whiteness and the ways in which movements can be appropriated. Sadly, quite a few of the essays read like theoretical gibberish that fell off the pages of some unpublished Delueze and Guattari manuscript.

Quite a few of the essays idealize the spontaneous actions in the streets as if revolution itself was manifesting itself before our very eyes. On one level, the collection offers an important revision for those who want to hide the property destruction and spontaneity of the uprisings from view. Instead, the collection focuses our attention back to the initial moments of the uprising before NGOs, politicians, and certain media personalities wrangled its energy into more reformist directions. All well and good.

However, in light of when the collection was published in 2023 where the rightwing has effectively mounted a backlash against the uprisings through legislation, political power, and sheer outright repression, these accounts championing the uprising without coming to terms with the current political moment can only seem partial. This is not the fault of the writers whose dispatches in the collection mainly appeared in 2020. But it is strange that the Vortex Group or at least a few contributors didn't reflect on where these uprising stand in relationship to the present moment.

Even if we want to assert that the uprisings perhaps offered revolutionary potential, the fact that they couldn't sustain themselves or transform into something other than state appropriation suggests a definite limit of them. One essay offers a rather reductive understanding of social movements as somehow all being institutional and ineffectual, which strikes me as very shortsighted. Some social movements definitely become appropriated and largely ineffectual. But some can create vitality in redirecting energy from the streets towards government by enacting vial policy changes, towards creating art, and establishing alternative institutions while still maintaining their radical origins as ACT UP did during the late 1980s and throughout much of the 1990s. The Black Panthers and the Young Lords did similarly during the height of their activity. Even the union movement had various successes like Local 500 at River Rouge providing resistance against redlining and racism as well as in defense for those working on the shopfloor.

The collection is good for a sense of the moment of when the pieces were written. A few essays offer a slightly deeper historical perspective and theoretical analysis. But mainly the collection places you in the vortex of the moment when it was happening.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the past almost four years, I've been dreaming about a book like this. I've read plenty of history about uprisings and occupations that have happened in the '60s and '70s but nothing really that I've been alive for and/or a part of. Little did I know that this book was published last year. If PM Press hadn't had another “damaged” book sale I might have never known.

The George Floyd Uprising is a collection of essays written (mostly I assume) by people who were heavily involved in different cities: Minneapolis to Atlanta to Portland, etc. Most of them were written during the peak of the battles, with some penned towards the tail end. All of them (except for one) were super insightful and brought me back to the spring and summer of 2020, when everything felt possible for a brief moment.

I'm not going to talk about whether I was there or not in this review, but I was around and heavily interested in the uprising. I read a lot of articles and Tweets, watched news, and spoke to people who were active in different cities. Still, I don't think I read or watched anything that had anywhere the analysis found in these pages. It was enlightening and interesting to hear the voices of people who were in the streets fighting for and believing in a better world. To read about things I didn't know happened, and predictions that mostly came true. Sure, some folks thought this was the beginning of the revolution (tankies) but most were able to see it for what it was.

This book looks at the things that made the rebellion work, from everyone working together to the spontaneity that allowed different things to be happening in different cities at the same time to tools like social media and city hopping.

It also examined the many pieces working together to stop what was happening including: police violence, peace police, infighting, ring wing goons, media turning on the participants and then losing interest, burnout, and the co-optation of individuals by politics and non-profits to name a few.

Now, when we're finally able to take a step back and see the whole picture, would be a great time to take another look at what happened back then and how it connects to Standing Rock, Occupy, the Battle in Seattle, and other big events; and how it will help influence the next uprising. I would highly recommend reading this book.

[Benjamin Solidarity · Rating 4 out of 5]

A interesting read. It's great to find a book that is willing to give a full throated defense of the revolt in the early and later days if the George Floyd Uprising. I think where the books struggles is in articulating a vision of what the revolts could accomplish and how.